Tag: engagement

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What’s worth doing something good, if that’s not expected?

Last week I have been confronted with a very interesting situation.

It was presented to me a simple yet powerful list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) that was shared to a global team, regarding to transformational initiatives that are being deployed through all levels of their operations.

That, per se, is a big deal, and a FAQ is a must in these cases.

I received an email asking my thoughts around it in a table, right after receiving another notification of a news article mentioning the importance of this FAQ, and where to find it.

When I received both notifications and gone through the article and the file, an idea came to my mind. Why not use the same content using a better tool?

The table format is awesome to brainstorm, understand the problem and visualize the results at once, but it is not responsive enough to be used in every situation.

So I turned it into an online list that could provide different views of the same content at once, solving the responsiveness issue of the table.

Problem solved! Everything worked and I added one more ability to my skillset! Awesome, eh?

Not so much, I was so enthusiastic about what I did, that when I shared it with the person who provided the first table, I didn’t remember to send him a simple heads up mentioning what I was thinking, and asking what he really needed.

There were some next steps to this process, such as advertising this new formatted list to everyone, and settling that as a normal procedure when they need information about the transformation process.

Now I have this additional step: Understanding what was the expectation around it, and if what was done, as good as it is, matches this expectation.

We all go through this, we sometimes infer what’s to be done, and do it right away, without checking with our stakeholders what they think about it, to save some time.

Making it right the first time becomes a matter of luck in these cases. But it is uncommon, and we end up making it wrong, which makes us lose all the work done, or worse, work twice to correct it.

Doing something good is different than doing it right, because the right thing to do is what is expected, or even better, exceed expectations!

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Something new happened! Old news…

I am happy to announce that I have a blog! It is brand new, just three months old!

When I wrote that first paragraph, I saw the word “old” there, and it made me think about the process of starting it an how it is deeply related to transformation.

This blog is not old, nor it is new anymore, as there are some posts before this one.

When new ideas come, we make tryouts, prototypes, we discuss it, create expectations alone or in small groups. That’s what I did here, and all this effort is not seen as change yet, as nothing is different from before.

We understand all of this as “change” after it is announced and involve more people because then it becomes tangible, there is a pressure to have it solved, at this point, it doesn’t matter if the change will take place or not, it has to become the new status quo or to be terminated.

That’s how changes happen, they are never brand new. They are always there, under the surface, growing quietly as whispers. We can sense them, but they are not clear yet.

They need to become a change when they already have momentum, a starting force that provides inertia to be resilient against all the opposing forces that will try to stop them.

In Project Management we use the kick-off meeting, where a lot of effort has taken place and its time to announce to all the team and the stakeholders it is an actual project.

In my case, I am creating a posting routine, maintaining it for some months before announcing it, so here it goes…

I started my brand new, three months old, blog!

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We have a problem!

After setting up a WhatsApp group with my neighbors, I found out that we were not as secure as we thought. Too many things were going on around us that we simply ignored, because we couldn’t know what was beyond our sight.

We got scared, even without having any real trouble happening directly with us. That fear was our motivation to gather around and solve the problem!

It was amazing! We created a strong relationship with our neighbors and solved our problem with a simple and effective solution. End of story!

No, it was not the end of the story, we “created” a new problem that became harder to solve.

We put in place monthly meetings to discuss the performance of the solution, shared the minutes of the meetings with everyone, created surveys to collect their opinion, and several other good initiatives risen. We had energy and enthusiasm to bring new ideas and make them happen!

But, with the solution of the greater problem – security – people started to feel comfortable. There was nothing else compelling them to be part of the meetings, or even to collaborate with their opinions in the WhatsApp group. It is easy to understand. Why to use your energy to solve a problem that doesn’t exist anymore?

What we discovered then was that our solution would be as good as the commitment of the neighbors to keep it. For when people got relaxed, we experienced some smaller security problems. Nothing to fear yet, but they were there.

We also known that we needed a minimal number of neighbors to sustain our solution, and if they were not concerned anymore, we wouldn’t be able to sustain the solution at its best.

This problem we created was not as big as the first one, but took much more effort to solve exactly because of the difficulty to prioritize it throughout the community. The monthly meetings were getting empty, and people didn’t care to answer our surveys.

After some time struggling, our best strategy to overcoming it was by accepting that we would only have full meetings and surveys answered if there was a real need for that, and we focused on specific meetings, with a tangible purpose, even though it sometimes was with a smaller audience.

The engagement risen with that, because we were adding value every time we met, and those who attend smaller meetings with their problem solved are prone to interact with bigger events.

Today I use that experiences lessons learned in the transformation project I’m involved. When the primary motivator for a project or a process is already gone for good, don’t be afraid to change your paradigms, remodel your ways, find new goals to keep moving forward.