Why you should define your company problems not your goals.
Why not plan the problems and solve the issues that put a break to your progress?
I don't think people fully realize they stay in jobs where they have the freedom to improve themselves and their careers.
In the last few weeks, I focused on process optimization. It is an activity on which I spend 1-2 hours/day from my working time.
Continuous improvement it's not only a sexy topic. It should be a business core principle or even a full-time role.
When I first read the Toyota Production System book, I worked on process optimization...
I started thinking about why this process optimization "role" doesn't exist in many companies.
When what it does is to increase the:
The efficiency of each team member and organization.
Performance of that organization.
Bring higher incomes to the organization.
Reduce costs of the organization.
Improve the working environment.
Reduce pressure and stress on people.
Offer clarity
And the benefits are endless.
This got me thinking.
We are so caught up in planning our goals and reaching the following milestones that we often fail with these only because we don’t know what keeps us behind.
So, why not plan the problems and solve the issues that put a break to your progress?
I don’t have the perfect answer on how this process optimization process should look, but here is at least a process that is working for me as a product manager and will be improved over time. For now, it is a good enough process.
1st step:
List all of your actions and the problems you are facing while doing those actions.
By doing this, you will see the areas where you can improve, and teams can participate in enhancing.
Are you having problems when doing regression testing? Then QA team should come up with improvements.
Are you having problems with project requirements? Then the Product Managers should improve that.
Action points:
List all of your actions.
Define the problem statement when doing that action.
Important note: An action can have more problems. Write them separately.
Check the example below:
2nd step:
Define the context in which the problems occur and the impact each issue has on your organization.
This step will offer clarity and show you how you and your team are impacted and in which situation.
You can measure how much you lose by not solving your problems.
Impacting
Action points:
Write the context in which the problem appears.
Write how that problem impacts clients, internal teams, dependency teams, and your organization.
Important note: Be specific, in some cases, only a few clients will be impacted. Who are those clients? In other cases, the project will be delayed by 2 weeks, so your development costs will increase.
3rd:
Identify the core of the problems. Apply 5 Why method.
The 5 why method is the most simple, helpful, and efficient method I used to better understand why a problem appears.
The method is simple. You need to ask the question “WHY?” 5 times when discussing a problem. There can be different ways of asking why but let’s keep it simple.
Action points:
Ask why 5 times
Write down the answers
Important note: A problem can have multiple root causes. Pay attention to this aspect as well.
In the light blue collared column, you can see that I have asked Why 5 times and reached one of the root causes of the problem.
This is how you will fully clarify the problem and truly understand why it is happening and what solution to adopt.
4th:
Problem prioritization and impacting score.
Each problem is classified based on the type of impact:
High
Medium
Low
And each type of impact has a scale:
High: 7 - 10 score
Medium: 4 6 score
Low: 1 - 3 score
The higher the score is, the bigger the impact is.
Let's give an example.
A level "High" can have multiple problems listed.
There are situations in which there are 2 development production bugs, and one of them is having a higher impact than the other.
Production bug 1 impacts large clients, and production bug 2 impacts small clients. Both influences live clients, but one is more important to get it done than the other based on the type of clients affected.
So we will need to also prioritize problems within the type of impact by putting a score.
In this case:
Problem 1: Prod bug impacting large clients can have a High impact and be scored 10. Problem 2: Prod bug affecting small clients can have a high effect and score 9.
There are situations where you will have 2 problems with High impact and score 10. You will be able to prioritize those based on the consequence itself.
Action points:
Add the scoring level to each problem.
Together with the team, add the scoring.
And in the end, you should reach a table that will look like this:
5th: Generate solutions to your problems.
I usually generate solutions on 3 levels.
Short-term - what I can do in the next month.
Medium-term - what I can do in the next 3-6 months.
Long-term - what I can do in the next 6+ months.
I do this because for some problems, even if you can solve them by implementing complex solutions and only in the long term can you identify workarounds to release the pain until you solve the problems.
PS: Because of time constraints, I added a “Placeholder” as a replacement for more details in some fields.
After you have done this, you will have more clarity on all of your startup/business problems and be able to plan to solve your problems to serve your team and clients better.
This article will have a second part in which we will plan to show the breakdown process of putting these problems on a plan and making sure these are getting done.
About Good Enough Today
Good Enough Today is a community around tech products, services, and educational content.
My simplified vision about Good Enough Today is to do good to others by creating high-valuable content and tech products. We will help people find how to manage work-life balance, perform in their startup and product management careers, evolve as human beings in all essential life areas, and be fulfilled. And we will provide all of these experiences through podcasts, meetups, videos, and tech products. Good Enough Today is a concept that will bring in front of our community exceptional people that are innovating and are good to follow as an example in this society 🔔
It is where you will learn about product management, startups, how to challenge yourself and find hobbies that excite you.
It is the place where you learn by applying and where mistakes (if not repeated on and on) are encouraged through support in finding solutions.
It is where you will learn to be human first.
Good enough today, it is about work-life balance.
About me: 👇
I’m Alin Pausan and you can find me most actively on Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/pausan.alin/
You can also find me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinpausan/
During my working time, I’m a startup enthusiast. I worked as a Product Manager with early-stage startups from Romania, Germany, Canada, US and helped them validate their ideas. Now I’m working as a Product Line Manager to develop global payment solutions on products like Paypal, Klarna, Bitpay.
I tell myself that I’m a “forever student,” and I try to learn something about myself daily. When I’m not working, I run(marathon runner), do yoga, travel, and like to spend quality time with other people, and I am “working” on understanding my life. I’m passionate about psychology and human behavior. Curious person and excited about new challenges.