Designing the Future of Work | What I learned as a Flow Manager
For the better part of the past 2 years, I was the Flow Manager at a company that guided clients through digital transformation, helping each of them move into the future of work.
Many people have asked me: "Mitch, what the F*** is a Flow Manager?"
Good news: while there, I wrote a post:
- What my goals were
- What I learned while fulfilling them
Below is my short manifesto: what I learned about teams, people, systems, and overall management, while working as, essentially, the internal productivity manager for a team of productivity consultants.
As Flow manager I had a few key roles:
- Company wide Project Management & Agile Coaching
- Company sprinting workflow management
- Assuring that teams' daily activities were strongly connected to the companies monthly, quarterly annual, and long term goals
Approach
My High Level is to support our team in achieving the company’s high level goals. I do that by accomplishing the following:
Creating a strong analytical and emotional connection between the company vision, mission, & goals and our teams daily activities.
These should connect in a relatively linear and hierarchical way
The best way I’ve found to do this is to make sure that every ground level activity can be traced to a key metric.
If an activity does not clearly drive company success, why is it being done?
All individual metrics must roll up into team metrics, then division metrics, then company metrics, or something similar. This is how the connection is maintained.
Imagine a world where each work item’s ROI can be projected and tracked, such a system requires clear structures, we’re building those structures
Compression Matters
Compression in this case means taking a lot of information and compression or summarising it into a small, easily memorabel, and usable form.
Compression is both a public service and the duty of leadership. Teams need concise, specific, high level direction and they need it repeatedly.
Metrics compress lots of information into one easily readable value
Depending on the metric, it may be indicative of outcome (outcome metrics) behaviour (hustle metrics). If a metric is too low-level, it often becomes a vanity metric.
We call it that because it has a narrow scope and does not accurately reflect the big picture.
Ex::
Outcome metric: Revenue vs. Target
Hustle metric: Outgoing sales calls daily
Vanity Metric: Twitter followers
Individual Project ROI, while important, is less meaningful higher level trends like sum of all project ROI’s
Unblocking blockages that would prevent us from achieving our goals
This is murky at first glance, it’s also dangerous, because it’s far too easy to get pulled into granular ‘blockages’. Thus, it’s easy to become unfocused if I’m not very intentionally directing my focus and tracking results..
Because of the many ways that one’s attention can be easily distracted, it’s wise to have a clear understanding of which projects, ongoing activities, epics, initiatives, etc drive which results.
Further, defining desired outcomes (aka definition of done) is critical, because it is much easier to keep iterating on something that has momentum then to step back and focus on what is coming next.
It requires strong relationships, allies, and many data points. This is one of many reasons that well established metrics are critical.
It’s easier to build relationships with like minded people, which creates blindspots.
To avoid this, people need to feel very free to speak their truths
I regularly ask others to tell me the idea I’ve just presented makes sense or if I’m “out to lunch on this one.”
One of our consultants goes even further, he’d lead in to potentially controversial ideas with: “now you can just tell me to shut the **** up, but…”
While phrases like these can make others feel much more comfortable voicing their thoughts, when others simply agree to a plan, that isn’t true buy-in. It’s best to ask for specific objections and end meetings by summarizing expectations, next steps, and due dates.
Enable and support team growth
This is similar to the previous point: Unblocking blockages, but from a different angle. Coaching becomes one of the important skills.
Again, this is a murky category but we’ll discuss how we are breaking things out as in the key learnings section below.
What I Learned
Leadership
Everything flows from incentives. Everything. In an effective setup (read: in a healthy company), each individual is incentivized to do what is best for the company. That means what’s best for the company is also what’s best for them individually.
Violate this law of nature at your own risk..Typically ‘What’s best for the company’ means working sustainably towards short term goals, while further guided by long term goals and within the constraints created by company resources, culture, market, etc.
Whatever metrics a person is assigned will dictate how they will be incentivised to prioritise their time. This has to be leveraged.
When metrics are well aligned to the value that each role is intended to deliver to the org, a meaningful cohesion is created.
This is because what is measured communicates something very important.
Conversations also become more objective when they are centered around metrics
Accordingly, you must be proactive in measuring intended new behaviors, as the accountability created by an objective measure removes wiggle room, and the focus on that metric creates alignment.
Individuals will also have a clear picture of their performance and thus the ability and duty to adjust
A company’s culture and metrics must work together to make sure that this chain of accountability isn’t undermined.
Ex 1: if employees are scolded rather than coached when they make errors, individuals start to optimise for perfection or for avoidance of scolding rather than team goal achievement. Either one will cripple quality and output.
Ex 2: a friend of mine runs a legal office and was upset with the number of minor errors his team was committing.
Upon discussion, it was revealed that the only team metric was ‘number of tasks overdue’, and so the team started optimising for quantity but not quality.
Needless to say, a second metric is now in place to measure quality: # of errors per employee. This is the most important metric of the two.
Another takeaway form this example is that pairing metrics is a smart idea for balancing potentially opposing outcomes which frequently end up being some form of quantity vs. quality. Quality should usually be more important.
You must always build solid foundations before scaling, or suffer the inevitable consequences of your own karma.
Objective KPIs should link goals at each level of the company. This means that each team’s goals roll up into the goals of the teams they support.
KPIs can measure goals (outcome metrics) or behaviors (hustle metrics).
Hustle metrics are typically used for managing at a more ‘micro’ level. This is sometimes appropriate, especially where a role has been scaled to the point of formulaic predictability.
Ex: I make 20 phone calls, have 5 conversations, close one sale.
In less reproducible situation, managing higher level outcomes is preferable as it requires less energy and better empowers growth and creativity.
The further removed from client delivery, the less obvious metrics can be to create, & the more hustle metrics seem like obvious candidates.
However, operational and non-client facing teams support at least one internal clients and thus affects client experience in some measurable way. Outcome metrics can be derived by focusing on the high level goals of these teams, and how those goals connect to their external and internal client experiences.
Below is a straightforward & generic sales team goal breakdown example:
if we wanted to increase revenue for partner 1, we could analyse what drives sales.
Maybe closing ratio and average sale are doing very well but we have determined that there is a need to increase leads.
We could plan a social media campaign.
Because of this breakdown we will (hopefully) never lose sight of why we ran that campaign: to increase leads with the goal of increasing partner 1’s revenue and thus overall revenue.
This way we won’t mislead into only measuring the success of that project based on lead-gen alone. If those leads don’t actually increase revenue then this project failed, even if it shows positive vanity metrics.
This breakdown can (and should) be created starting from the company top level, then subsequently for each department.
That breakdown looks something like:
Company mission > company goals > Leadership goals > sales & delivery goals > operational goals, but it isn't quite that linear.
Each team will connect to / drive one or more of the items listed in that table. Those items may come from multiple branches, even within the same team.
Again, the point of this exercise is that each objective supported by any team should be traceable back to the top level company goals, or else why is that work being done at all?
As a leader, I cannot effectively solve the specific problems of the teams I coordinate; I can provide them with frameworks, criteria, constraints, insight, accountability, coaching, soundboarding, & guidance.
For one, Individuals quickly get used to having their problems fixed if they are not encouraged but also given space as they solve their own problems. I can’t possibly be effective by spending my time that way.
Often, the most valuable thing to unblock someone’s thinking is written or typed exercise.
These are valuable not only because they are effective, but because they are package-able and re-usable. You can even re-use the as marketing content by posting those frameworks as part of your company’s thought leadership methodology for awesome delivery. Efficient, right?
In general wherever we can create evergreen content, it is likely in our best interest to do so. These opportunities are everywhere.
Documenting how problems are solved is critical to scaling. We often focus on tech for automation, but a well documented process is automation of your personnel.
Most of the time, individuals suffering problems can solve those problem in ways I can’t possibly, because:
They have better perspective and insight at that level
They need to structure a solution that navigates their unconscious objections to buy-in and personal tastes
To reiterate: they need to learn to solve their own problems and not depend on me anyways.
One tool we use often is our thinking framework, which is great for dissecting problems; Most problems can be affected from multiple angles, and I’ve found we often argue because we each believe our angle of attack is the best (and maybe only) one.
Splitting up root causes and possible solutions into the categories: leadership, System/Process, and Individuals, helps us move past the impasse.
We can then clearly see the angles from which the problem is being caused and thus can be solved, and choose the most actionable.
I’ve had many conversations with team mates who were frustrated and wanted leadership, systems & processes to change.
After some discussion we agreed that actually, the fastest change could happen at the individual level, which would solve a vast amount of their problem, and which is completely in their control.
Though they would not have wanted to hear this at first, it turns out to be their best outcome.
Again, problems are best solved by aligning to objective higher level values like the good of the company, this year’s goals, kpis & metrics, etc.
To bring things back together, different personalities will want different levels of guidance and autonomy.
While I try to provide clear instructions when I assign work, the first step is to establish clear desired outcomes, requirements & constraints, that way, the more creative or autonomous can find their own way and end up in the right place.
It bears repeating: Individuals quickly get used to having their problems solved for them if they are not pushed and encouraged as they solve their own problems, so be highly mindful.
Systems & Processes
We default to less structure. The busier we are, the worse it gets.
Task management can break quickly in busy times, it frequently needs minor resets.
Quarterly and annual planning sessions are a good time for resets. This does not excuse the team from regular backlog & roadmap grooming. Either way, this is normal.
As a rule, each additional step a process reduces the likelihood of completion.
Streamlining is important, but making teams stop and think is equally so. This is a challenging balance to strike.
Finally, repetition is very necessary when learning new behaviors
According to Author and consultant Patrick Lencioni, people need to hear new things 7 times before they will actually remember them.
If we make the frameworks non-negotiable and the workload more negotiable, we’ll have better results. Meaning that when things get busy, we focus more and only do what is most important. The boundaries are our rituals which demand time. If we are not doing those, we have too much work. It is not sustainable to ask teams to work 10-12 hour days and then carry out admin & planning on top.
You’d be amazed at how much more productive teams become when they plan for 4 hour days instead of 8 hour days. Planning for anything above 6 hour days should be seen as a huge red flag. 6 hour plans will turn into roughly 9 hour days. Humans are terrible at planning and estimation, we are highly optimistic.
Individual
The future is abstract and hard to stay emotionally connected with.
Roadmaps and other high level planning are essential for aligning teams with goals.
From an emotional connection standpoint, delivering on pieces that move the client and thus the team forward creates momentum. Not only is feedback from clients motivating, but by checking in often with the recipient of our work, we make sure that the work we are doing is useful. If ever we veer of course and that work is no longer actually valuable, we find out quickly, reducing the risk of work-waste.
The opposite is true, If we don’t engage regularly with the users or recipients of the work we do, most of us will tend to get bored quickly.
Dev & design practices apply thoroughly to flow.
Objectives and constraints define the game we are playing.
If you want to be innovative, change the constraints. This is how you actually do things differently.
Example: if you have a process that takes 4 man hours and has only ”‘essential” steps, try reviewing the process with the goal of cutting it down to 1 hour. This will help you quickly revise what is actually essential.
Different personality types will experience activities differently, make sure that feedback includes a range of personalities.
I like MBTI as a framework but there are several good options. Either way, make sure you understand them at a surface level, they can easily be misused.
These frameworks are not a set of boxes for us to define people by, but a tool to help understand what types of tasks, comms, processes, and scheduling is most likely to work for different types of people.
Feedback about products, processes, or experiences won’t be valuable until the others have skin in the game.
Ex: Asking people what they think of a process they will have to do in the future is typically not going to get much engagement compared to asking for feedback on a process that people are forced to undergo as a test.
Like magic, in the latter scenario, users, clients, or colleagues, will generally have 10-20x the amount of feedback compared to the former.Behavior change is challenging because we are strongly inclined to auto-pilot and default to what is easiest ‘now’. To change behaviors, triggers for those new behaviors should be built disruptively into our processes and environments.
If we don’t enjoy something, we mostly won’t do it. The more complex and un-enjoyable a task is, the worse this resistance becomes. By contrast, when things are simple, enjoyable, and valuable, they catch on very quickly.
Reassurance matters a lot. Most people don’t want to go very far in a process if they think they may be doing the wrong thing. Frustrating as that may be, it’s also valuable to know.
Seen through a different lens: people will often use any lack of clarity in a new process to ‘excuse’ themselves from following it. It’s easily possible to go crazy from trying to solve all of these people’s ‘problems’; at the same time, it is critical that there is clarity around new processes, so be mindful in balancing your response to these situations.
We are the sum of our habits.
“Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.” - James ClearPusing individuals to adopt better habits across the areas of work is easy and fun if done right. The opposite is also true. Motivations are varied but excuses are generally similar.
I’ve rarely solved someone else’s excuses in a way that they accepted and actually actionned but I’ve frequently pushed others to find their own solutions by diggin into those excuses. Even then, I dig in only just enough to reveal them as non-fatal.
The reality is that excuses all stem from either fear of pain (David’s story) or lack of perceived ROI. This is why we must always lead with the ‘Why’. A good shortcut to memorize is: head, heart, hands. People need to understand, believe in, and have the tools / skills to action changes.
Blueprints are our best tools for creating change in our own habits. Like most plans, it will be partially incorrect, this is why having a weekly ritual to review your blueprint is so important.
Weekly rituals in general make it so that we never have too much accumulated. This unblocks flow.
Ex: emptying task, or email inboxes (ok I don’t actually use email at work, it’s amazing)
For Planning, ‘fuzzy time’ is my favorite type of time. Calendar blocks can be vague and flexible. I hate rigid scheduling so I try to create work queues and then rough times to work on those queues. It’s much easier and I’m happier. Less is more when done right.
For context, I’m someone who very much dislikes rigid schedules.
Blockages to success (for this role & in general)
Not delegating enough / doing for others because it is easier
Questions to ask around how I spend my time:
Am doing this work to cover a gap? If yes:
Flag the gap in sprint check-in
Address the gap with leadership & colleagues
Find a sustainable solution
What is this work achieving?
Who else could or should actually do this?
What else won’t I be doing as a result?
Could I simply read the meeting notes?
If I stopped doing/supporting/filling in for X
What positives would happen? --Maybe I’m actually blocking things? Often these are my worst blindspots.
What negatives would happen?
Sense check this: It’s useful to go to an extreme: what would happen if you were hit by a bus later today, would work continue without you? Probably.
If I can stop doing something AND create a net positive, there’s not much more to ask for. This is the holy grail of productivity.
Anecdotally and experientially, the number of things to trim your WIP list by is somewhere between 20% at the low end and 80% at the high end. Are those numbers familiar?
More and more I’ve started to ask: How can I accomplish *outcome* by doing as little as possible?
I don’t mean right now, I’m not stupid-lazy, I’m smart-lazy. I’m asking this question over a [period of time contextually ranging from as little as a few minutes and up to an entire lifetime. Here’s an example:
Should I do the work manually (slower but lower risk) or build an automation (faster, higher risk & lifetime return, can backfire)?
What are the odds of my short term success in automating this?
What are the odds someone else could do this quickly.... maybe we can trade work?
On the other hand, automation skills will start to yield huge returns over the course of months / years, despite early pains and lower initial productivity. Which route is actually most effective?
Conclusion
At the end of the day, too many of us are busy fools, which is a lose-lose approach.
We end up burned out, stressed, rarely present, and we just speed through life from one task to the next.
This hurts our teams & colleagues, our companies, our families, friends, ambitions, overall effectiveness, sense of personal security, and life enjoyment.
That may sound dramatic but it also should stand self-evidently.
When we eliminate all invisible work, and get all of our obligations out of our heads, when we create frameworks to protect and iterate on our approach to work, we are finally free to focus on the task at hand, and not our upcoming obligations. At that point, we’re about halfway there.
When we craft a strong connection between what we are doing, why we are doing it, what we need to do first, and what we will say no to or de-prioritise, we’re a whole lot closer.
Not only can we rediscover or greatly enhance our enjoyment of our work, our output, and our sense of ease. Now that we’ve unblocked the obstacles, our natural creativity can flow.
It’s been said that as a person develops, their internal peace and quiet grows. In the present age of infinite leverage, the value of good decision making is amplified a thousandfold. Good decisions are made by people who are organised, who have time abundance and inner calm.
I hope that by reading this, you are that much closer to embracing your full potential.
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