STAR email template

• Situation
• Objective
• Action
• Result
• Alternative Action
• Alternative Result

Top engagement questions

• At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day. – This is the single-best survey item you can ask an employee. If they score high on this, it means they have been assigned a job for which they have the talent to excel. Mastering this begins with companies identifying employees’ strengths and putting them in the right roles.
• There is someone at work who encourages my development.
• At work, my opinions seem to count.

“Genius design” (articulates the holistic experience, gets outside the norm, changes paradigms, new tools/capabilities/outcomes)

versus
“Data-driven design” (reduces risk, validates and selects, makes sure it works, incremental improvement):

You need both.

Define and articulate desired end experience early so that the design and implementation work are focused and you don’t over-build.

“Conservation of complexity” – Sarah Gallivan Mitchell
“Real people, real life” – Aaron Sevier

Innovation principles

1. Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world
2. See and hear with the mind of a child
3. Always ask: “How do we want people to feel after they experience this?”
4. Prototype as if you are right. Listen as if you are wrong.
5. Anything can be prototyped. You can prototype with anything.
6. Live life at the intersection
7. Develop a taste for the many flavors of innovation
8. Most new ideas aren’t
9. Killing good ideas is a good idea
10. Baby steps often lead to big leaps
11. Everyone needs time to innovate
12. Instead of managing, try cultivating
13. Do everything right, and you’ll still fail
14. Failure sucks, but instructs
15. Celebrate errors of commission. Stamp out errors of omission.
16. Grok the gestalt of teams
17. It’s not the years, it’s the mileage
18. Learn to orbit the hairball

The situation: Need to systematize a department’s work.
Your random word is: Noon

Idea: Periodic activity

• Find out what we do regularly, and standardize
• Find out what we make regularly, and standardize
• Detect patterns in the work
• Find parts we reuse, and make a library
• Find out what I have to learn over and over, and capture it

Idea: A meeting

• For every meeting, detect if it is needed or could have been handled another way
• For every communication, determine if it is unique or regular, and template it
• Ask the team to collect their work patterns

Idea: Lunch

• Use lunch as a time for the team to step back from the work and examine it
• If I work through lunch, automate the thing that caused me to do so

Idea: The sun

• Shine a light on things that went wrong; use five whys to understand where to apply a system

Idea: A break

• Take a break from the churn before systematizing
• Treat this as an opportunity to UCD ourselves
• Get out of the business to work on the business

Idea: A showdown

• Make sure that questioning employees doesn’t become judgment

Idea: No shadows

• Look at anything and everything, no matter whose, without personal judgment

1. Here is what we presented last week
2. These were the outcomes and actions
3. Here’s what we did
4. Here are our challenges
5. Discuss
6. Accept and reflect resulting actions

“Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just get to work.” – Chuck Close

Three people need to know exactly what the product is and does — PM, tech lead, UX person.

It takes discipline to work/plan methodically/evolutionarily. It takes discipline to examine successes so they can be repeated. It takes discipline to collect, evaluate, and choose the right action on feedback (which may include no action).

Small steps shipped beat big plans deferred. Momentum is a habit, not a mood.