Managing Product Development

Bob Sutton has an intriguing post, A Surprising Study of Infant Mortality Rates: Evidence-Based Management Meets Evidence Medicine. One of the surprising conclusions:

One kind of collaboration was linked to higher mortality rates. When front-line employees became more involved in unit governance — doing things like being involved in decisions about who was hired and fired, the creation of new positions, scheduling, and budget allocation decisions – mortality rates WENT UP.
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I would also speculate that the staff who were involved in those decisions might have been distracted from their jobs – taking care of sick little babies – and that in some cases (although they were given lots of information) they may have been given a greater voice in decisions that they lacked expertise about.

It’s critical to consider where and how people collaborate. I bet some of those folks were not interested in budget allocation, especially if budgeting in hospitals is the sham it is in many of the organizations I work with. (The senior managers have already determined the budget. Why do they make managers do more work??)

I don’t know the answer to how much collaboration is the right amount. If the collaboration is about how we as a group work together, what work we do, how do we know when we’re done–that’s all ripe for collaboration. Even for hiring, the team needs to be involved in the interviewing and in the hire/don’t hire decision, but not necessarily about the hiring strategy or the planning, offer, or first day parts. If it’s about paperwork, get someone else to do it. It really depends on who makes the decision.

If the decision is already made, don’t involve the team. If the team can’t influence the decision, don’t involve the team.  But if the team can influence or make the decisions, and the decisions affect how they do their work, then that decision is likely ripe for collaboration.

It’s certainly worth thinking about.

I’m in Albuquerque this week at a debriefing workshop. When I teach, I don’t just read PowerPoint slides. I do use handouts (and frequently PPT) to guide what I’m going to say. However, I add lots of stories, and use interactive activities to drive specific points home to the workshop participants. The way to extract learnings from the activities is to debrief the activities. And this week, fellow bloggers Esther, Dale, Don, Steve, and Dave are here as part of the workshop. (Jerry Weinberg is leading the workshop.) Us AYE hosts are here to improve our debriefing skills so that AYE is even better this year.

Yesterday, I learned something unexpected. I normally debrief my activities with words, either in small groups or as one group. But yesterday, one of the other participants suggested we draw our reactions to an activity.

I flunked drawing (and cutting) in kindergarten. That was over 40 years ago, but to this day, I don’t believe I can draw. (I know I know how to use scissors now So I never considered drawing as a way to debrief an activity.

But there are lots of people out there who find “expressing themselves on paper” (my new codeword for drawing) to be more effective than words for debriefing. And, since I’m the instructor for my classes, it behooves me to learn how to flex to those people’s preferences.

Many of the activities in my project management workshops are best debriefed with words. But not all. And I can imagine a number of activities in the management workshops Esther and I are planning that might use “expressions on paper” as first pass of debriefing.

The best thing about using experiential techniques when teaching is that the instructor learns something in every class. As an instructor, I can plan the interaction and how to debrief, but in almost every case, something unexpected happens. And the real learnings for everyone in the room arises from the unexpected happenings, which is why debriefing is such an important skill.

If you’re planning to take a class (any kind of class), make sure experiences are built into the class. Because the practice and debriefing of the practice will teach you much more than any prepared material ever could.