3 unexpected strategies to boost your projects (inspired by the book Wiring the Winning Organization)
Want to make faster progress with your projects?
Our first instinct:
- Do more
- Sleep less
- Maximizing every minute of our schedule
For those who’ve already done it over a long period of time, you already know where it leads.
- Loss of clarity
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Loss of meaning
In the book Wiring the Winning Organization, Gene Kim & Steven J. Spear propose a strategy for companies that want to focus on their important projects:
- Slowification
- Simplification
- Amplification.
And as is often the case, we can reuse it for our own projects.
1) Slowification. Slow down to speed up. Create the conditions to face our challenges and opportunities.
Our lives often seem like a whirlwind. We’re parents, children, partners, friends, professionals, passionate about our hobbies…
The list never seems to end.
We don’t have the power to slow down the world around us, but we “always” have the choice to slow down our thinking.
2 suggestions to slow down our thinking and boost our projects
A/ Intentional pause.
Block out time to think and learn.
- Between meetings with others to sum up the essentials.
- Between meetings with yourself to review what you have learned.
- Between the books you read…
Continuous improvement is the ability to capture and reuse knowledge. Every interaction is an opportunity.
B/ Block time in your calendar to move your projects forward.
Start small. 25 minutes of concentration and you will gradually reach 90 minutes.
Intense concentration is the key to moving your important projects forward.
2) Simplification: Tackle the problem
The authors suggest 3 steps. Modularization, Incrementalization, Linearization
Modularize: Break it down into small pieces
No matter how complex the project. There’s always a first step. Finding it is gaining clarity.
Increment
To innovate is to test new things. But spreading yourself too thin, or never finishing what you’ve started, often makes things more complicated.
The key? Increment intentionally.
Focus on one new thing at a time. Test it, adjust it, master it, and then move on to the next.
Linearize
When it works, it’s time to integrate it into our routines and try to do even better.
Think about one of your important projects.
- What can you break into small pieces?
- What else can you test?
- What could you integrate into your routines?
3) Amplification. Detect your problems and turn them into opportunities for continuous improvement.
Despite all the organization and effort you put in, there will always be difficulties.
How can we turn them into opportunities for continuous improvement?
The authors recommend setting up systems to alert us.
In our personal projects, it could be :
→Regular review of our progress. What works, what doesn’t?
To go further on this idea, click here.
→Daily question, an approach I learned from my mentor, Marshall Goldsmith.
“Did I do my best to…?”
To find out more about this concept, click here
→ Seek feedback. Share your goals with trusted people and ask for their feedback.
I’m looking for X, can you give me two suggestions for improvement?
To find out more about this concept, click here
Conclusion
Whether for an organization or an individual, having a system that allows us to
- Become more intentional by slowing down our thinking (slowification)
- Solve complex challenges (simplification)
- Adapt quickly (amplification)
is a solid foundation for accelerating our important projects.
What iteration will you test to improve your current system?
See you soon.
Dror
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PS: Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 more ways I can help you accelerate your important projects through coaching:
- You’re ambitious: you’ve already achieved a lot. And you intend to continue. But this time, you want to do it while enjoying the important things in your life. Curious? Click here.
- You lead a team: you know that a small improvement in your leadership can have a huge impact on the team’s results and therefore on your career. I’ve been trained and certified by the world’s first executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith. I accompany you in your project and guarantee the result. You only pay me if you succeed. Would you like to know more? Let’s connect for a free call and see if we can work together.
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