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A mini Survival Guide to Continuous Improvement
Aldo Rall, CDAPSenior Consultant
Forecasting the future: A scene at a house somewhere in Wellington…. In about 2 hours
Mark Thompson, 2012“I blame entropy”
Increase in entropyHighly ordered
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Making sense of our world: Cynefin
Cause-and-effect is known
Cause-and-effect is unknown
OrderedUnordered
ComplexProbeSense
RespondEmergent Practice
ComplicatedSense
AnalyseRespond
Good Practice
ChaoticAct
SenseRespond
Novel Practice
SimpleSense
CategoriseRespond
Best Practice
Disorder
For more see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework and David Snowden and Cognitive Edge
VolatilityUncertainty
VUCAComplexityAmbiguity
“How can you arm yourself so that you successfully tackle those new, unfamiliar situations that are bound to come your way? Through Learning”
From: Becoming an Agile Leader, Victoria Swisher
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Where can VUCA occur?
AA Meta Mental Model by Aldo Rall and Andy Cooper is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
A3 complete version can be found here: https://goo.gl/JrjMnt
Me
My Teams
My Organisations
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Learning Agility Spirals
Share and Explain
Evaluate the Learning
Implement via Experiments
Explore Alternatives
Awareness
Enabling Active, Continuous and Intentional Learning
Awareness
“Through the deliberate use of practice and dedicated strategies to improve our ability to learn, we can all develop expertise faster and more effectively…. Learning is a learned behaviour. “
- Ulrich Boser -From: HBR, “Learning is a learned behavior. Here’s how to
get better at it. -
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People, Systems,
structures & processes
Leadership
Employee
Engagement
Transformation
Start here
And… it starts with Leadership…
“Only three things happen naturally in organisations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”Peter Drucker
LearningAgility
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Putting it in practice: a Learning Kanban
Mental model
sub topics
Decide whether you need to learn
it
(Low Priority)
Schedule a block of time for learning it
(Highest Priority)
Learn it right away
(High Priority)
Learn it as the chance arises
(Lowest Priority)
Adapted from the original HBR article by Marc Zao-Sanders. See https://hbr.org/2017/09/a-2x2-matrix-to-help-you-prioritize-the-skills-to-learn-right-now
Tim
e to
lear
n
Usefulness/ Value/ Impact of the feature
Celebration Grids from Jurgen Appello’s Management 3.0 materials. See https://management30.com/practice/celebration-grids/
Celebration gridBehaviour
Out
com
e
Mistakes Experiments
You screwed up!Where’s your brain?
You lucky fish!
OK, You failedBUT you learned!
Yay! You exceeded AND your learned!
Argh, bad luck!
Yay! You exceeded by doing the right things!
Practices
LEARNINGNo learning No learning
FAIL
URE
SUCC
ESS
New Ideas
Done
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Real world examples
A Learning Kanban for myself
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Real World Examples
A Learning Kanban for a team
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Ideas for Success in Learning Agility
Experiment and have multiple tools available
Be comfortable with failure and ambiguity; Think about your thinking
Visualise your learning and learning objectives
It starts with me (You don’t need permission from management to start learning)
Reduce waste and prioritise the learning and learning goals
Promote and Participate in Active Learning
Keep the environment fail safe and experiment friendly
Reflect on and Celebrate the learning
Keep it in digestible sizes (micro-learning)
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In conclusion
“The Speed of learning is the new unfair advantage”
From: Leanstack.com
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”Alvin Toffler
People, Systems,
structures & processes
Leadership
Employee
Engagement
Transformation
Start here
Final Thought: Successful Continuous Improvement is rooted in effective learning Agility and driven through leadership for myself, my teams and my organizations
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Thanks!
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