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Okay, so today we're going to talk about how we can create a culture of

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innovation. We're going to call it shaping up work that matters. Now not all

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work matters the same as we know and specifically how do we innovate and do

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projects in a way that's most successful. You know there's a thing we've learned

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in our own business having done over a hundred projects where not a single one

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has been an hour late. That's quite a thing to say especially over a four-year

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period. And the reason isn't because we have the best trained project managers

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or anything like that. These are just ordinary people who have learned to do

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what we're going to talk about right now. So the keys here are four key concepts.

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Concept number one is what we measure our projects. When we do a

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project, when we do something new, we measure it in how many deep work

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sessions we're going to use. And so in a previous training when we went through

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deep work sessions we warned up front this is going to be the building block

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for our innovation coming. Well here's the moment where we're doing exactly

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that. So deep work is and if we got at least one deep work session a week or

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four hours we know that deep work is when we work on something new. So we know

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everybody has time to innovate. Why? Because everybody has a deep work

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session. Well I don't have a deep work session. Well that's easy to fix. Start

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tomorrow. Simple enough. So the idea is that the reason why you have a deep work

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session once a week is because you as an individual are investing in your own

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growth. You're starting to hone your contribution to the organization. This is

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what gives you unique value in the business. And what you're doing is

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this is your contribution to the world. If all you're ever doing is doing

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current work and you're trying to focus on it, well that's what's called focused

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work. Or all you're ever doing or mostly doing is general work which is teamwork

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and shallow work. Email meetings and that sort of thing. It has to happen. Get that.

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But it doesn't have to be the priority and it doesn't have to be the thing

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that sets your schedule or your allocation of your time. We've gone

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through how to do the the buckets where you've got four hours in the morning, four

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hours in the afternoon. That's two buckets. You get ten buckets a week. Then

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one of those buckets has to be a deep work session. So we're talking now about

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this unit for project innovation. So what do you actually do in those four hours?

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And that's what we're getting into today. So that's the first big concept is that

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the way we're going to our unit of measure is how many deep work sessions

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is this project going to take? And that will then translate to week. So if

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you're doing two deep work sessions a week and you know it's going to take

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four deep work sessions, obviously that's two weeks. If you're doing one a week is

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going to take four weeks. So we translate the number of deep work sessions into

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weeks to know how long a project will take. That's the first big idea. The

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second big idea goes around what we call shaping up work. So the way we shape up

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this project. How do you approach a project? Most projects are hard to think

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about because they're new. And more specifically they're new to you.

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They're new to us. We're looking at them for the first time. And so we're saying

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well I don't even know what it is. Well that's why it's a new project to you. You

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don't know how it works yet. You don't necessarily understand the

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interconnectedness of all the elements you're thinking about. And so you say

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well I don't know how to think about innovation. Well innovation can be in

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every area of the business. Literally every area. It can be in sales, can be in

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marketing, can be in product development, can be in customer support, can be in

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finance, can be how you're reporting finance. It can be all those elements. And

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so there are literally ten areas of innovation. And that means everybody's

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involved. So when we are thinking about this area of innovation what you need to

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think of is don't think of time. Think of appetite. By this I mean we don't say

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okay here's the project. Let's estimate how long the project will take. I think

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most of you may have learned it that way. This is the wrong way around of thinking

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about projects. What you need to say is I have three deep work sessions. What can I

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do? I have one deep work session. What can I do? You start with your appetite. How

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much time do I have to do this? Second, as you're thinking about shaping up the

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work, how much is this idea worth to the organization? And a good way of

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coming to that is ask yourself in my area of responsibility in the business

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if I could change one thing that would really make a difference what would it

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be? Now here's a surprising thing about asking that question because

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almost always the one thing is a small thing. It's rarely like you know reinvent

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something. It could be but mostly it isn't. So what's the one small thing that

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if I'd

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Fix this thing would really help my workflow,

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would really help me improve my contribution to the company.

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And then we want to hone it down

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to what we call the thinnest slice.

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So think of taking a loaf of bread.

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We've used this example before.

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Don't just cut the loaf in half and try to eat it that way,

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which a lot of projects try to do that.

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But if you take the thinnest possible slice,

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what will happen is with each thin slice, you will learn.

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And when you learn, your next slice

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will be informed by the previous slice.

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By the time you have three or four slices in,

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what you started out to do is completely different

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because you've been learning.

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You've been tracking the learning.

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It's tracking the business growth.

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And you go, oh, when I started this,

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I thought we were going to solve problem A.

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But in reality, we were solving problem B.

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So as an example of that, when I wanted

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to have everybody in the company all know

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all the financial information except salaries,

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which is our policy, so how would I give them

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that information?

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Well, I could go to QuickBooks and print out

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a weekly report and email it to them,

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which would be terrible because it'll carry

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way too much information.

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Or I could come up with some way in which I just told them.

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But I decided to come up with a dashboard,

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a simple spreadsheet that went out onto a little dashboard

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everyone can have on their phone.

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But when I started that, I had no idea how to do that.

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So I realized, okay, what's the thinnest possible slice?

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The thinnest possible slice is if I can get one piece

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of information out of QuickBooks

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and put it into a Google Sheet.

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That's the first thin slice.

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That's all I had to do.

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That was my project.

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Get it from there to here.

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The next question is, how can I organize the information

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in the Google Sheet and create a tab next to it

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that put together information that would be useful

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to our team?

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Well, that started me thinking, third thin slice,

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what would be actionable information?

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I could put a whole bunch of information on a dashboard,

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doesn't mean anything.

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So I learned, took me a third slice to figure out

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what is actionable information.

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So I started to ask team members.

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So one of my thin slices wasn't engineering.

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It was sitting down, asking people,

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what one piece of information do you need to know

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on a daily basis or a weekly basis

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that would really help you take action?

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Not just be fun to know.

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I'm not interested in what people are fun to know.

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We're not doing that.

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What I wanted to know is what's actionable.

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If you had this, what one piece of information?

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By the way, it took several people a lot of thinking

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to answer that question.

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Not as easy as it sounds.

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Once I'd got a couple of core feedbacks

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that if I had these three pieces of information,

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we could take a lot more action.

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So then the next question is, how do I present it?

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Then I found out there's a product called Looker

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at that time.

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I think it was called Google Data Studio.

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How do I go from a spreadsheet and present it?

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And it was really bad.

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It was ugly, hacked together,

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but the information was there and it was in real time.

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It was being updated every few minutes.

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So it was ugly, but it worked.

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And then the last thin slice was I got a designer in

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to lay it out and make it actually look like

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something you wanted to look at.

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So I've run through that example to explain

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that that's what happens when you take

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a series of thin slices.

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Now imagine if I did it the old fashioned way

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called boil the ocean.

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I sat down with everybody and said,

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okay everybody, what do we need on a dashboard?

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And I end up with a 20 book list of stuff and things.

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Nobody's asking, is it actionable?

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Nobody knows the technology.

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How will we deliver it?

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Who's gonna support it?

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How's it gonna work?

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When will we have it?

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And by the time we build the whole thing

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because we boiled the whole ocean,

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we end up delivering and 70% of what we deliver

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will be useless.

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By the way, that's sort of the standard stat

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for trying to build everything up front.

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But if you build as you go, you also learn as you go

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and you start to delete the unnecessary

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so you can focus on the stuff that actually

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moves the needle forward for the organization.

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Okay, so that's idea number two.

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Shaping up work, starting with the appetite,

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not with boil the ocean.

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What's the thinnest slice?

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Number three, we then target risk.

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Where will I get stuck?

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If I'm doing this thin slice, where will I get stuck?

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What could bog me down?

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And what rabbit holes could I end up going chasing

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that would be a complete waste of time?

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And therefore, we build a culture

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of delivering projects without excuse.

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Wow, what would it be like in your organization

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if you always and everyone in the team

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always delivered the project exactly

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when they said they would

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and did exactly what we expected it to do?

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That turns out to be a whole lot easier than you might think.

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So let me break this up for you.

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When you're putting this together, we've got a template that will help you put the

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whole structure together.

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And in that template, we can help you go through three phases.

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Phase one, I started talking a bit about it, called shaping up.

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So what we do here is this is where we set the appetite.

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So we start off with, I'm going to do two deep work sessions.

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Now if you think it's going to take two, add a third, because we always add margin.

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Right?

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Always.

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So we don't write it right on the edge.

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We always do it.

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Because remember, we have to deliver it without excuse.

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There can never be...

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So in our case, if you miss a deadline, which we haven't done, if you do miss a deadline,

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you can't touch that project for six months.

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And so this is to create the culture of trust with each other.

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When I say I'm going to deliver this, I'm going to present this to the team.

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When I come to deliver it, they must be expecting what I said I was going to do.

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If that kicks in, your innovation level as an organization will skyrocket.

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And remember, the one who innovates the fastest wins.

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So we're going to set the appetite, two deep work sessions.

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Then you write a quick pitch.

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Now this pitch is very simple to do.

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All we're going to do is just high level, what problem are we solving?

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Then we're going to ask a very simple question next, and that is, what does it include?

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What does it not include?

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And what's the actual deliverable?

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Is it a document?

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Is it a piece of software?

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Is it something that's a working prototype?

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Is it research on where the three best vendors are to help us with our new finance system?

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What is it?

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What is the physical deliverable?

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Once we know what that is, then the last piece we're going to look at, if the project

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goes well, what will I include?

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If the project goes poorly, what will I cut out?

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Notice I've up front told everybody in the team what's going to happen.

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So that's step one.

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I shaped this up.

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The next thing is we want to know is pitch your team.

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So now we go to the team and we pitch it to the team.

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In our company, every Wednesday, we have pitch day.

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So for one hour, people come and do their pitches, and we walk them through the pitch.

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I'm spending two deep work sessions.

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This is what's included.

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This is what's not included.

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Here's what I'm going to deliver.

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If it goes well, I'm going to do this.

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If it goes poorly, I'm going to do that.

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And that's why you get to a point where you can have over 100 projects delivered always

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on time, because you've set the expectations.

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You've got their input.

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Everybody knows what you're working on, and sometimes you need some of your team members'

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help to do it.

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Everybody commits to it up front.

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It's all there, and we're in the game.

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And then the last step, which is the fun step, is you come back a few Wednesdays from now,

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because we do pitches and presentations on the same day.

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Pitches when you start a project.

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Presentation when you finish it.

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Now we come and present.

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Here's my deliverable.

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That's as simple as it is.

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As you're going through this, we've got a template for you to work out.

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When you're putting a pitch together, when you're shaping up the work, it shouldn't take

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you more than 20 minutes.

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If it takes you more than 20 minutes, you're overdoing it.

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You're starting to work on the solution already.

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Don't do that.

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Remember, we're thinking about the project.

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This is my appetite.

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This is the problem I'm solving.

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Here's what I'm delivering.

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Here's where if it goes well, I'm going to do this.

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If it goes poorly, I'm going to do that.

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You're building in all your contingencies, all your risks managed, and then you pitch

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it to your team.

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I hope you have a lot of fun becoming an innovator.