by Lisa | Aug 12, 2021 | Business, Leadership, Productivity, Visual Thinking
Are you looking to improve the employee experience by designing the perfect hybrid workspace? Consider a human-centered design thinking approach when creating the perfect hybrid workspace and you can start by examining these three areas.
Following the effects of the pandemic, many organizations have had to make a change from the traditional workspace design to adopting a more flexible hybrid design. A hybrid workspace design gives employees flexibility over where they work so that they can effectively work from home and at the office at different periods.
Designing a suitable workspace poses quite a challenge as employees who had been required to work from home for months at a stretch might find coming back to the office an unwanted change.
As a business owner or an HR professional, applying design thinking to the way you design your hybrid workspace post-pandemic can make the difference between retaining quality employees and losing them.
Through human-centered design thinking methods, you can empathize with your employees to create the most favorable and efficient work environment for them.
Some of the things you should consider when creating a hybrid workplace are:
Employee Safety and Wellbeing
While designing your hybrid workspace, one primary thing you have to factor in is the safety of your employees. While employees are at work, you should provide tools and systems that guarantee their safety and compliance with safety measures.
Employee Schedule
To achieve success with the hybrid model, employee roles and responsibilities should be considered during the design process. Some roles require more in-person work than others, and as such, an employee schedule should be designed to accommodate all roles.
Team Meeting and Connectedness
A significant challenge running a hybrid program may pose is the possible disconnect between employees. Good employee relationships have been shown to improve the quality of work in organizations. To foster this, your hybrid workspace should accommodate and encourage communication and connectedness irrespective of the work location.
Are you looking to improve employee experience by designing the perfect hybrid workspace? You can find solutions for your hybrid workplace with our Design Thinking Workshop. You can register here.
by Lisa | Mar 2, 2021 | Business, Facilitation, Technology, Visual Thinking
Project planning is a crucial phase of your project. You can’t afford to skip it. Visualization techniques can help you get on the right track. Learn if you are using the right tools and techniques to get the desired results.
The planning phase is arguably the most crucial stage of a project’s life cycle. At this stage, you determine the logistics, budget, and other important details.
Here you can define and discuss potential problems your project might face at the different stages of execution. Then you can brainstorm with your team and provide possible solutions to these problems.
More importantly, it is during this project planning phase that you need to identify and select the RIGHT problem that your project will solve upon successful execution.
Why?
Identifying and presenting the key problem your project will solve to stakeholders is vital for effective communication and ensuring expectations are met.
So, how can you create an invaluable project management plan and identify the correct problem?
There are several visual planning tools and project plan visualization techniques that can help you execute this crucial part of the project planning phase.
Why Should You Use Visual Planning Tools and Techniques?
Turn a project’s large volume of data into useful and straightforward diagrams that help you brainstorm and communicate the project’s SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).
Outline and visualize all stages of your project’s life cycle so you can present a high-level plan to project stakeholders.
Better yet, you can use visual planning tools at all stages of your project execution!
It’s true, visual planning techniques help foster creativity when approaching and solving complex situations or problems. Visual techniques like mind mapping, process maps, or cost breakdown structures are crucial to your project planning.
Types of Visualization Tools for Project and Program Planning
There are many project planning tools and techniques to use for project management, but not all are suitable for the planning phase. Your visual planning phase should be a detailed process where you might use several project planning techniques and tools.
Here are the top visual planning techniques that will help ensure that you identify the key problem, that your project’s stakeholders and team are on the same page and that expectations are clear and met.
1. The Six Thinking Hats:
This can be done remotely or at in-person meetings to explore different viewpoints related to complex situations or problems. Team members will wear different “hats” that represent different thinking perspectives. The six thinking hats are: Creativity, Process, Benefits, Facts, Cautions and Feelings. Use an online whiteboard tool to take notes on each of the participants points of view.
2. Starbursting:
Help meeting participants fully understand the problem that your project is going to solve. Once a team identifies a problem, draw a 5-point star and label each of the 5 points: What?, Where?, When?, How?, and Why? Have meeting participants collaborate and add detailed questions to each of the 5 categories.
3. The Five Whys:
More specifically used for quality improvement, and to thoroughly analyze a problem, repeatedly ask the question, “Why?”. Using a whiteboard, state the problem. Then list out five boxes below the problem statement, each with the question of why? As you repeatedly answer why, you will eventually reach the root cause of a problem.
4. Mind Maps:
Mind mapping is a useful way to gather and organize all information about your project. Mind maps are crucial to the information-gathering process. Mind maps can be helpful during brainstorming sessions to generate and gather new ideas. Besides, you don’t have to collect information hierarchically. You can add ideas as they come to mind, and the mind map will help you present the information in an orderly and meaningful way.
Project Management Apps For Visual Project Planning
Project management software helps you collaborate effectively with your team and carry out your visual planning. Most apps are designed to work for remote meetings as well. So, your team members and project stakeholders don’t have to be physically present to brainstorm on your project.
There are various project management applications that help to effectively assign tasks, manage, and track your team’s progress such as Trello, Asana, and TeamGantt. But what about apps for visual project planning?
Think collaborative whiteboard apps, such as Mural, Miro, Zenkit, Google Jamboard and Lucidchart.
Collaborative whiteboard project management apps provide the option to collaborate visually in real-time, and allow meeting participants to add sketches, notes, videos and more to a digital canvas.
Conclusion
Project planning is a crucial phase of your project. You can’t afford to skip it. Visualization techniques can help you get on the right track. But you must be sure you are using the right tools and techniques to get the desired results.
Do you need help facilitating your meeting so that everyone can see the big picture? You can reach out to us here to help you out with visual planning.
by Lisa | Jan 21, 2021 | Business, Facilitation, Leadership, Productivity, Visual Thinking
Have you taken time to evaluate last year’s projects or programs? It’s the beginning of a new year – the perfect time to do project course corrections with your team. What questions are necessary for project evaluations to provide innovation and improvements for your organization? It’s time to implement a simple process called the Stop, Continue, Start method when evaluating key areas such as meetings, stakeholder management, risk management, training, onboarding, reporting, changes and requests. This easy exercise can help you manage your business, team, and project more efficiently. It allows you to think through what you need to continue, stop, or start doing.
Have you taken time to evaluate last year’s projects or programs?
It’s the beginning of a new year – the perfect time to do project course corrections with your team. Besides, the last year was eventful; the pandemic forced every organization to operate differently.
Now is the best time to step back and think of how these changes will affect your programs and initiatives this year.
- What are the things your organization should be doing to take advantage of these changes?
- What are the things that are no longer relevant in the current situation?
- How can you manage your team effectively in light of these changes?
These questions are necessary for project evaluations and may provide innovation and improvements for your organization.
Do you know what process is simple to remember during a performance review?
The Stop, Continue, Start method!
This easy exercise can help you manage your business, team, and project more efficiently. It allows you to think through what you need to continue, stop, or start doing.
Here are 7 areas that should be considered, among many more, for the Stop, Continue, Start exercise.
Meetings
Meetings are a crucial part of project management. So, that is one of the areas you should perform a Stop, Continue, Start exercise. Plus, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed how meetings operate – a shift from mostly physical sessions to virtual meetings.
- What are the things you should start to make your meeting run more effectively?
- What are the things you should stop doing to make your meeting less time-consuming?
- Do you need to stop/continue/start using a specific platform for your meetings?
For example, should you conduct some meetings via phone and stop doing all meetings via video because everyone on the team is suffering from Zoom fatigue?
Should some meetings be “hybrid” meetings, because some employees are working from home while others are now working at the office?
Stakeholder Management
Your stakeholders – your team, clients, and management, are the backbone of your project. As a program director or project manager, it is your responsibility to manage how well stakeholders receive information.
You can use your stop, continue, start exercise to determine:
- What are the things you can start/stop to help you with your stakeholder management?
- What you can start or continue to help you manage information dissemination well.
For example, should you stop sending broadcast emails and start calling individuals to encourage more effective conversations and, in turn, improve communication with stakeholders? You can use this exercise to revisit your stakeholder register to identify if there are new stakeholder groups to add, or stakeholder groups to remove from the list.
Changes & Requests
Changes and requests occur often throughout the course of a project. They are necessary for growth. On the other hand, how well you handle them determines if they will improve your project.
So, during your project or program evaluation, you can discuss:
- What are the processes that you should stop doing because they impede your ability to manage changes/requests?
- Are there better ways you can handle your requests?
- What can you start doing to implement changes better?
For example, maybe you should stop receiving change requests via fax because no one is faxing anymore? As as result, you may need to consider implementation of a web based change request system to increase efficiency.
Risk Management
For any project, you must have a proper risk management plan in place to identify and take care of issues as they arise. To keep your risk register up to date, you should carry out the Stop, Continue, Start exercise often to mitigate new risks as they emerge.
- What risk mitigation practices should you start to make it easier for you to identify and manage risks?
- What risk management processes do you have in place that have proven effective?
- Do you have practices you need to stop?
For example, is it possible that management needs to revisit their emergency contact list? Is management ready to take the necessary action to contact their team during a time of crisis, such as the U.S. Capitol riots? Do they have an updated cell phone list to ensure they can get in touch with their team members?
Training
Training is a crucial process in every organization. It exposes your team members to new and more effective ways of tackling the task at hand. Due to pandemic restrictions, training your team may become increasingly challenging.
An excellent way to tackle this problem during performance evaluation is to use the Stop, Continue, Start exercise.
- In the light of the recent changes, what are things you can start to make training your personnel easier?
- Should you continue/stop in-person training? Or start virtual training?
- What can you initiate to make your team members take advantage of the training?
For example, as a program manager, maybe you need to find a service provider that can assist your staff with Microsoft teams training?
Onboarding
Effective onboarding is essential to incorporate new members and programs into your organization without disrupting the workflow.
- How efficient is your current process? Do you need to start a new onboarding process?
- Are there practices you need to remove (stop) from your onboarding process?
For example, maybe you will start using a new onboarding system to more effectively manage your growing team or project portfolio? Maybe you will need to stop using the paper system and move your onboarding process online to a more intuitive web based platform?
Reporting
Reporting is crucial to let your stakeholders know about your project’s progress. So, you should also evaluate your reporting system to ensure you aren’t lacking in that area.
- What action should you take to help your team report better?
- What are the irrelevant things you need to stop reporting on?
- What are the things you need to continue or improve?
Should you stop tracking a certain metric because it is no longer relevant, for example, fax numbers?
How to Execute the Stop, Continue, Start Exercise
The best way to run the Stop, Continue, Start exercise for your project is to perform it with your team. Create a time for you and your team to review each element of this exercise. By asking questions, you can categorize their input as stop, continue, or start.
Ask for your team members’ input. Their feedback will help you in making the right decision. Take advantage of this team-building exercise!
Conclusion
In summary, these are the things that a project manager, program manager, PMO, or senior level manager would consider to improve their project/program. Of course, the point of executing the Start, Continue, Stop exercise is to act on your findings.
Once you have completed your list, make it a point of duty to consult the list regularly. This will promote movement in the right direction towards your program’s goals, as well as your overall company’s mission.
This visual template can help you carry out your Stop, Continue, Start Exercise efficiently. Click here to print the template and instructions.
