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I hired Per Frykman to find out what my professional reputation was by asking colleagues and clients I worked with what they think are my strengths and weaknesses. The result was overwhelmingly positive, which was a real boost for my self confidence.
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New Web Design

After many creative discussions and some wild ideas this is where we finally landed. My goal was to have a web page with a modern and minimalistic touch. Important information should be easy to find and the focus should be on me as a professional and what I do.

My Professional Reputation

The new web is part of a larger effort to reach customers and colleagues in a more professional manner. I hired Per Frykman to find out what my professional reputation was by asking colleagues and clients I worked with what they think are my strengths and weaknesses. The result was overwhelmingly positive, which was a real boost for my self confidence. I must admit that it did feel a bit strange in the beginning presenting the result publicly, this is not so common in Sweden. But hey, when looking for a new job you give references to your future employers and my professional reputation is actually a condensed ten-person reference!

Photos

I also had some new photos taken by a professional photographer. Armand Dommer usually has clients that are younger and better looking than me but I think he did a great job with the material he had this time!

What´s With the Blogging?

The last three months the web has been under development so I have intentionally not wanted to update or change anything. However I have been very busy reading and writing.

New Learnings

I have been digging deep into visual problem solving reading the works by Mike Rohde, Becky Agerbeck, Dan Roam, David Sibbet, Lee Lefever and bikablo dictionaries. Test design modelling goes right along the same track of visualizing problems in order to analyse and increase collaboration.

In November I will be giving a full day tutorial at EuroSTAR and I really wanted to update the material with all the new ideas I have. Creating the material included not only new content and new slides but a 50 page paper on the subject! This paper is submitted for the EuroSTAR contest besides being material for the tutorial. The paper will be available as an e-book in November.

I have also written a shorter article on the same subject in Swedish. This is part of a book that will be published in November by TestZonen.

The Lean Effort I Started?

Since last blogging I have participated in a value flow mapping workshop taking notes and analysing the workflow. This was an enlightening day on how these workshops are conducted but I will not be able to share any details due to confidentiality agreements. My job was paying attention to the group, keeping my mouth shut, thinking hard and documenting. Later I discussed my findings in detail with the workshop leader.

The Toyota Kata book is the next item on my reading list for Lean. Problem is that there are so many interesting books on other subjects I still have not read.

What About Work?

I have a part time assignment testing a web application which is planned to end around Christmas. Besides that I give classes in testing.

I will be participating in a management consulting effort done by my colleague Mattias Nordin and am discussing a lot around enterprise architecture with my friend, teacher and guru Peter Tallungs. I want to increase my skills in these areas and what’s better than learning from the pro’s in real situations!

As of right now I have openings for new assignments starting January next year.

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Recommended by a good friend and excellent Enterprise Architect and thinker Peter Tallungs - I bought the book It´s your ship by M Abrashoff. I started reading it last night and could not stop. I finished at 2 a.m. enlightened and inspired. This is a story about a captain turning a mediocre crew into the best of the best of the best.. you get the picture.

It is a really great book on leadership. Starting out with an abused and disillusioned crew that just wanted to do the minimum of effort ending up with an inspired team of people that felt that they were doing it for themselves.

That it is really what is all about, doing things beacause they WANT to do them instead of doing things because you are told to do them. In the worst case somebody that has no clue tries to micro-manage you.

So What Was Abrashoff's Method?

  • First of all respect the people your are leading, show them that you care for them and trust them 
  • At the same time set clear rules
  • Clearly communicate what you expect from them.
  • Allow failures and then coach them to do better next time
  • Realise that the people actually doing the work are the ones that can make a difference.

By respecting people and treating them well and at the same time telling them that you expect them to perform well. Everybody wants to do a good job - if you let them!

If you really want to be a great leader - you need to read this book and reflect on how your own leadership can improve.

As for LEAN. This is right along the lines of the Lean Leadership book i just  finished reading. Respect the people!

I really despise people that do not respect others. A healthy argument can be wonderful for the spirit but when you stop respecting you peers as well as your adversaries you are in deep trouble. If you get in the situation when you realise abuse and disrespect is the case - leave, for your own good!

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I finished Reading Lean Leadership by Liker and Convis. It is a really good book that fcus on the philosophy and ideas behind true leadership and I recommend it warmly. This is the summary I made:

 

SCN_0008

 

I finished the book and created the summary as a preparation for the Tuesday evening three hour presentation and workshop on Lean given ny my colleague and mentor Anders Häggkvist. Twenty people were gathered at the Kvadrat office to learn and discuss about what Lean is and how we can help clients implementing it. Some facts were already known to me ut the repetition of them and the additional facts and discussions helped me to sort things out.

This is the sketch-note I created at the workshop. Sorry my English speaking readers this one is in Swedish...

SCN_0011

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Recently found some great sketchnotes done by Ruud Cox

As I am an extremely spontaneous person I ordered the book on Sketchnoting he recommended

I read it, started practicing and LOVED IT!

The whole flow from becoming inspired to creating on my own took less than a month. That is pretty Lean I Think!

Here's a recent note created for the Nordic Testing Days I will be speaking at in a couple of weeks:

Lean Process of Development

And here is one on Lean Usability testing:

Lean Usability Test

 

This is so much FUN and I do Believe Pictures are wonderfully effective for explaing things.

I also got to buy a lot of new Writing materials which makes things even better.

You will see more of these images in the future!

Got to go - on my way to an evening class on Lean given by my mentor Anders.

 

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Second meeting with my mentor.

Progress?

First question is of course - have we made progress on the tasks we put down in our plan?

Well I have reviewed my CV as well as my linkedIn profile and made sure they are both up to date and that the Lean and management work I have done is clearly stated. Besides that I have written two blog post on getting Lean.

Anders in turn has looked into the possibility for me to participate in som Lean project as soon as possible. One important part is the Lean Box approach that I will discuss more detailed later in this post. I am ready to do some, possibly unpaid work, in order to gain experience.

Why do Lean Implementations Fail

We started out with a discussion on Why Lean implementations fail. A key factor is the view on leadership. The tradition western leadership is hierarchical with more important boss telling less important boss what to do until we reach the simple worker that just do wothout reflecting on why. Sometimes reflecting but beeing told to shut up and work - that has happened to me personally. The Lean thought is quite different. Everybody in the organisation is expected to assume responsibility for what they do in order for the whole team to be as good as possible. So the individual has more responsiblity for Kaizen - continuous improvement.. However most bonuses given out is for the TEAM performing well. No focus on individual excellence at the cost of producing a worse result overall! You cannot really succeed with Lean in the long run if you do not take a look at leadership style and principles.

How do we convince people that Lean is superior? Well, show them tehere is another way of doing things and things can be so much better for them AND for the company. How? Start by doing a pilot and show that it works for real.

What is the Deal with 6 sigma?

I have read at least part of the book Toyota Way to Lean Leadership and noticed that Six Sigma was mentioned a lot of times. I had to ask Anders his thoughts on the matter. Six Sigma is a very detailed process that may work well to impove large, well used processes by analysing statistics on the usage. So most of the work we do is not that well defined, our processes vary a lot and we do not have thise huge amounts of data to analyse! So in most contexts that we work - Six Sigma will not work very well, however for some specific contexts it may work great! Anders mentioned an example with the production of wings for those huge windpowered energy works where larger wings tended to break. By analysing huge amounts of data on materials ised and production methods they were able to identify key factors for building durable wings. That said, most projects we work on have to do with changing the way we work entirely and Lean Box is a much better tool for that.

Lean Box Explained

LeanBox

Here is the short description - this fall I may be skilled anough to tell you a more detailed story.

1: introduction to Lean, getting acceptance from management, agreeing on where they want to go

2: insight/perception: understanding the meaning of Lean. One day lean game with tehory and practice

3. vision: doing value flow mapping for a few selected processes - not too much. From wish to delivery - how much of the time is value adding activities. how much is waste?

4. doing it: 6 weeks sprints. Working on getting a better value flow - reducing waste. Often icludes doing effect mapping

All over this we have the Lean leadership I mentioned before. Changing of attitude from management. Reallise that leadership is different but not in any way diminished in meaning. True Lean companies recognise leaders by their ablities to make individuals grow and thereby adding more value for the team effort.

Improvements must come from the organisationion itself. ALL efforts to impose models on peopel that are not part of the process will inevitably FAIL!

After this coaching session I feel really good. I feel that Anders wants to be a good leader and that a very important task for him is to help me improve!

Also, a lot of the things we talk about I know already and am pretty good at as well (first I wrote God, I am good but not that good :-). I have worked a lot with the mapping of work processes - a large part of value-flow mapping. I love effect mapping - important part of stage 4: doing it.

I have good hopes that I will add value and learn a lot about Lean this coming year.