Posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago at 8:05 am. 2 comments
As part of my continuing series of posts on lean and kanban boards from an I/O Psychology perspective, this post focuses on pull systems. Most people who subscribe to lean ideas think pull systems (as opposed to traditional push systems) are superior for employee performance. The most often cited reasons for this are case studies of organizational success like Toyota and others. I found that when looking through a lot of this information, there were few empirical studies that focused on aspects of lean for complex jobs outside of manufacturing. One of the few (academic) articles to test an aspect of lean, specifically pull systems, was an article by Marsh and Conard (2008).
Their article looked at a pull systems in the context of “knowledge work”, which is work that is considered to be non-physical, non-repetitive, white collar, and cognitive in nature. The traditional set up for work such as this is that information on what to do is pushed down through an organizational hierarchy from management to those who are directly responsible for the work. As you can guess, the results of push systems are having a lot of work-in-process and long lead times. Push systems often require that tasks be worked on concurrently, which tends to result in slower response times and more waste. The point of a pull system is to use a kanban board to limit work-in-progress by pulling from the previous phase of your value stream when necessary. Many studies that focus on the implementation of kanban boards for industries other than manufacturing have shown that waste is reduced when work is set up to be pulled through a series of phases.
The Marsh and Conard (2008) study found that there was a significant improvement in performance time (without significant differences in performance quality) when using a pull versus a push system. The pull system was five minutes faster than the push condition, a 9% reduction in time. Though that may not sound like much in practical terms, if the results were to be replicated in the workplace the time reduction translates to 22.5 days (assuming a typical 40-hour work week). Think about all the additional things you could do if you had another 22 work days a year!
The findings for the study also suggest that those who used pull systems as opposed to push might have had higher levels of intrinsic motivation. This fits with my first post of this kind related to motivation and lean/kanban because Marsh and Conard (2008) go on to note that “leanness” could affect motivation and performance. It seems as though the use of a pull system in this study gave participants more feedback, which motivated them to continue working. Other research like Doerr et al. (1996) has also found evidence that worker using pull systems performed faster than those using push systems, so the results are not an isolated incident even though Marsh and Conard (2008) looked at these issues in a lab. The conclusion of the paper suggests that studies like this should help shift the way that work is delegated from a push to a pull system, and I certainly hope that this is the case.
It would be interesting to see what the increase in performance might translate to in terms of the bottom line. The increase in efficiency with the use of a kanban board would be well worth the low-cost of Zen, a lean project management tool.
Posted 9 months ago at 12:42 pm. 0 comments
Sensemaking is likely to occur in all organizations, particularly those that operate in ever-changing fields such as software development. Sensemaking is an action taken by organizational members in order to create and maintain understandings, sustain relationships, and enable collective action (Maitlis, 2005; Weick & Roberts, 1993). This is likely to occur during times of change (Balogun & Johnson, 2004), which are always present in the field of software development because of the speed of changes in technology. Sensemaking is, in essence, the development of a collective understanding in an organization as team members/employees actively try to collect information to better understand relationships among pieces of information. This is likely to happen on a daily basis as people constantly monitor their environment for new information. Trying to understand your environment can be tricky without some basis for collective knowledge.
This is just one more example of why using a kanban board for your team’s projects is so important. Employees want to know the status of what they are working on, what has been completed, and so on, because this information is used to help motivate them to make progress. Instead of making people spend time monitoring several different places (or waiting for meetings) to understand exactly what is going on, a kanban board makes the process easier because the status of a project can be understood at a glance. This lessens the need for constant communication among team members, so that people can focus on work rather than trying to piece together what is going on. People have the desire to understand how the information fits together, so why not make it easy for them? That’s why one of the biggest ideas we focus on with Zen is visibility and enhanced communication. Zen makes the sensemaking process easy, so team members don’t have to spend time looking for feedback from the environment. Instead, they can look at the kanban board at any point and understand exactly what is going on. You don’t have to spend time in meetings to figure out what everyone has done because Zen’s messaging system updates your team as important things happen in your project.
Posted 9 months ago at 11:35 am. 0 comments
Those that know me well know that I am always talking about the importance of mental models. Much of my research over the past two years has dealt with mental models including what they are and how they develop. I’ve looked at them in the context of a classroom, showing that better mental models lead to classroom performance on tests (the paper goes back out for review in July). I’ve also looked at gender and leadership and found that leadership characteristics that are more masculine tend to hang together more closely and the same goes for more feminine characteristics (this paper was presented at a conference in 2008). My hope is that my dissertation will also take a similar perspective looking at entrepreneur’s mental models.
I am taking these ideas in a more applied direction by talking about how a kanban board can help to develop mental models.
First off, mental models are one way that people can organize information. It helps the individual describe, predict, or explain behavior. They affect how we see the world and what details we pay attention to. If you have a psychology background, it can help to think about it as a schema. If you have more of an engineering or biology background, it can help to think of it like a neural network. Whatever the topic or context might be, information is organized around that in a network of related ideas. Activation of the main idea, for this example let’s say it is the workplace, activates other information that is closely related to that topic. It could be anything from how you go about doing a particular task to a simple feeling or mood as to whether you love or hate your job. Regardless, mental models are important because they differentiate novices from experts. Those who are experts have a deeper understanding of the connections between ideas, whereas novices focus more on superficial/surface features. Mental model organization becomes better over time and exposure to the topic or idea. (For the sake of length, I left out a lot of information from previous studies, so contact me if you want particular citations for this information).
Research on team mental models, which are shared understandings about key pieces of knowledge in the environment (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994), has shown that the shared meanings underlying mental models are created through communication among members in a group.Team members may differ in their representations of information due to different levels of awareness, acceptance, or salience of the information based on time or context (Breakwell, 2001). This can be an issue because long-term success in an organization depends on the process that the organization uses to change mental models, including those of their employees. Having a shared mental model with others in your workplace or team can lead to better performance in an organization. An article by Lim and Klein (2006) showed that similarity among members of a team is important for team performance, and accuracy (as measured by similarity to an expert), is just as important for success.
The questions then are: How do we enhance communication among team members? How do we create a work environment where information is presented in a consistent way to all employees? What is the process by which we create similar mental models in our employees? I think by now you know that my answer is going to be to use a kanban board like Zen. The board is a clear representation of what is going on at a given time and should be in a place where everyone can have access to the information to see the status of a project at a glance. The kanban board helps team members think about completing each story in a similar way because the process is the same for all stories. The mental model for the process is set to be similar on some level because the value stream is mapped out before beginning work and there has to be some agreement and understanding of ideas like limiting work in progress. This shared idea about the status of a project and the process associated with completing stories helps to establish a shared mental model among employees which has been shown to lead to better performance.
Posted 9 months ago at 12:01 pm. 0 comments
Hackman and Oldham (1976) have a theory of job enrichment which suggests that jobs that are complex and challenging often enhance employee motivation, increase satisfaction, and help with productivity. They also suggest that there are several characteristics that are important for designing work to be “enriched” and lean ideas map well onto their theory of motivation. It seems then that using a kanban board, such as Zen as part of your project management can help to increase satisfaction and performance. I will describe the five characteristics they believe are important for work design for enrichment and how lean ideas/kanban boards fit with their theory.
Their first characteristic is skill variety. They believe that in order for people to be motivated at work, they need to do different activities using many of their skills and talents. Most jobs that require the use of a project management tool are likely to have some level of skill variety built in (or at least they should). This principle fits with the lean principles of software development discussed by Poppendieck and Poppendieck (2007). Specifically, they talk about respecting people and the myth that there is one best way to do something. Allowing your employees to write software in the way that lets them use their unique talents and skills is going to be important for their motivation. This seems like common sense, but there are a lot of companies that bring in employees because of their skill set or ideas and then do not allow the employees to use them to their full potential. I could go on for a while about this topic alone, but I’ll keep it short.
The second idea is task identity, meaning that a person’s job requires completion of a “whole” and identifiable unit of work from beginning to end. They note the importance of understanding when the task is complete with “a visible outcome.” It is pretty clear how this maps on to using a kanban board. A story is used as the identifiable piece of work that is assigned to an individual and it is clear how that unit of work moves through your value stream from beginning to end. Because Zen is focused on visibility regardless of location, all members of a team can see how a story moves from start to finish and the visible outcome that Hackman and Oldham describe.
Their next point is task significance. It basically means that people have to believe that what they are doing has some importance. With software development, it is likely that what you are working on fits with a group of stories that makes up an area of the product like user interface or security. With Zen, you can tag stories with the area of the product to help put the story with the right context and keep the work meaningful. If people can keep in mind how what they are working on fits with the product as a whole, they are more likely to see their job as meaningful.
The fourth characteristic is autonomy meaning freedom, independence, and discretion with regards to the schedule/procedures used to carry out the job. The best part of Zen is that it focuses on flexibility and the continual movement of work through your value stream. Because the value stream names, numbers, and order can be customized, you have discretion with the procedures that you use. You can also use different colors, tags, etc. so you have the freedom to work the way that you want to. Because everything is organized in a board format, you know exactly what is going on and what needs to be done next, so you can work independently, without having someone tell you what to do next. There is definitely a sense of team empowerment that comes with using Zen.
The last idea is feedback. This means that it is important that people receive clear information about their performance. Feedback is important for lean software development as discussed in the Poppendieck and Poppendieck book (2007), but since they discuss it in some detail, I want to talk about feedback specifically with Zen. What many manual kanban boards lack is objective feedback about the process. People may sit down to hand calculate lean metrics like cycle time and lead time, but hand calculation is really a waste when a tool like Zen can do it. The metrics that Zen calculates gives you a snapshot of the effectiveness of your process. Thus, it has feedback built right in.
These characteristics were combined into one measure that looked at these 5 facets. One could easily empirically test the idea that implementing lean ideas and a kanban board like Zen could increase satisfaction, motivation, and productivity, but for now I think it is an interesting idea to think about.
Posted 9 months, 1 week ago at 8:22 pm. 0 comments
I generally don’t have issues writing papers for class, but for some reason, longer articles and chapters are much harder for me. I think it has something to do with the fact that I have so many things swirling around in my head and I’m not exactly sure how it is all going to come together. How am I supposed to write a summary of something that I don’t even know what it is yet?
Instead, my dissertation strategy has been to sit down and write paragraphs or sentences that I want to include, even if the full idea isn’t developed yet. Academic papers are harder because you can’t just say what you want to say; you have to find an article or two that back up your point. That definitely slows down the process and makes everything a bit more tedious.
I’m currently working on my first chapter of my dissertation. I know the general points I want to get across, but it is definitely a long process. It takes me an hour just to get back to the mindset I was in previously, and then I can only give it a couple of good hours before I can’t stare at articles and the computer screen any longer.
I think I may have found a good sample though. I met a woman who heads a local non-profit entrepreneurship education program. They seemed interested an had good ties with their alumni, so there might be a good study there. I might even volunteer for the program at some point as well. I think it would be fun to work with kids who are creative and inspired. More info on that as things develop.
Posted 10 months ago at 6:34 pm. 2 comments
One of my favorite hobbies is cooking, and I’m making brunch for my parents and my in-laws tomorrow. I missed out on making brunch last year since I was studying for comps. Here’s a recipe that is sure to please any chocolate-loving mom (or person for that matter). It is my chocolate chip banana muffins. This recipe makes 12-16 muffins. WARNING: They are pretty rich.
1 3/4 C organic all-purpose flour
3/4 C organic sugar
a few sprinkles of organic baking cocoa (depending on how chocolatey you want it)
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
a dash of salt
1 organic egg
1/4 C canola oil
1/2 C organic vanilla yogurt
1 C mashed organic ripe bananas (about 3-4)
3/4 C organic chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350. Combine dry ingredients together in a large bowl and mix (flour through salt). Combine the egg, oil, and yogurt in a small bowl and mix well. Pour into the dry ingredients and combine. (The mixture will still be a bit dry). Mix in the bananas and chocolate chips. Bake at 350 degrees F about 24 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let them cool a bit and enjoy!
My menu for tomorrow includes these muffins. I am also making a fruit salad of mango, pineapple, grapes, strawberries, and blueberries tossed with a little lemon juice, organic sugar, and poppy seeds. I will be serving a smoked salmon appetizer, asparagus frittata, and chicken sausages also.
It should be a pretty fun time.
Posted 10 months, 1 week ago at 12:43 pm. 0 comments
Well I guess I have no more excuses or distractions since my classes finished up this week. I need to start my dissertation proposal over the summer. I think I have solved some of the sample issues, so I can finally sit down and write.
I’ve had some disappointing news as of late, but as I learned from reading The Dip nothing worth having is easy. I’m definitely upset that things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, but I’m not planning to let that hold me back.
I should have more time over the next few months to blog about what’s going on (and to keep myself honest), so more on that as I make progress.
Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago at 12:05 pm. 0 comments
I’ve been talking a lot about the student venture fund that was started at Akron this year. We’ve gone through the entire process and even presented to some experts in the field. We prepared a presentation about the business we were evaluating and ran through it as if we were presenting to a real board. The purpose was to get some feedback about what should be included in a presentation to a board in an Angel fund. The presentation went over pretty well, and we had a good discussion following the presentation.
The venture fund has taught me a lot about the funding process for start-ups. In addition to that, I have been able to apply my knowledge and skills to something “real.” I have spent a lot of time in school learning theories and reading research. Though I feel like I know a lot of things (or at least I should, having spent all of last year studying everything I know all over again for comprehensive exams), I don’t have a long list of applied experiences. It was also good to work with people with a diverse skill set, discover how they approach issues/problems, and ultimately come to the same conclusion in the end. It was definitely one of the more exciting things that I did this semester.
Even though next year I am going to try to cut back on extra things to work on a start-up and my dissertation, I would still like to continue on with the program and try to get other people involved as well.
Posted 11 months ago at 8:26 pm. 0 comments
An organization can be defined as a group of people who are interrelated and rely on one another to pursue and achieve a common goal. At one point in time or another, the common goal will be organizational change. After all, change is inevitable. Organizations do not exist in a vacuum, and therefore, are left with the choice to adapt to the environment, try to change it, or fail (Katz & Kahn, 1966). Organizations are likely to change due to internal factors such as poor performance or external factors such as changes in technology (Tushman & Anderson, 1986; Tushman & Romanelli, 1985). Change efforts can be considered planned, a deliberate try to improve functioning probably in reaction to the poor performance factor or unplanned more of an adaptive response that is probably due to something outside the organization (Porras & Robertson, 1992). Regardless of the reason, the role of management in times of change is very important.
Management and Organizational Change: The Role of Middle Management
Managers have a strong role in changing an organization, such as advocating for transformations, distributing knowledge about a possible change effort, and being examples of the culture and values of the organization.
One of the ways that managers can impact employees is through social capital. Social capital is the goodwill available to an individual in the organization and is focused on relationships and the information available to the employee (Adler & Kwon, 2002). Managers can impact social change beyond just advocating interactions among employees; they can also try to bridge the gap by bringing social networks together and try to facilitate the collective goals of the company by bonding with employees through the exchange of information and trust (Adler & Kwon, 2002). The interactions that take place between employees and management go beyond just the idea of social capital. Interactions can also be used to change organizational sensemaking through changing cognitive schemata. Just as managers have an important role in providing knowledge to employees through social capital, they also have a role in implementing changes by helping to evolve the notions of employees during strategic change.
Maitlis (2005) defines sensemaking as actions that organization members take during turbulent times in order to maintain understandings and enable collective action. Sensemaking, thus, is a social process where constructions of reality take place through accounts. Informal conversations between management and employees can have a powerful affect on the feelings of change that take place. Though upper management may have a role in shaping the vision of a company, middle management interactions with workers are critical for enforcing change and are not completely influenced from above. It is clear that the support of middle management is needed to persuade change ideas from resentment to cooperation (Balogun & Johnson, 2004).
The question then becomes how managers might go about changing the minds of employees within the company because this is essential to any change initiative. What we want to do is align the assumptive world views of employees with that of management. If employees are not on board with a decision, disaster can take place as in the AT&T/Western Electric example in the Werther (2003). When the companies wanted to shift to making cheaper phones, the employees resisted the change because it was a complete shift in the culture and pride of the company. Allowing employees a voice in the decision making process would probably have helped create strategic change because successful organizations usually spend some time looking at options and gathering information before establishing a direction (Nutt, 1999). Managers need to allow employee input when trying to select the best possible path to change.
Management and Organizational Change: The Role of Upper Management
Top Management Teams (TMT) are important for creating strategic organizational change because they are responsible for the vision and direction of a company. TMTs can use their relationships with other companies, the government, or even the media to help push their change agenda in the environment, but ultimately, it is important that they create change through working with the employees in the organization. A CEO could do this in many ways, but one easy way is by adopting a collective orientation. CEOs with a collective orientation, one that is based beyond personal interests and puts the goals of the organization first, is likely to create a situation where employees are more likely to go along with collective action because they believe it is best for everyone (see Simsek, Veiga, Lubatkin, & Dino, 2005 for more on this collective orientation). Top management should create a sense that all people in the organization are considered equal. Symbolic changes can help employees to be more open and trusting of the vision set forth by management.
A “How-To” Management Guide: Strategies that Work
This section focuses on those strategies managers can take to ensure effective change. The best summary comes from Porras and Robertson (1992) when looking at common behavioral changes in successful change interventions. For all employees in a change process, the most successful things were to be open in communications, collaborate with others, take responsibility, maintain a shared vision, solve problems effectively, support and respect others, facilitate interactions, inquire, and experiment. For managers, in addition to what was mentioned generating participation, leading the vision, functioning strategically, promoting information flow, and developing others are also important things to consider. Obviously a shared vision is important in an organization to be successful, but creating that vision is not necessarily as easy as people may think. Many organizations fail to be specific and systematic about their goals and the vision never translates into change.
Creating a successful vision requires input from multiple sources and collaboration. When employees have a say in the change process, they are more likely to adopt the vision than when the change is imposed. Interactions between people are also key in an organizational change. The interactions socially construct the sensemaking that takes place between employees and managers. Managers have to present a change effort in a way that is open, fair, and honest, so employees don’t resent the change.
Another way to ensure that successful change is through the adoption of an abundance approach according to Cameron and Levine (2006). Working to one’s highest potential is likely to lead to success. If organizations want to affect change they should focus on positive energy as people are likely to be drawn to it according to the heliotropic effect. It is manifested as the Pygmalion effect in that people respond to the expectations of others. If you require high standards of achievement for a change outcome, it is likely that you will get it as difference in performance can be accounted for by the expectations set forth.
Managers should avoid talking negatively about a change effort in front of their employees as what they say will influence how employees react to a change. They should also avoid the idea that the change will take care of itself. Although people do not what a change forced on them, setting objectives was very successful to guide future development according to Nutt (1999). Managers need to intervene in the process by creating new norms and focusing on improving when needed. Managers should also avoid focusing on a single, imposed solution to the problem, as multiple perspectives and voice are important. Often, these imposed solutions are used for practical reasons because they may be a practice of other organizations, but many times implementing something from another source and trying to make it work in a new situation may be very difficult. Also, implementing a directive such as an edict or trying to persuade employees will not work and should be replaced with participation by all stakeholders (Nutt, 1999).
If we examine change efforts of management in terms of power, it is much more effective for managers to be seen as having expert rather than coercive power based on the French and Raven (1959) model. Imposing an edict is similar to coercive power in that the demands are likely to go along with consequences. If you give people a chance to have some development in the process people would be more likely to respect their manager rather than feel as though they are forced to comply with them. Change is likely to be most affected when organizations ask for consultation from the employees or use an inspirational appeal.
Ultimately, it rests in the hands of management to create change in an organization.
Posted 11 months ago at 7:21 pm. 0 comments
I’ve been on Twitter for a while now, but I haven’t really taken it seriously. I figured that no one cares what I have to say, so why bother. Plus, it is hard for me to say anything in such a short amount of characters. :)
I hear that the best way to get followers is to ask questions and be controversial, but that somewhat hard for me considering that there are so few people in my field on Twitter. I would like to use it for more industry-related things, but all the “experts” in the I/O field are either not that interested in new/emerging technologies or don’t really need to use it to get things done.
I would like to move from a strictly I/O area of interest to the application of I/O ideas to entrepreneurship and software development. There seem to be a lot more of those types on Twitter, so I’m learning new things there. It is hard to search for these people though, so I’m just going by my connection’s connections at this point.
I don’t think I’ve learned exactly the right way to utilize the network yet, so if people have tips on what they did, I’d love to hear them.
