Solving A Work Crisis With A Novel And Optimized System

00:00:00.000 | All right, so I want to try something somewhat new here.

00:00:04.200 | We're trying to do more case studies on this show.

00:00:07.360 | This is the feedback we got that people would like to hear more details about real people's

00:00:12.160 | experiences putting these ideas into practice.

00:00:15.020 | As I've mentioned, the medium term goal is a call.

00:00:19.640 | We want to have people call in live and actually interact with me.

00:00:23.560 | That's all complicated.

00:00:24.600 | Sound is complicated.

00:00:25.600 | Don't even get me started on that, but we're working on it.

00:00:27.560 | In the meantime, I'm also soliciting you can send in text case studies in the same question

00:00:33.120 | survey that you can use to submit your questions.

00:00:35.200 | That link is in the show notes, but I wanted to read one today from Josh.

00:00:40.160 | He was a network engineer who's in his 20s.

00:00:43.440 | All right, so here's what Josh had to say, and I'll just read this.

00:00:47.400 | A world without email got my team and me through a crisis.

00:00:52.200 | I got a copy of it on pre-order, and just after it arrived, my wife and I went on vacation

00:00:57.800 | to Puerto Rico.

00:00:58.800 | It was really lovely being able to just read about a better way to work while sitting on

00:01:03.200 | the beach.

00:01:04.200 | I'm returning home from vacation.

00:01:05.760 | My IT team suffered an unexpected crisis, and I was thrown into a demanding management

00:01:14.280 | role.

00:01:15.280 | I'm the kind of person who likes to feel in control, and the one mission I could give

00:01:19.240 | myself to preserve some semblance of that feeling was to make sure that we didn't drop

00:01:22.920 | a single ball in response to this crisis.

00:01:26.220 | As a team, we had minimal shared documentation, and we had no central work repository, so

00:01:30.920 | I didn't even know what engineering work was happening.

00:01:33.040 | My first thought was to collect all work items into a task board, just like a world without

00:01:38.000 | email lays out, but I didn't have the time to wait for corporate procurement to approve

00:01:42.180 | an enterprise Trello subscription, and we didn't have a way to get the team onto any

00:01:46.320 | sort of task board.

00:01:47.320 | So we ended up creating a minimum viable product out of folders on a shared drive.

00:01:52.920 | We had a folder called active work.

00:01:57.160 | Inside of that folder, we had a new folder for each work item.

00:02:01.000 | The folder name was a short description of the task itself.

00:02:05.140 | Inside that folder was a notes.txt file that detailed the task.

00:02:09.760 | Any emails pertaining to the task were copied and pasted into an emails.txt file.

00:02:16.880 | Any working documents were also saved in that folder.

00:02:21.080 | So for example, we might have a folder named design data center core that would contain

00:02:27.720 | a notes.txt file detailing all the design considerations and a working diagram and a

00:02:34.120 | spreadsheet also in that folder.

00:02:36.660 | If I were to take ownership of a task, I would modify the folder name to indicate that.

00:02:41.200 | So now it might say, Josh colon design data center core.

00:02:46.480 | That way, an alphabetical sort of the active work folder would isolate all of my work.

00:02:51.080 | As I finished a task, I would update the notes.txt file with closeout notes and change the folder

00:02:56.240 | name to completed colon Josh colon design data center core.

00:03:03.080 | We could focus exclusively on a task by opening that folder.

00:03:06.280 | We could share notes and feedback between team members by dropping a txt file in that

00:03:09.720 | folder.

00:03:10.760 | We could see work in progress at a glance.

00:03:12.840 | We had a way to gather detailed information about a task without actually having to own

00:03:16.000 | the task and start working on it.

00:03:18.480 | We only use that system for a couple of months, but it accomplished its goal.

00:03:21.660 | We didn't drop or forget even a single task.

00:03:25.120 | There were no external teams that might have company that felt like they needed to escalate

00:03:28.560 | issues to my manager.

00:03:30.200 | We were able to share the increased workload to the team, even though I was primarily the

00:03:34.600 | one collecting information about work items.

00:03:37.480 | From there, we were able to move to a real task board.

00:03:40.120 | And 18 months later, our little team is now seen as an agile transformation leader within

00:03:45.240 | our broader organization.

00:03:46.640 | All right, it's a cool case study because two reasons.

00:03:52.400 | One, it highlights something I say often on this show, which is when it comes to organizing

00:03:59.840 | work, especially in teams, start with the process first, what makes the most sense for

00:04:06.320 | us to organize our work and then to figure out what tools you need to implement that.

00:04:12.800 | And that is exactly what Josh did in that story, because they couldn't procure the right

00:04:17.240 | tools fast enough.

00:04:18.240 | They said we can just use text files and folder names.

00:04:21.240 | And it worked great.

00:04:23.040 | What mattered was the process.

00:04:24.260 | And then once they got approval to switch to a task, or they switched to a task board,

00:04:28.040 | but it was that process that they switched to a task board.

00:04:30.360 | And it didn't really matter if they were implementing it by changing the name of folders, or if

00:04:35.680 | they're on a Trello board, it was the same process.

00:04:38.520 | And so I think that's really cool to see.

00:04:39.880 | And then two, I just like that specific setup.

00:04:43.560 | That's a cool system.

00:04:45.160 | Right?

00:04:46.560 | Folders for each thing that we're actively working on all of the information relevant

00:04:50.400 | to that thing, go into that folder, including relevant emails, have a key readme file in

00:04:56.300 | each folder that gives you the overview of exactly where everything lands, put your name

00:05:00.240 | into the directory title.

00:05:02.440 | So we know who's working on what that's a great system.

00:05:05.440 | And see what Josh said there.

00:05:06.680 | Josh said, all of the incoming was directed at him.

00:05:11.840 | So it's this was a, the elaboration explained as a IT team within a big organization.

00:05:17.360 | So IT teams get hammered with build us this fix this, add this new feature, implement

00:05:23.880 | this system.

00:05:25.120 | It's all day long.

00:05:26.520 | It all came to Josh.

00:05:28.760 | And yet he said, he felt like all this work was very intelligently distributed to the

00:05:35.320 | whole team.

00:05:36.560 | Everyone was working on different things, beautiful collaboration.

00:05:40.200 | And because they built a process here that made sense.

00:05:43.160 | So anyways, great example, Josh, I appreciate, appreciate that those specifics.

00:05:48.600 | And I appreciate that opportunity to talk about when you get specific about workflows,

00:05:52.960 | as opposed to just saying, Look, we're all on Slack, let's rock and roll, things can

00:05:55.880 | get a lot better.

00:05:56.880 | I like how he says when he does the alphabetical search, it can just show all his work right

00:06:01.600 | there.

00:06:02.600 | So there's definitely an IT labor to that system.

00:06:05.520 | Yeah, well, if you put your name in the folder, and you can alphabet alphabetized folders,

00:06:10.000 | alphabetized folders, it is true, like existing technology is great.

00:06:14.880 | Yeah, it's not the problem.

00:06:16.480 | The problem is not that someone hasn't built a fancy web interface for what you're trying

00:06:20.800 | to do.

00:06:21.800 | The problem is you don't have a system that you're just on email, like, did you get my

00:06:25.480 | last message?

00:06:26.480 | Why don't you respond?

00:06:27.480 | So good for you, Josh.

00:06:29.960 | [MUSIC]

Solving A Work Crisis With A Novel And Optimized System

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