Courtesy of gluemoon, Some Rights Reserved

I remember when I did the keynote at XP2007 and someone told me: “amazing how fast you go in your company, I’m happy my users are not asking me to go that fast” I remember I said “they don’t ask because they don’t know you can go that fast“.

I always think of that moment when I see teams with slow process, full of unnecessary steps that are usually in place for at least 3 reasons:

  • historical reasons (= no one knows why AND no one asks why they are doing that way)
  • “because dept. XYZ/important person ABC once told us to do that way” (= no one knows why AND no one asks why they are doing that way)
  • for the illusion of control

When this happens, I suggest people to try something that I’ve learnt during my hypnosis training: time is not absolute. Time is not absolute in the sense that even if it were absolute, we just perceive it (as we do with reality in general). As we perceive it, we transform it through our senses. And as we transform it, it happens time can go faster or slower depending on … us.
As an example when you are on the dentist’s chair time is soooooooo slow while when you are on holidays … it’s unfortunately too fast :).

Now what if we apply this concept to your company, team, business, task, process?  Take your ‘lead time’: the time that is needed to go from the beginning to the end of the activity you want to speed up. Describe it putting everything inside: make a nice flowchart, Gantt chart, process map of what make you comfortable. Make it visual.
Now make the magic and say: what if I knew this stuff here can be done 10 times faster? Rule #1 stop saying “it is not possible” and start looking at all the components of your process as if you knew someone can go 10 times faster.

Our brain can be easily tricked: do you remember when your wife (or yourself) were pregnant? Do you remember how many pregnant girls you started noticing? Same stuff when you decide to buy a new car: it seems everyone in the world has that car all of a sudden.
This is called focus: your brain is so focused on this new important stuff that all of your energies go there and you start noticing stuff that you were not noticing before, your brain start automatically acting in a different way trying to satisfy your new needs.

Use the same trick here: convince yourself you can do it 10 times faster, 10xFaster:
What can you make differently?
Can you cut a step in your process?
Can you simplify?
Can you use different people with different skills to it more quickly?
Are different roles beneficial?
Does it help if  you change the way in which people communicate?
Do you have to change software?
Are you really sure you have to do that extra manual step?

Don’t let the context (rules, politics, …) limit your new behavior: you can di it 10 time faster!

Do it. For 30′. In team. Deeply. And then leave … because you know, in the moment you start this process, your brain starts to be focused in that direction and this is the best tool I know to start changing.

PierG