Learning From Labs: Day 2

Here is the e-mail thread from learning on Day 2: xxxx To control our workflow, we stuck 2 pieces of Flip chart paper on the wall, one a grid of 4 weeks and the other a 5 day grid split into morning and afternoon. One represents the calendar for the duration of the lab, the other the one week plan. We use post its to track work. Green post its for syndications, yellow for To do, orange for deliverables and red for resource unavailability. We use red, green and orange on the monthly plan, and yellow, green for the weekly plan. We only started yesterday afternoon, so I hope it’ll still be on the wall when we get there today… It seems a simple visual way but it’s way better than having to switch on the projector to see the plan and way more efficient to change plans on tack. As we write on the flipchart a lot, we have two (additional) people to help with the typing and capturing. We currently used 2 SL1M trainees, and I tell you, with the right coaching, these two will learn a lot! You may want to plan ahead and try to get this 2 support staff for your OSH lab. Oh one final note: Data-> information -> insight -> Knowledge -> Wisdom -> Truth. Warmest Regards, Wan Fadzil Adlan xxxxxx wah interesting facts...keep in coming tuan. Thank you for sharing xxxxx Wan Fadzil Adlan B W Sidik wrote: Great job! Hope everyone can watch it. Btw, Apollo 13 is a good movie to learn crisis management, and there is an episodeof ER that is a good example of hazardous materials readiness. If I find the title, I'll share it. You the man, Azizi xxxx Interesting indeed.. Btw I just finished downloading The 12 Angry Men. For those who want a copy, it's 6.9GB. Sent from my iPhone xxxxxx On Apr 16, 2013, at 8:20 PM, "Wan Fadzil Adlan B W Sidik" wrote: > Thanks for the comments and interest. > We watched '12 Angry Men' a movie about a juror who went about systematically convincing the other 11 jurors that they're wrong. > Thinking about syndicating and selling ideas, this movie taught me: > facts and figures always trump emotions. > Understand what drives the other persons motivation and deal with it one at a time > Include everyone and create allies. Tackle the most difficult ones last > Self-interest and prejudices commonly drive the need to disagree > To win, u need to pick your fights one at a time. Don't just spew facts. Strategy is important. > The environment profoundly affects the level of acceptance > When arguing your case, focus is important as your opponent may sidetrack you away from your objective. > Other things I learnt was: > Think of the 20, 000 non execs we have in the company when choosing a name for the lab and make sure the name you choose delivers the right connotation. The fastest way is to think of an inspiring word, and then find the words to turn it into an acronym > We needed to come up with a model by today, but we got caught with trying to fix the current problems we had. > We should have begun with the basic definitions such as what is vendor,development, what are products and etc to get the team on the same page before starting out on the model. > As a result of that we will be continuing the drawing up the model tomorrow as well as pitching name for the lab. > Tomorrow we wil be reviewing our profiles, so it will be interesting to see how the team responds. So far behaviorally they have been spot on with the scores. > > That's it for now. There'll be more fun tomorrow.

Lab Learning: Day 3

Here's a copy of an earlier thread from my Learning of Day 3: No, we SHOULD NOT start with as is. For the lab at least. The lab Looks for radical change, and an as is limits that. What I experienced today was an eye opener. We asked ourselves what's wrong with the current process, and as we sought to understand it we ended up focusing on solutions that does not have the issues we are facing. This was exactly how quantum came up with a revenue target of rm5 million. But if we ignore 'as is', we can fix on the.purpose I.e. Provide consulting, we can picture ourselves in 5 years, and come up with a really radical figure. xxxxx En Wan, Pls correct me if I am wrong. No. 1 below actually says we SHOULD NOT start with as-is, am I right? xxxx From: Wan Fadzil Adlan B W Sidik Sent: 17 April 2013 21:35 To: TNB Quantum Solutions Sdn Bhd Subject: Learnings From Labs: Day 3 Dear all, Learnings from today: It was a long day today as we began syndications and began developing the new model for VDP. We also played “broken Squares” (our building squares game). Here are some of the things I learnt today: 1. We spoke a lot before this about how we shouldn’t begin with As-Is, and instead focus on what we want at the end. Today I found us still wanting to refer to as- is. While it may not sound too bad, it led people on the defensive and discussions were somewhat stilted. The model revolved around modifications of the current situations, thus, though comfortable, wasn’t at all radical. We need to actually start from the purpose, and then imagine the picture in order to come up with something really different. The end result? We now have 4 models which we will refine, define and choose over the next few days. 2. To syndicate, we need a strategy. We talked about that the other day, but today we sat down with a stakeholder, without a strategy and ran circles around the guy. At debrief today we got something of a rap on the knuckles for not filling up our calendar with syndication appointments and for not having a strategy. The important thing I to know the stakeholder’s mind frame i.e. the thing that he always asks about and leverage that to get what we want. i.e. if he were CK, then we should expect him to ask how much it will cost and where the funding will come from, then we should need to have a ready response. 3. From the building squares game, we learnt: a. It is important to understand the mission, the big picture and the role. It’s easily misunderstood as people tend to do what they think they need to do. b. Time is of the essence, work with the best way to get things done; if you can’t build your square, then pass it to someone who can. c. Take interest in others performance, they may need and will appreciate your help d. IF the mission is not met, offer resource. We often refuse to release people when other dept ask for help e. Look around and see what others are doing; don’t be a prisoner of your own view. f. We always compete internally, and cooperate externally – always helping outsiders, never ourselves (sound familiar?) – instead we should break silos by cooperating internally and competing externally g. Always take the leadership position (i.e. take charge!) the opportunity s always there. 4. Resist the temptation to give the answer to our staff. Let them go thru it and discover for themselves. Then only they will learn. 5. Leaders sometimes have to become managers; when there is crisis, to give rewards, and when there are changes. 6. I had a first hand experience today discussing my conceptual model with a choleric/ melancholic. Phew! Temperatures were rising up to the point I recognized the inability to deal with ambiguity and pointed it out. The other person realized that when I pointed that out, too and immediately cooled down. It made doing the profiling and discussing the results this morning really worthwhile. That’s it for today. More tomorrow!

Lab learning: day 5

I cant say much about the lab, coz today I spent the morning visiting Freescale, the chip maker. When I got to the lab, everyone was busy syndicating with several parties, and debriefing was postponed to Monday.
In Freescale I found an American company more Japanese than the japanese. They are in the process of installing super 5S, and the MD is very committed, making the Wednesday walkabout the most important matter. The quality meeting is the top meeting, and latecomers are fined.
They are a 6 sigma company, that has experienced a sigma shift, meaning, instead of 3.4 defects per million, they have achieved 0.3 defects per million.
In doing this they added 2 belts, white (awareness) for all staff, yellow (tools and techniques) for  others. There are online assessments writhe end of   each module.
Green belts have to produce 2 projects to become black belts, while master black belts are selected by a global community of practitioners.
They have several approaches to problem solving:  dmaic for optimization, dmadv for design and Ford's 8D for crisis and customer complaints.
Amazing, eh?

Lab Learning: Day 4

What us is a blog if it's not updated? I thought, for a change, I'll update my daily learnings here. At least there'll be some content on this blog. Today marks day 4 of our lab. We got ourselves a bollocking for being tardy. We're running a tight schedule, but we need to put our noses to the grindstone and get used to being timeliness. If we don't change here, we're not going to make a difference. The culture starts here. There are two types of change; positive change and negative change. Positive change: People are excited at upcoming changes, then experience discomfort when the change happens,then they see what could be possible and become hopeful for the change. These stages are uninformed optimism, Informed pessimism, hopeful realism and finally informed optimism. Negative change (SARAH): Shock when the change happens, followed by Anger, followed by Rejection and then Acceptance and finally, Hope. We spent the day in two groups, one setting up our Story area for the launch and finalizing details of the lab launch while the other group carried out syndication and work on further refining our model. We're still not efficiently working, as at the end of the day, there are still syndication arrangements not yet done, and four days have passed. We could use other resources to get the appointments done i.e. secretary, friends etc, yet because we insist on doing it ourselves, it's lost in the hustle and bustle of the other activities. In the initial syndications we were shooting in the dark over the questions we need to do, but once we realized there is a strategy needed, things started to move a little faster with the syndications. At the end of today, we were shown a simple way to keep track of the syndication findings. We had to create a table with the names of the syndicates on the left most collumns, and the different options discussed listed across as column headings. This meant that we had a tabular view of the syndicate response thus we could visually identify the opinions. At the same time, at the next round of syndication we could use it as a reference to remind them of their initial stand, thus making the buy in process easier. The table was still being drawn up when I left, so I'll post it up here tomorrow. Keeping things simple (you melancholics better pay attention! :-P) and visual really help! I think I missed an important learning as I was called away to a meeting; as I came back I found our chief facilitator end his session with ".. so remember this when you're doing.." *sigh* That's it for today. Hope that this info is useful!

Trying My New Toy

Ever the non conformist, while everyone else talks about the new iPhone, I went out and got myself a new toy: the galaxy notes 10.1. Just I got an HTC flyer when everyone went Samsung, this time it was no different. I went grocery shopping, saw the exhibition booth, fiddled around with the display unit, found that there was discount offered since it was the last day, I got it. My verdict? A little unwieldy compared to my HTC, but the pen needs no batteries and is super reliable. I give top marks for being able to take notes on the go. I don't need paper anymore. I haven't any use for the phone function, though, and with a tablet this size, I really don't think its necessary. Wish me luck as I continue to play around with it!

Singapore!

For the first time, I drove into Singapore. It was a pleasant drive, though many, cars were relatively few due to the Chinese New Year. Since then we've been to Sentosa island. Universal studios was great, and underwater world not too bad. The rides were great and the express passes minimised waiting times. The highlight of the underwater world was having stingrays eat off the back of your hand.What really spoilt it were the loud visitors, speaking at the top of their voices, rushing, crowding and pushing. There were also pedestrians meandering along at their own pace, getting into peoples paths. Today's the last day, and it's 10 am and we've hardly stirred from our rooms. Guess we're tired out from yesterday.

Someone just tried to Kill Santa!

I was happily trying to kill time when, at the stroke of midnight, the cool quiet night air was suddenly shattered by a barrage of Chinese crackers followed by whistling rockets and booming fireworks. At first, I thought that it might have been a sudden burst of violence. Then, my son's friend went: extremists!, they're trying to kill Santa! Though he may have been joking, it did for a moment cross my mind that Rudolph may be startled by the fireworks, swerving aside, the sleigh swerving and throwing Santa and all those presents off the sleigh. And, in tomorrow's news headlines, in truly Malaysian spirit: "Santa claus killed in freak mishap involving fireworks. Not wearing safety belt the primry cause" Anyway.. no offense intended. Just to wonder when fireworks became part of Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone. Have a safe and happy celebrations.