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Design For Ease of Use with Lean CX – Leadership Card 19
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Engineering Happiness, Engagement and Flow in your Team
Leadership is a funny thing. We naturally look up to those risk takers, the ones who “made it”, who did something outrageous against impossible odds, and won. It’s easy to write an article about those guys (and gals), and it’s easy to think “if only I had done this or that, maybe I could have been that leader too.”
But here’s the thing about those high flying, outrageous risk taking leaders – they’re full of sh*t.
They’re full of sh*t because of a very simple psychological principle: Survivorship Bias.
What is Survivorship Bias?
Survivorship bias is our tendency to look at people who have done something against all odds, see them a lot because the news loves their story, and believe it is easier than it really is or that we can do it do, or that it is even more common than it really is.
When the reality is we see more of them because they are the ones who made it, making it look as though it is easy to do and more people are doing it.
Case in point – look at all the people who try out for American Idol, because they can sing. Even just a little bit. Even only in the shower. So they go on the show and they get obliterated by the judges, because real, true, burning talent is a hard thing to find and in reality it takes years and years of hard work. Now look at it from the other perspective – how many of these tens of thousands of people go on to have long, successful careers as entertainers?
Very, very few. Even the ones who “make it” on the show have short lived careers that fizzle out relatively quickly. And yet we see them in the spotlight, while they are there, and we hail them for their seemingly incredible life.
So Here’s What We Don’t Do
We don’t celebrate the grinders. The workers. The ones who are building a solid foundation for their team and engineering an environment that makes them happy to come to work, engaged in the work they do, and feel as though they are working towards something bigger than themselves. And people who don’t make it to the spotlight – the majority of people – are the ones who need that engagement and happiness in the work they do. And that happiness leads to the “Flow” state, where you can lose yourself in the moment, do things effortlessly, and forget to eat.
Engineering Flow in the Work Your Team Does
How would that be, if you could engineer that flow state in your team and their work? Do you think their results would be affected? You bet they would.
And so far we’ve seen a few key ideas in designing our work to create a state of flow in our team. This last one is a key idea not just from Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi, who originally coined the idea of the flow state, but from many other methodologies as well – namely the Lean CX Score, Agile, Lean Startup and more.
This last key idea is fast feedback.
The idea is feedback because have you ever been doing something – making something really special or important, and working very hard on it every day? But imagine this – you’ve worked on it every day for many months, even years, and at the end of that time for whatever reason it turns out it’s actually not the right thing. It doesn’t do what you wanted and nobody wants anything to do with it.
That is what happens when you don’t get fast feedback.
The Lean Startup method is built around fast feedback – creating a Minimum Viable Product, a small product that does just enough to test in the marketplace and see if it works and gather feedback from real customers. The Net Promoter Score is built around fast feedback – if you’re not doing well the customer gives you a score below 8 and you’re meant to follow up immediately to find out more and adjust if you can.
Feedback is almost priceless. It is extremely valuable in business, and yet most businesses are afraid of it.
Asking for, and receiving feedback can be quite tough. It’s tough on our ego, who doesn’t like things rocking the boat. And yet to thrive in business we need to know if our customers aren’t getting what they want, and if it’s not ridiculously easy to get what they want.
It’s Like Playing A Video Game
Finally, I’ll say this: what else has clear rules, a clear objective, is neither too easy nor too hard, and gives you immediate feedback if you’re winning or not?
That’s right, a video game.
And people play video games for hours and hours. They forget to eat. They forget to sleep. Some people become quite addicted to them, which has unfortunate results but it happens for good reason – they are the perfect example of the things that need to be present in order to engineer the flow state.
Do This For Your Own Teams, And Win
So find a way to give your team a process that is neither too easy nor too hard, and that gives them immediate feedback if they are on the wrong track. It’s like a pilot checking in on the flight plan. Are they on course or off course? Are they moving towards their destination? Because if you’re a pilot you need to know. In fact, if you’re a human being you need to know. But most leaders first don’t clearly articulate the process and objectives for their team, or don’t improve the ease of use of that process, and then finally they don’t check in to see how their teammates are tracking towards that goal so they can assist and make changes to the process as necessary.
Objective. Process. Feedback. Improve and repeat. You’ll soon be on your way to your destination when previously you were only flying around in circles.
Chat soon – David McLachlan
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