PDCA psychology – Continues improvement (and kids video games)

True PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act.) is all about the ability to respond to change,  constantly improve, gain sense of ability, change and grow while making forward progress. How can we use it to the benefits of the family?

My kids are now old enough to play video games. This has, of course, got me wondering about the benefits of playing those games, if there are even any benefits.  Well, they have SOME benefit. When you fail, or experience success, or need to get things done to win the game (remember this post?). It’s an excellent example, of what a PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act.) is all about.

Well, one day I came across this awesome blog post by Mike Langlois, Failing Better .

“ There is another aspect of failing in video games that I think we need to pay attention to, and that is the role of autonomy. ….The reality is that mastering challenges and fun failure creates a feeling of optimism, which neurologically and emotionally improves our ability to learn in the future. If we think we are capable of solving a problem, we will keep at it. Therefore, we need to foster a sense of autonomy in learning. The minute we start talking about “my special needs child,” we are taking away their autonomy…The less we stigmatize failure, the more we encourage autonomy and optimism. Autonomy and optimism make you a better learner, a better collaborator, and a better worker. Personally I think the world could use a lot more of that.” Mike Langlois

And I will argue the additional point, that those video games allow the kids to fail over and over again, forcing them to re-plan their steps and try again. Gain more experience and try yet again. Failing again and again just means that you learn how to do it better next time. And each time you re-start the level, you gain in abilities, or power, or wealth. You start from a relatively easy stage and advance to harder and harder stages, journeying through a series of failures, successes and learning.

And so, thinking of the video gaming experience, I think it’s an excellent example, of what a PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act.) is all about. The ability to constantly improve, gain sense of ability, change and grow while making forward progress.

Lets leave the kids playing their video games, and learn a bit about PDCA, and how we can use it in the family.

According to Wikipedia, “PDCA (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust) is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products. ”

When do we use it?

●     As a model for continuous improvement.

●     When we wish to implement any change

●     When we wish to improve

●     ….

Plan to do something → Do it →Check and see how it went , Change whatever you think is needed to change →And Act accordingly to the changes.

Then do it again.

Take a task (a small one) and place it on the board:

(I will add the F - for Fun)

When we start using PDCA more and more, it becomes second nature to us. Just like a child playing a video game, failing and checking our steps is something that comes without thinking.

It’s a continues improvement mindset approach.

When done right, I believe that PDCA keeps us in a “capable “mode. It challenges us to solve problems in relatively small portions, allowing us to experience small failures and experience a change to success.

By the way, ‘Failure’ isn’t a bad word; it’s something that when experienced in small doses can be manageable and helps us progress and achieve. ‘Success’, of course, is a great feeling - and we can use this feeling when we make small changes. We don’t need to wait for the big bang process to be completed.

PDCA, when done right, helps us experience controlled success and failures, and most important, helps us feel capable, driven from our experience and the effort we put into ‘doing’. This fuels us to continue, to try solve and change and grow. 

Of course, just as anything else unfamiliar, the theory looks very strict. We just need to experience it, adapt it to fit our needs and improve on it.

So , what is the best way to get into a continues improvement using PDCA?

1.    Don’t forget to have fun while changing .
‘Fun’ usually comes last in my checklists. Not this time. Having fun helps fail better and increase the ability to solve problems now and in the future.

2.    When something is interesting it’s also easier to solve.
PDCA is like a puzzle, so treat it as such. It should be interesting and related to what we want to do. Like in puzzle, we need to try sometimes few times before we figure it out.

3.    Encouraged Autonomy.
In a video/PC game, you start from the easy stuff. You gain experience by failing and retrying (do-check), you learn from your mistakes and try again. Sometimes (most of the times!!!) you become better… even awesome in what you do. But the player manages to do it since he can use the autonomy of the game. This is a very important step in PDCA. Have the autonomy to change, learn and adapt. No change will happen if you aren’t allowed to think by yourself, fail, make mistakes and try again.

4.    Welcome failure as a step toward success.
Don’t expect to succeed from step one. Encourage your family to check things out and try again and again.

5.    Deal with small steps, one thing at a time.
There’s no need to plan, do check and act over massive projects. It doesn’t need to be a long cycle. It can be a daily process of planning, doing, checking and acting. Divide big changes into smaller practical tasks. Pick up one at a time and go with it.

6.    Check – means communicate, talk it over, discuss.
Ask what went well and what can we do differently. You can use the daily gathering for that.

7.    Ease yourself out of your comfort zone.
Do one small thing each day to challenge yourself. Feel uncomfortable once a day, check it out, learn and adapt the next day.

8.    Learning is a curve.
We learn better from experience.

9.    Appreciate the effort of doing.
 It is highly important especially when you don’t succeed.

10.  Visualize.
As always, when you can see the change, it increases the probability of changing and doing.

By the way, to visualize, I take a small enough task , using  sticky notes, place them on the board, run them visually into the PDCA process,  and until people don’t even see the process anymore it’s so innate, I mark the change visually on the board.

Well, I’m off to play some video games. Can’t let my boys grow TOO complacent :)

To read more:

●     The steps in each successive PDCA cycle are ⁽http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA :  ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems - Requirements. ISO. 2008. pp. vi.)

●     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Kata

●     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA

●     http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/fearoffailing/

The Feeling of ownership and quality time with our kids .

Agile@Home :

How many times have you told your kids to stop strewing stuff all over the living room? And how many times have you wondered, when would you be able to stop repeating yourself?

As you can imagine, it happened to me too.

Now, for a pop quiz. How many of you have taken over these tasks for your kids? You might get angry with them from time to time, but YOU are the one tidying the room, getting their bags ready for the next day - you are the task owners.

All of you? Yeah, I know the feeling.

But how did it happen?

First, lets all agree that we want our kids to own their tasks. Second, lets agree that we want to stop nagging them. Third, lets agree that the kids want to stop being nagged too. Now that we’ve agreed on all that, lets continue.

After all, i believe, we all want quality time with our kids, meaning we all need to free our valuable time with our kids to more important stuff than the same old nagging over and over again.

So how do we do this with Agile? It’s simple, really. By the way, some teachers have already used this method in their classroom to get the kids to perform better and own their tasks.

We take Kanban as a tool and Agile as a mindset and we manage to reduce the nagging and increase ownership. Doing that, we free up valuable time for a healthy family dialog.

I believe that Feeling of ownership means that you are the one that care about this task. You do it because YOU think it is important and not because someone commanded you to do it.

So how do we empower our kids, how do we help them become owners of the task?

What benefits are we looking for?

1.       How to get to the stage where the child does his task on his own (answers our needs as parents).

2.       How to make sure it's not a one time thing.

3.       How to make the child feel in control.

4.       What values should we pass on, and what does the child gain by completing his tasks (involvement, parental communication, attention).

We’ve written about real life examples before, but here’s a short list to achieve our goals:

A : Visualize the family chores.

1. Introduce Scrum to your kids the fun way. Use colors, sticky notes and a board, and show them its fun. Fun helps us connect better to a concept. Once we are emotionally connected we will be more cooperative.
   
   
2. Build the task board together: Sit down with your kids to build a task board as a family. Let them be part of it. Don’t build it for them. When we do something ourselves, we relate to it better and we start to develop that sense of ownership toward it. Having the children build the board is also easier for us as parents. I mean, what can they possibly get wrong? And don’t forget, this way they have our undivided attention.  So, just Draw the three columns, and let them do the rest.
   
   
3. Everybody puts a task on the board - even Mummy and Daddy. Not too many, one or two each.  Let them pick their tasks by themselves. ‘Helping’ them pick tasks just makes those tasks yours again.

B : Initiate the first step of a healthy family dialog

4. Suggested that it would be really fun to meet every evening and talk about the tasks, and move them on the board according to their progress.
5. Meet every evening and talk about the tasks. Let the kids move the tasks around the board themselves.
6. From time to time , suggest adding more tasks.

Over time, your kids will take ownership over their tasks. They get to the board from time to time, and especially on times agreed they need to do their chores and move the tasks from one column on the board to another.

It works in so many families these days, and its so simple.

Want to learn more?

And … don’t forget to have fun.

How to decide what to do? – Another way to order the ‘To-Do’ column

Lets say we have a lot of issues at hand, and we need to decide what to do first. The catch here is, that we need to decide as a group (we’ve already discussed the benefit of a group and empowerment before). The group leader (teacher/ manager) agrees that the best way to have an assignment completed in the best possible way, and get people highly motivated and have fun, will be to allow the team/class to decide on their own.

But we have so many issues at hand and only a short time frame to make our decision. So  how are we all going to agree in, say, an hour?

Imagine we are in a classroom where the class has tons of many social assignments, from which they need to pick just two activities that will benefit the entire school and probably win them a prize. But again, there’s a catch. What if they don’t win? Well, even then, at least they had fun and achieved the feeling of success and accomplishment.

The technique, a simple sort of brain storm that I’ll show you, is a very common "game" we play almost in every implementation in the industry or wherever. In fact, I even remember playing it when I was in the Girl Scouts.

So why not try it out at home or in the class room?!

So ,We have a huge list of idea we want to achieve.

1.       Ask the each class/ team member to offer two ideas and write them down on a sticky note.

Paint the school fence

Build a Muskie over in the lobby

Clean the tree area

Have an party during one of the breaks

 Create an hour of fun for first grader

Build a coffee shop for the next parents day

**No one can object to a team member idea at this point.

2.       Once every one is done , each team member has ten seconds to present his idea and place it on the board in the order of its importance.

3.       If more then one team members have the same idea, they add their note to the note already on the board.

4.       Each team member in his turn will  add his note to the board and place it according to the priority he thinks it has.

5.       The next step  may be done in two different ways:

a.        The ideas that got the most votes are selected.

b.       We can ask each team member to grade the ideas 1-5, (or whatever points we like to use) and see what two ideas got the most points.

6.       Discuss the ideas selected: drill down into practical tasks.

7.       Examine again the effort of this idea selected vs. the effort needed. Do we still want this idea or not?

The point is that

1.       We have an open discussion.

2.       Everybody’s  ideas are visible.

3.       We select the ideas as a group.

4.       We can change our mind after we have selected an idea.

5.       And, we can do this every time we have lots of things to do. A project can be a trip or a birthday party , or an event or something we are planning to do, and there are always more than one way to do things.

a.       Place the high priority ideas higher , and the rest of assignments as a wish list inside your backlog.

b.       We now have a visibility over more then only two things we wish to do.

A trip to San Diego

The Four Quadrants of the To Do list

Stick to the important, before it becomes urgent.

Here’s another way to manage the ‘To do’  list when there are many tasks that need to be taken care of , immediately, or in the long run. This method is also very useful when we find ourselves doing nothing but putting out fires. 

Instead of just putting out the fires, and constantly chasing after the daily tasks, we should stop for five minutes, and even without knowing time management theories, simply present our tasks in a visual way. That way we can start working on what’s REALLY important, and stop the constant crisis breaking out.

So what DO you do?

Start off with KISS. Keep It Simple.

Now, how can we manage the task list better?

Let’s divide our tasks into four, like below:

Now, start adding your tasks to the board, each task according to how important and urgent it really is.

(Of course, when it comes to Agile Kids, we do this as a family).

This way, the task board appears much clearer, and we know what needs to be done.

This is known as the Eisenhower Method.

Now, when you want to complete a task, just follow these simple rules to determine if it’s REALLY what you need to do next.

1.     Stick to the important
Sometimes you find that what’s really important as a family - like reading a book to your children, or talking to them - isn’t urgent, so it keeps getting postponed. Don’t forget that what you don’t do today, will come to haunt you in the future as a crisis. So if the task is important  - make sure you complete it. 

2.     Start with those that are due soon and assign them with a date and an owner.

3.     Then work on those tasks that may be due later.

4.     Delegate urgent and non important issues.

5.     Make sure to review your tasks from time to time and see if their position in the four quadrants has changed.

I still have time to do it, or ‘The Student Syndrome’

We’ve all been there. You’re in college, you’re having the time of your life, and you don’t have a care in the world. Then one day, you are told that you have three months to get ready for your final exam. Three months? That’s ages away! You’ve got plenty of time! And what do you do over the next two months and 29 days? You go out to parties, try to drink at least three pubs dry, and brush up on your guitar skills - you do anything and everything, in fact, other than actually sit down and study for the exam. Then the last day “suddenly” arrives. All of a sudden, you realise that you might have made a slight miscalculation, and that the three months AREN’T as long as you thought they were. Like it or not, now you have to get through a year’s worth of studying in 24 hours, or you might very well have to start the whole business all over again. Panic sets in, and you start cramming like mad.

Unlike what most Hollywood college movies have taught us, there’s no guarantee here. You may get lucky and scrape through your exams, or you may very well fail and have to start all over again.

This is called the Student Syndrome, or “putting things off until the very last possible minute”. There were three whole months to get ready for the exams, but you just kept putting it off. ‘I’ve still got plenty of time’, or ‘Tomorrow I’ll start for sure’ are just a number of excuses we tell ourselves to avoid sitting down and actually doing what we were supposed to.

Funnily enough, life is just the same.

Think about it. As a family, you have chores to do, and you need to get them done by the end of the day, or week, or whenever. A new chore just came in, and you have to get it done quickly. But you have tons of chores. And you need to work. And you need to take the kids to school. And you need to make sure your kids do THEIR chores. Starting to sound familiar? So, do you start on the new chore? Put it on one side, to be dealt with ‘later’? And when exactly is this ‘later’?

I’ve seen so many cases of chores and tasks being put to one side, or even completely forgotten about, until the last possible minute. Then you realise that you’ve got this task to complete right now, and you start working on it feverishly, and usually, you don’t manage it as well as you should. Some of these tasks are vital - say, you have one night a week to sit down with your son and play a game. This isn’t a task that you want to leave to the last possible minute - but when you do, the results aren’t good, are they?

So, because you put off everything to the last minute, your efforts aren’t as good as they could be. For parents, that’s a make or break kind of deal. Especially if you are trying to get your kids into Agile at home - leading by example, remember?

Luckily, it’s a surprisingly simple situation to solve. Really. All you need are two things:

Priority. That way you know what’s more important to do right now, to get the best possible results and avoid pressure in the future. Do you REALLY need to play the guitar right now, or can it wait until you make sure that you have enough time for your son??

Focus. Working on just the task at hand makes it easier to complete, and complete properly. Playing with your son while checking your email every five minutes on your phone isn’t exactly focusing on him - and believe me, he will notice right away, even if you think you’re being really discrete.

So how do you achieve focus and priority?

Well, as you’ve started practicing Agile at home, go to your task board. Make sure that you not only put the tasks on the board (sticky notes are your friend), but that you’ve also got them sorted by priority. Don’t think too big - ‘family time’ won’t really help you, but ‘do a puzzle with Ben’ will. The most important tasks go on top, the not-so-important in the middle, and the ones you will-do-one-day-but-aren’t-urgent down the bottom.

Easy, right?

Now, when you suddenly have a new chore - a light bulb needs changing, you need to take the kids to the dentist - you don’t just put it on one side, leaving it to the last possible minute, nor do you have to start working on it straight away. Just look at your board, and decide. Is the task THAT important? Are there other tasks that you can postpone a bit to make room for this new task that has just come in? Do you need to start working on something else?

Of course there are always going to be more tasks than you can handle. You will ALWAYS have to postpone some to another day, or next week. But having all the tasks out in front of you helps you manage your time much better, and you won’t find yourself checking your email while changing a light bulb while playing with your son.

Which is a good thing :)

Are we overloading our kids with tasks? And if so, what can we do about it?

The answer is simple. Focus!

If you want to get your kids to perform their chores, one of the most important factors is focus. This is one of the keys to your success. The task board is an excellent solution for scope and focus our attention over the most important tasks and getting them done.

Sometimes we get to the point where our kids feel like they have too much to do. This might even be because of us, the parents. Not because we give them a lot to do, but because sometimes even a few simple (to us) tasks seem huge to our kids. Sometimes we forget that they aren’t really small adults at all, but children. Children who aren’t very experienced at setting goals or priorities.

I find that parents come home and immediately start with a list - “take out the garbage, pick your coat up from the floor, why is your plate here, and why is your room in such a mess?”...

Even I can get stressed out from a list like that, and kids take it even worse.

Homework is also a task that can cause stress - what seems simple to us, like four pages in English and two in Maths can create a feeling of pressure to get the tasks done. Ask him to empty the dishwasher as well, and you’ll find that it’s too much for them to handle.

If we succeed in changing the way they perceive their tasks, then we will be able to change the feelings that follow hearing about these tasks as well. So for example, there are tasks that we can head off the pressure before they start - for example, what do I do when I come back from school? Put the coat and bag in the room, eat lunch, clear the table and tidy up the big stuff in my room. Other tasks we will split up into smaller tasks - for example “Maths” would be the header, with “Page 1”, “Page 2”, etc. will be the tasks.

So how does the task board help us here? It’s simple!

One of the Agile principles of managing the work flow is first to be able to visualize it.

So our first step will be to do exactly that.

Draw three columns ( to being with) on a white board. Our flow will be to have tasks that we need to do, those in progress, and those we have done.

Put the tasks on the board, and you can visualize where you are today.

See? Simple!

In the following example. Adam has tons of tasks to complete, AND he’s expected to do his homework. No wonder he is stressed. This stress will probably cause him to drop everything, and try to avoid doing any of his tasks at all.

One of the main advantages of the task board is, that it makes our chore bottlenecks visible.

Now we can place the tasks in the right order, and we can see if we are overwhelming anybody with their task load.

The second, and not less important principle is to limit our Work In Progress, or WIP.

This means that you can only have so many tasks that are in the ‘Doing /In-progress’ column at the same time.

Sometimes limiting the tasks that are overloading our WIPs is the best way to get things done. Starting from doing one thing at a time (Yes, we can set more sophisticated WIP flows, but you are dealing with kids and basic principles, so keep it as simple as possible).

Limiting our WIP load doesn’t mean you should stop doing things. It just means that you need to control what you are doing at the same time, in parallel, and limit it to what we are really able to handle. As all tasks are now visible on the board, we will make sure to do one thing at a time. Adding more and more chores to the ‘Doing’ column won’t help if you child is already bogged down with tasks, and starting more and more new tasks without finishing old ones only leads to delays and frustrations.

Keep in mind that we are at home with our kids - not at work with our team or employees. This means that our ability to control the load is much more simple:

1.    Decide what important.

2.    Decide what comes first (priority).

3.    Divide tasks up into small chunks if possible.

4.    How long will it take?

5.    Work on one task at a time.

6.    Pull tasks from the “To-Do“ column only when your completed the previous one.

So if you told your child to do lots of things at once, now you have a different method. Visualize everything you want them to do, give each task the right importance and priority, pull tasks only when you are done doing the last task, and you’ll feel how the sense of being under pressure is lifted.

Take the first example we gave, what the kid needs to do when he comes home from school. There are a few solutions for the problem, such as:

1.    Planning in advance the ongoing and repeating tasks, and placing them on the board.

2.    Limiting, prioritizing and timing those tasks to the right time and place.

This way, instead of dropping all the tasks on the kids at the same time, when the kids get home they can see the task board and know what they need to get done. The child then selects one task after another, moving them into the ‘Done’ column when they are complete.

Let’s take the example of homework:

Let's teach the child to divide into smaller tasks. Then visualize those tasks on the board, and decide together on right time to perform those tasks.

So, to focus means:

1.    Visualize your flow

○     Identify our list of tasks /chores.

○     Identify the crowded areas or bottlenecks.

2.    Limit our load, or actions to reduce the load:

○     Plan tasks and chores that we know need to be done at a specific time in advance.

○     Decide priority, timing and importance...

○     Divide to small chunks.

○     Stop working on other tasks, and focus on moving bottleneck tasks forward.

○     Do one thing at a time at our own pace.

○     Pull  - Only start a new task when we complete the previous one

Sometimes we can put a WIP limit over our 'In Progress/ tasks, but this is something for another blog :)

The Agile Kids book

Want to learn more about Kanban?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)

Kanban for project management

http://www.atlanticcanadabusinessblog.com/

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