Blueprint

Image by xresch in public domain

I write this article based on the insight of my conversation with my team in our monthly 1-on-1 call. I speak with each one of my team members. This article is a compilation of a whole week's takeaway. You can read more about the reason for it in the article Restart.

Will we have only one culture goal, or will we keep adding more?

 We will only have one goal for the rest of the year and maybe beyond. 

I believe that all great businesses and products have only a few features that work exceptionally well. 

I say so because most small companies like us have a common challenge of constraints: small team size, smaller market, or no marketing budget. We need to decide what we want to do because we cannot do everything we want. We have to move out of the survival mode to growth mode. It will give us the luxury and leverage to move to the next level of the same goal.  

When you see our goal (Getting things done good enough in half the time) in-depth, it gives us the freedom to learn, experiment and innovate without any additional cost. You will get time to add on without the fear of losing. When you apply the goal to experimentation, you can do dozens of them simultaneously.   

"innovation that gives your customers exactly what they want - and nothing more" ~ from the book cost-o-vation 

Invest the time we gain back into learning, systems, code, features, automation, marketing, collaboration, community building, cost innovation etc. OR Do what you would want to do? 

Imagine if we can earn so much from licensing the product that gets us everyone's salary + 10-15% increment every year. 

We will start working with the following feelings.

1. No one feels the pressure of a deadline
2. Fear of not being able to complete the task on time
3. Getting enough time to upskill
4. Not rushing to get things done
5. Enjoying the work you do.
6. Plan 20% of our time to learning whatever we want
7. Taking leave whenever we feel like
8. Your schedule is not fully booked
9. You work uninterrupted for 3-4 hours
10. There are no unnecessary meetings. 

What is your(Vikram Shetty) expectation for the culture goal? 

I want everyone taking part in achieving the culture goal is, to be true to themselves. Only take part if you think. Getting things done good enough in half the time will impact you for the rest of your career.

There will be two groups running multiple experiments with time. 

Alpha Group - It will include Achievers and Ignorants 

Beta Group - It will consist of Obedients, Critics and Pretenders 

The Alpha Group will follow the above steps to participate.

The standard algorithm of the experiment will be as follows

1. Pick any example from the wiki
2. Apply it by taking action on it for a month
3. Bring the results back with plus and minus in the next 1-on-1
4. Update or add to the examples in the wiki
5. Brainstorm to make adjustments and pivot with a new version
6. Go to Step 2 and repeat

The Beta Group will be the passive contributors

1. They will share challenges related to time in the 1-on-1
2. They will get a working proven idea from the Alpha group 
3. They can apply the idea as per exact instructions
4. Bring the results back with plus and minus in the next 1-on-1
5. Go to Step 1 and repeat

A prerequisite for all participants will be watching the course so that we establish a common language. 

Time is allocation, Time is energy, and Time is money. Urgent-Important Matrix. Why are meetings bad? Emotional energy, mental energy and energy leaks. Opportunity Cost. 

How do successful people spend time? 

How to increase the value of your time? 

How to take control of your time?

I would like everyone to be honest about following things

• Tell me if you will not take any action for the goal
• Stop pretending by doing fake action for the sake of it
• Be practical and reasonable while taking any commitment

As I mentioned many times before, this is a voluntary exercise. So if you feel that getting things done good enough in half the time will NOT impact you for the rest of your career. You will do a favour to the team by not participating and coming to 1-on-1 for a general time-related chat and updates. Your group will be called Gamma Group. 

How will the 7 culture pillars help us get our culture goal?

1. The first pillar is done by default because we are discovering the goal of getting things done good enough in half the time as a team. We are finding techniques, methods and tools that will work for all of us effortlessly. It's about getting things done with or without your presence. 
2. You will have a specific topic of time to ask for help. You can share notes if someone asks for help that worked for you last time. You schedule a skype call and discuss a smarter way to ask time management questions. You can arrange calls to dive deeper into the course shared with you. Discuss the topic that you didn't understand how to apply. 
3. Creating targets in smaller tasks will automatically give you the leverage to celebrate small progress. You can study how achievers are making progress. You can weekly measure your actions and outcomes. You can start from as low as 1% because 1% of your monthly business hour is 12 hours which means you will get two business days.
4. The opportunity to collaborate is never better before. You can pair with any company member because time is the common language. You can do an Async collaboration by writing the progress in a ticket and answering them when you have time. Highlight your wins, lessons from losses and get your schedule reviewed. You can collaborate by posting questions in our group chat or personally to someone. 
5. Shared learning just went up to the next level. Not only we all can have a group call once every two months. I will continue to share the 1-on-1 question with you all daily. You can bring it up in your daily meeting by questioning the deadline, checking the work item on your plate, and sharing your team's time allocation.
6. Clear communication will be the building block to make this experiment successful. Most of the hacks working for us will look like saying NO or doubling estimation. The clarity will keep on improving between the teams and even with clients. The clarity of thinking will improve because everyone will collectively think about time. The team will learn to answer a few questions without the help of the lead.
7. Asking a good question will become an easy habit to follow daily. We all will atleast ask 1 question each day about time. The practice of asking a question on one topic will only make use better at it. We will see which questions produce results and which one creates friction. We start picking ones that give us results and make us successful. 

This is the first time our team has one common goal that we have to achieve. We have all the ingredients, enough will, power to change, clarity of vision and leverage of money. 

Those who choose to walk on this journey with me, I can promise that we will all witness a new way of working that is effortless, smarter, and profitable done in half the time. 

How are we going to achieve the culture goal?

As many of you may be wondering, what steps, activities and action plans do we have to make sure we will do the right things to meet our goal of "Getting things done good enough in half the time."

As I mentioned in our culture call, we have already started, and we will not do any disruptive change. The only prerequisite for everyone is completing the Time Management Course. You must also have the link to access it. Everyone in the team is precisely aware of the blueprint, the method and the mindset to overcome the challenge of less time.  

The team chooses an example of work and a solution from the course in the experiment. In other words, you can find all answers to fundamental questions in the course. I have used it personally for 73bit to successfully make some transformational changes in our business. I am confident that this method works wonders. 

It's a volunteer experiment for all. The team will lead it, and I will play the role of facilitator to guide and explain concepts. Thus discuss possible solutions to the challenge. I have created 40 questions Culture Goal Sheet, and everyone is requested to answer them. You can take this month to complete it, and I will pull it up in our 1-on-1 to clarify any doubts.

At the end of the sheet, there is an Action plan. Until Dec 2022, I can anticipate that we will have about 3 action plans for each of you that you will pick for yourself. I hope this gives you some clarity on how we are going to achieve our culture goal. 

Here are a few paths we could see our team who participate may take and decide how to meet our culture goal?

1. The action plan can be repeated each month, and take small steps to improve it. One action could be enough to do the work in half the time.
2. In the Culture Call, every 2 months, each of you can share your success and setbacks. Thus others can apply the winning formula shared by your colleague.
3. You can read the goal sheet and connect with like-minded people in the team, and collaborate at your convenience.
4. You can try to pivot to a new action plan to find the easiest thing to do to achieve the goal. 
5. We will only focus on the positive side of your strengths, so in each 1-on-1 call, you will share what worked for you and build on it. Setbacks will be recorded for the method you should avoid doing.
6. You can put aside some time to work on the culture in your daily schedule and make sure you communicate this with your leads. 
7. If you are unsure which example you want to try for the month, you can pick one from any colleague or one suggested in the course.
8. You can create your road map based on the course and the pillar we have chosen in our Team First culture to meet the goal of "Getting things done good enough in half the time."

In short, we will try multiple experiments individually and see which one brings 2X results so that the other team members can try it and get the expected results. It will be easy to implement, with no extra pressure and align with our strengths.

The success in achieving the goal will depend upon the level of engagement and accountability our team will demonstrate.  

I wish the entire team all the best. 

Could you share it with your colleague Today?