When you start to dig into how to make work better it can be a little overwhelming. Ok. That’s a lie. It can be a lot overwhelming. It can be fucking impossible.
You will, I assure you, likely feel as through the task is akin to Sisyphus, rolling a rock up a hill just to watch it roll back down the other side. Oh, and it will hit a lot of people on its way down and that will not enjoy the process. In fact, they will hate you for it.
Sound fun? Cool. Let’s get to work.
Start with why. Why are you doing this? Have you been asked to do this? By whom? The truth is that it is hard and painful to go at it on your own and if you don’t have the support of your peers and your “elders” it’s going to be harder than you can possibly imagine. If it sounds like I’m telling you not to bother, that’s because I am.
If you don’t have a reason to get the work done AND/OR you don’t have a champion in the organization that is going to have your back when you find the levers you’re going to want to pull, stop or at least lower your expectations. If you want to reinvent the wheel for fun, have at it, but there is nothing worse and more frustrating than seeing the error of your ways and not being allowed to fix it.
So I know that you’re asking me where to start, but I’m absolutely telling you to stop. Don’t do it. Quit while you’re behind. Trust me. You’ll thank me later.
But let’s say that you DO have enough authority to make something actually happen. Then where should you start?
Information.
This is where most organizations fail.
Information is hidden. It’s not displayed to the right people, at the right time. It’s not accessible. It’s not usable. It’s some sort of secret code and only a few actually have access to it.
It sucks. So how do you solve for it?
First, tear down every wall that you possibly can. If you’ve got conversations happening in DMs, move them to public channels. If you’ve got email threads with small groups, move them to public conversations. If something doesn’t need to be secret, make it public. We’ll talk a little more about that in later issues but that’s the most basic explanation.
Second, make meetings the same. 1:1 meetings are great for personal relationship building and private feedback. But if what you’re sharing as data and information is not something that needs to be private, make it not private.
This is overly simplistic, bordering on irresponsible, but I stand behind it. That’s my secret.