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Get Out And Interview, Whether You Need To or Not

Perhaps your job is great! Things are swell and you have the perfect mix of performance and growth opportunities. That’s why today is the right time to interview with another organization. A piece of career advice I once received, and which has stood the test of time for myself and others, is to “interview once a year whether you need to or not.” Why’s that? Doesn’t interviewing mean you hate your job and need to quit? Not necessarily – here’s 6 reasons why:

  1. You never know when you’ll need your interview skills, and it’s important to keep them sharp. You may unexpectedly find yourself in need of a job, or with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, where your interview performance will be key. By interviewing once a year, you’ll ensure those skills are ready.
  2. Interviewing helps us process our story. Our careers tell a tale, and in an interview we often have to repeat our story of challenges and successes to others. Interviewing puts us in a position to hone this story and actively reflect to confirm it’s the journey we want to be leading.
  3. Our resumes and social presence stays fresh. The interview process is the perfect time to tweak your resume, update LinkedIn, and post to other social sites. It’s far easier to incrementally maintain these important documents than to have to do major updates later.
  4. We learn a lot during an interview. Approach an interview as much with your ears as your mouth. How does the organization operate? How do they approach the role you have, or the one you want? What can you take back to your current role and organization to make it the best yet.
  5. You’ll find new reasons to love your current role. Over the years at an organization, you lose the passion from the ‘honeymoon’ phase when you were first hired. You now know all the warts and downsides to your role. However, an interview will show you that other companies have the same, or worse, faults. This can be a healthy reality check and reinvigorate your love for your job.
  6. Career pathing should consider opportunities elsewhere. You’ll learn during the interview more about your strengths, and your growth opportunities, for your role at any organizations. Or reach higher and see how you compare to the next position you want. You’ll better know what you should be learning and developing to be relevant and exceptional in the industry. Be sure to ask for feedback after the interview to get all the info you can.

With these great reasons to interview, not even listing the fact that you might find and get your dream job, it’s time to take action. Over several years of interviewing, I’ve found the best approach is to be honest and transparent with your boss. Using the reasons above, explain why you find it important to interview at least once a year. There’s a lot in it for your boss! You are making the offer to go out, become re-energized, bring home new ideas, and help craft your development plan. Plus it’s a great conversation starter with your boss about what’s motivating and demotivating for you right now. I’ve had all my bosses be on board with the plan and it’s only made our relationships stronger. It may get you on a list with HR that you’re looking around, so be sure to also formally close the process with your boss by having a debrief when you’re done.

Go out, interview, and best of luck!

Further Reading

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3 Ways to Trigger Your New Habit

We are creatures of habit. Our days are defined by the simple repetitions we perform consciously or subconsciously. We may always drink a coffee at 2pm, read Facebook when we wake up, or go for a run on Saturday mornings. These habits don’t have to be “good” or “bad”, they’re simply who we are and have been formed for various reasons. But it’s up to us to create constructive habits for our personal growth and success. Let’s talk about how we can start our next new habit.

The basis of any habit is a three step loop:

  1. Cue – These are external or internal triggers that cause us to initiate our habit. External triggers may be the clock striking 2pm for coffee time, a Facebook notification that your friend has made a post, or your fitness app reporting that your exercise has been low this week. These triggers become internalized as a habit is grown. For example, instead of waiting for the clock to strike 2pm for coffee, you instead feel your energy drop in the afternoon and grab that coffee. Or you wake up with the fear of missing out (FOMO) and check Facebook. Or you feel your legs being restless and get that run in on Saturday.
  2. Routine – Whichever cue begins the habit, it produces a response from us. This is the action itself, whether drinking coffee, checking Facebook, or going for a jog.
  3. Reward – After our routine, we receive the benefits of our habit. This may be a caffeinated energy boost, social information, or post-workout relaxation. This benefit motivates us to initiate the habit the next time we have our cue. If the reward is great enough, we will internalize the habit’s cues to trigger them ourselves without needing the external world.

With any habit you want to start, you thus need a great external cue to prime the pump. What types of cues support any habit and are easy to set up? Here are my top three ways to trigger a new habit I’m created:

  1. Passwords – Make the creation and maintenance of passwords fun. Choose an inspirational phrase to trigger or remind you of your habit. “D0.N0t.R3@D.F@C3B00k!”, “Appreciate!Some1!”, “St@yC@lm” are all phrases you’d have to type 5-10 times a day to access your laptop. It’s a superb way to actively have to engage with your habit, and a regular cue for you. These phrases can make long, secure passwords and  as you make new habits you’ll have an excuse to change it often.
  2. Alarms – Use your phone to set a fun alarm. Remind yourself to go to bed, or your morning routine. Make the messaging inspirational and add fun emojis, like “Go To Sleep Rockstar 😴🎸” or “Zen Into The Day 🧘🌅”.
  3. Lock Screen Image – How often do you check your phone? Is it every hour? Minute? Second? What if every time you did you saw a trigger of your new habit? Make your lock screen image an inspirational trigger or reminder and your biggest challenge will be switching it so often as you master each new habit. To find a great lock screen image I search the internet for something like ‘iPhone yoga wallpaper’, save it to the phone, and set it as the lock screen image in settings. Often if I’m trying to get through a slog of a book, I make the lock screen the book cover to remind me to read on my phone rather than be distracted.

Hopefully your new habit gets off to a great start!

Learn More – Check out Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit for more on the habit loop. Nir Eyal’s book Hooked shows you how to leverage habits to build amazing product experiences to keep users coming back for me.

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Art in the Round – Hone and Share Your Collaboration Skills

Collaboration powers our innovation, creativity, and success. Hopefully you’ve seen this in action with design thinking activities or co-creation workshops. It might have been by jotting concepts on post-it notes furiously in Crazy Eights, or sharing whiteboard markers while sketching concepts.

These events can be stressful, though, putting us into a performance mindset as we strive to show our best collaboration. We need opportunities to also grow these collaboration skills in a safe space. We need to exercise the give-and-take of watching our ideas soar, evolve, or crash. Art in the Round is a great activity to practice collaboration while also nourishing relationships with the kids in your life. Who knows, those kids may in turn be building amazing collaboration skills to be the Product Managers of tomorrow!

Art in the Round is a fun, easy way to co-create artwork. Gather your kid(s) and:

  1. Choose a theme for your art, like cakes or turkeys
  2. Give each participant a big piece of paper and a shared pool of art supplies
  3. Choose a fun album or playlist, and start it playing

And you’ll end up with great art like this:

Example of Art in the Round

(note, I may be biased as my six-year-old daughter and I made these)

As the first song plays, each person will start their picture however they choose. There are no artistic rules to Art in the Round. Hopefully your song will be about two to four minutes, giving a great amount of time to make progress but not too much. I usually play something chill, like Emancipator or Thievery Corporation. When the song hits the final note, everyone passes their paper to the person to their left. If they’re halfway through a line, drop the marker! These are some of the best moments to see what someone else does with your art. The next artist will add to the art for another song. If you’re a group of two, you pass the papers back and forth to each other. Continue until the art is looking great or for a predefined number of passes.

Art in the Round is going to help you grow and share your collaboration in several ways:

  1. You’ll practice drawing, which is always great for visually communicating your ideas
  2. You’ll experience the feelings of having others take your idea and make it what you weren’t expecting, perhaps ruining it in your opinion
  3. You’ll see how childlike curiosity and innocence lead to art that you couldn’t make yourself. You’ll witness diverse views making better and bigger ideas!

Along with growing yourself, you’ll be helping your daughters/sons, nieces/nephews, or kid friends learn how to better share, exchange ideas, and co-create. Skills that will make you and them both successful at life!

If you try it out, I’d love to see your art in the comments!

Further Learning

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Thing Three – The Power of Peer Coaching

Me giving a lightning talk on Thing Three at Agile2018

When we collaborate together, we can achieve so much more than we can alone. We see it in team successes all the time, and in the ways personal goal achievement can be a struggle. Two co-workers and I have been trying to solve this conundrum of personal goals over the last year, and have developed an informal peer coaching framework called Thing Three. We have had great results, and I hope you will learn about it below and try it yourself.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you go far, go together.
-African Proverb

There are three core ingredients for Thing Three:

  1. You and two Peers
  2. Weekly personal goals
  3. A regular place and time

First, you’ll need to pick two peers. Ideally they will be people you connect with and like, but do not work with you directly. You want peers you can trust and share diverse viewpoints. Folks that you would love to work with every day, but don’t share a common team or project. For our Thing Three, we are a Product Manager (me), Agile Coach, and Product Owner. The variety in roles and personalities leads to cross-functional insights and coaching. We offset each others’ biases and gaps in knowledge.

Next, we three create weekly personal goals. We each use the level of formality that matches our personal styles. Personally, I fill out a two-page template to help me think through my opportunities and route to success for each goal. It includes identifying items such as my learning opportunities and those who can help me achieve my goal. Others use a journal to jot down goals, or even just stickies. We set goals for the upcoming week across both home and work, each limiting to just three items in progress. Saying “hell yes” to only three goals, and timeboxing outcomes to just a week, confirms our dedication and responsibility to achieve them.

Finally, we mix these together each Monday for 30 minutes. We’ve found that 10 minutes each is just right to go deeper on one goal and have time for conversation. After sharing each goal, the other two give their Feedforward, or what they would do if they had the same goal. Here’s an example Thing Three session:

  1. I share my first goal, such as wanting to clean up a crufty backlog I inherited.
  2. My first fellow Thing Threer shares what she would do in the same situation. For example, she would get the team involved in cleaning it up.
  3. My second fellow Thing Threer shares what she would to too. Perhaps I should use Kano to assess the current backlog?
  4. We then repeat with my second goal, getting feedback again.
  5. Finally, I share my third goal and get feedback. At the end, about 10 minutes are up.
  6. Now it’s time for my first fellow Thing Threer to repeat steps 1-5 with her three goals. 20 minutes have passed.
  7. And in conclusion, my second fellow Thing Threer shares her goals and gets feedback. We randomize the order each week to switch it up.

We’ve experimented with variations to this structure, like not meeting weekly or having less than three people, but it always comes back to this process as the right mix of achieving personal responsibility while gaining amazing coaching and insights from others.

Hopefully you take this lightweight framework back to your office and try it yourself. We’ve had amazing results, with all three of us getting promotions this year. Thing Three has begun to spread to others as well, like our Lean In group. Hopefully it brings you both the success of personal responsibility and the joy of peer coaching to achieve results you could never imagine.

 

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Your New Checklist For Crushing Your Largest Goals

It’s time to think big about making your dream a reality! With our largest, most ambitious goals, a little preparation goes a very long way. Taking a moment to reflect on our path to our goal ahead, and why our goals are important, keeps us focused and on-track through thick and thin. For me, I find a little structured process gets me energized and thinking smarter. This in turn leads to these personal dreams becoming my new reality. I can’t wait to share my approach with you!

I start by filling out a simple two-page form that’s free for you to download:Download here

I’ve personalized this to my own style, strengths, and weaknesses. Hopefully you find it a great starting place to make your own tweaks. Let’s take a look at what I consider valuable when starting a new goal:

Goal – I Give the goal a compelling name that excites me. I also draw a doodle or logo to recognize it easily in my set of goals and make it fun.

Why – What’s in it for me? I make it as juicy as possible to get me excited when I hit blockers or barriers. Spending time to articulate the why will also unlock new ideas in later sections. I jot down a couple bullets, nothing complex, as this preparation is for me and me only.

Success Metrics – How will you judge my success? A common mistake I can make is celebrating too early. When I have made progress or achieved some success, and get distracted or reprioritize, I lose track of the bigger win or breakthrough right around the corner. By noting what success means first, I can hold myself accountable to not stopping until I’m truly done.

Your Strengths – What is my unique or unfair strength in completing this goal? I often reference my StrengthsFinder assessment and think back to similar goals I’ve achieved in the past. What went really well? What positive feedback did I get about my actions or behavior that I should duplicate this time?

Partners – Who can join me on this journey and help achieve my goal? Who can I ask for help to be more successful and build lasting relationships? I check each name off after I’ve asked them for their insights and assistance to confirm I’m not leaving any stones unturned.

Key Activities – This todo list evolves over the course of the goal, but I limit it to three outstanding items at a time so I don’t get distracted and identify the highest priority items. It’s the classic way to jot down action items and mark progress.

Risks – As opposed to the Strengths section, I take some time to acknowledge my fears. This not only makes them more concrete and thus solvable, but also helps revise the other sections. Perhaps, for instance, there is a partner that can help overcome the risk. And if there’s nothing risky in the goal then I’m not being bold enough.

Learning Opportunities – What can I learn along the way by making mistakes? How can I share that learning with others via blogs, social posts, presentations, or conversations? Is there a new technique or practice I can implement?

Pomodoros – How much effort will it take me to achieve my goal? In a previous post, I share how I use Pomodoros as 25 minute blocks of focused effort that help make the best use of my time. Estimating how many I will need also leads me to better understanding my goal by considering how long it will take. I acknowledge the long road ahead, or consider how I could achieve my goal with less effort. I make a box for each Pomodoro I think it will take, and check them off as I do each Pomodoro (adding more checks than boxes if my estimate was low). I include estimates for time in meetings as this too (so an hour-long meeting would add two Pomodoros).

Start Date/End Date/Blockers – To help me retrospect on my goal when it’s crushed, I track when I started and completed it, and what major blockers I encountered along the way that stopped my progress.

Appreciations – I note who helped me along the way to make a concerted effort to say ‘thanks.’ I check them off after each is delivered.

Each week I start by reviewing the goals I have in progress, and make new ones, trying to keep a WIP (Work in Process) limit of three. For each goal I print, fill out, and maintain one of these forms. I keep them in a special folder for quick editing and access. I purposely make them physical, rather than digital, to encourage me to focus as I review and update them. The corporeal nature of the form lets me take them to a quiet, distraction-free place and treat them with more importance than the urgent items on my computer.

Hopefully you find this goal-preparation valuable too, and tweak it to match your own style. If you have changes you make, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

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Your New Playbook for Calming Cranky Customers

Photo by Matteo Catanese on Unsplash

The Nightmare

You’re hyped! You’ve just posted the latest feature announcement to your users’ forum! The word is out and now it’s time to get feedback. You can’t wait for users to like it and say how they want to see even more! The first customer reply comes in:

“I have zero use for this feature, and I am disappointed that you spent time on it.  Our company has submitted numerous enhancement requests that our users have asked for, and we keep getting told ‘not on our roadmap.’  So it is frustrating to me to see time and brainpower spent on something that has such little value to us.” -Your Customer

The stuff of nightmares? Well, it was my Tuesday. And did I mention it’s one of our top accounts? This type of feedback can come from anywhere at anytime: via email, in-product feedback, or in a public forum for all users to see like this. Regardless of the venue, it needs a response.

Here’s your new playbook for calming these cranky customers!

1. Don’t Lose Hope

Before writing a response, take a breath. Cool off with a quick walk before you start typing in the heat of the moment. Take time to remember your customer is another human, just like you. We naturally put up defenses to such strong negative feedback by making assumptions and stereotypes about the user. It makes us feel good! We’re the hero, they’re the enemy, let’s write a response to hit back! But that attitude will come across in the language and tone of your response, no matter the content. Both you and user will end up with bruises that damage the relationship. So relax, you got this! A customer who is passionately cranky can become an evangelist for your product if you can show them you care about their feedback. They take the time to post feedback publicly, which will be a boon when we redirect to a positive outcome.

2. Get On The Same Team

Begin your response by restating you’re on the same team – the team that wants to make your product great! The user took time out of their busy day to provide feedback, demonstrating they care about your product meeting their needs. That’s your goal too, to build a product that meets customer needs! You should thank them not only for their time, but also for being honest in their feedback. Without feedback, we truly can’t make the best decisions. Here’s how I started my response:

“Thank you for the honest feedback ! I appreciate that you care about making [PRODUCT NAME] awesome, as I do, and that you took time and care to give your thoughts. I agree that this feature isn’t going to be useful for everyone, and its target user is someone who gets value from [FEATURE USE CASE]…”

3. Set the Stage

We are all biased and make assumptions about the background of others. Thus, we must make sure the conversation is on a steady foundation. We can do this by giving insight into how this feature was conceived. I think about the one thing I want the user to take away from the decision process. That can mean:

  • there was a general customer need that may not apply to them
  • there was an important segment of customers that need this feature, perhaps by geography or industry
  • or in this case that I can’t innovate without failing:

“I wrote this app as a hack: to provide value to myself, to others, and to develop my coding skills. It’s my way of giving back to users and to leverage our collective wisdom on the best way to solve problems. It’s also part of personally trying new innovative ideas that may sink or swim to determine what is valuable to our users and what isn’t. As a Product Owner, who doesn’t code, it was a great way to spend my personal evening/weekend time to develop a new idea, and the app is not officially supported in any way.”

4. Celebrate Wins

When a customer is cranky about a feature missing the mark, be sure to celebrate the features that have hit the bullseye. Not every feature can be a winner. If they are, you should try being more risky with innovation. Bring your recent new features into the conversation to:

  • show you are building a better product every day
  • drive more usage to the newest features
  • ensure the user is getting all the value that’s now available

Here’s what that looks like:

“At [PRODUCT NAME], we value exploring new innovation and structure it through our Hackathon events. Hackathons are a time for developers to take customer feedback, or their personal passion, and create new solutions and [PRODUCT NAME] features. You may be surprised the incredible value that first came from a Hackathon. Here’s some recent Hackathon successes: [BULLET LIST OF FEATURES]”

5. Dig Deeper

At the heart of the cranky customer is a real desire to improve your product, and they feel their ideas aren’t being given the priority they deserve. Close with a commitment to renew the relationship either yourself or by bringing in their account rep. However, don’t make promises that anything will be implemented. I also like to highlight that Product Management is about finding patterns in customer feedback, to set the expectation that their individual feedback is not necessarily enough to make a funding decision. Take the conversation forward by going deeper into their needs and getting them updates:

“Thank you again for your feedback, and I’m more than happy to go into more depth. We’re also constantly reviewing customer feedback to look for patterns to identify the features that will have the most benefit for the most users. If there’s a particular request that you would like an update on, please message me and I’ll gladly get more information.”

Putting It All Together

Going through the playbook, I posted a reply to the customer. Did it work? I’ll let the user speak for themselves:

“William, thanks for your positive response to my negative feedback.  I agree, there have been many, many useful features that came of Hackathons.  All of the ones on your list above are great examples of features that I have found valuable.

In this particular case, this particular feature just missed the mark for me. And I figure the only way to improve things is to give feedback.  I’ll get back to you with the links for our MVP requests.

Thanks again for your thoughtful and professional response.”

Now It’s Your Turn

Before blasting a reply to negative customer feedback:

  • recenter yourself,
  • connect with the customer,
  • give background on the feature
  • celebrate wins
  • carry the energy forward into renewing the relationship

As always, it’s great to have a peer spot check your reply before posting it too.

Share your experiences and tips below so we can all get better at handling tough cranky customers.

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Save Your Feet! Reclaim Your Focus with LEGO Permits

Work is messy. Requests, tasks, and inspiration come flying at us every minute. Soon we feel like we’re in the middle of a kids’ room. Don’t look now, but you’re about to step on a LEGO!

Yes, that is a Halloween pumpkin on the floor

We need to conquer the mess, to reclaim our life and to make serious progress on the builds that matter most. We need to limit our work in process (WIP) to spend more time creating and less time pulling LEGOs from our feet. How can we get there? How can we maintain focus on our priorities day after day?

Let’s try a simple tool – LEGO construction permits. We’ll first make a physical set of permits to define and enforce a limit to our work in process (a WIP Limit). We’ll only work on an idea, issue, or interrupt if we permit ourselves to do so. Make them as fun, simple, or creative as you wish:

3 permits = WIP Limit of 3

And start cleaning your messy room, assigning a permit for each work in process:

The LEGOs cover the permit, but it’s in there

If something doesn’t get a permit, it goes back in the box for another day. Maybe it will get a permit later, maybe never. Soon you’ll go from playroom overload to sanity:

Room to breath

So try it today! Make a set of physical permits and restrict yourself to only work on what has a permit. Start with physical permits over digital because they’ll:

  • Give you more flexibility to tune your process
  • Nag you as a persistent reminder
  • Bring fun to work!

Limit your work in process to give focus to what matters, making real progress and a real impact.

Bring this tool to your kids too! All photos are from my son cleaning his LEGOs. We ignited the conversation with observing those paper permits in windows around town. We then flowed to a conversation on why we have city councils and planning boards in the first place. We finally brought it home by using permits as an engaging way to clean his room. Have fun making the permits with your kids too out of whatever they want, even out of LEGOs. Don’t have too much fun, though, as you’ll have to remember to stop at your limit number.

When you make your permits, we’d love to hear what you used or, better yet, see a photo in the comments!

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Be Agile – Break Your Resolution

“Broken” by Dom W via Flickr

It’s time to plan your next big product release. You sit down, set a goal for 12 months out, and get to it. What happens next is one of the common fates for traditional product releases:

  • Your  changes go slowly, leading to missed opportunity and demotivation
  • Your funding runs out, and you have an undelivered, half-finished release
  • You have to make so many compromises to keep on budget that you ultimately miss the outcomes you desired

And that’s why agile methods are used today. Rather than setting a target for a year out, we iterate and experiment with our product ideas to create the outcomes we desire more effectively and efficiently. So why do we still adhere to traditional personal resolution setting? It ends in the same outcomes as traditional projects with broken resolutions or spent effort without the results we wanted. We either stop going to the gym and feel like personal failures, or keep going to the gym and don’t lose pounds. And if you do keep your resolution and get the massive results you crave? Then your story is so unique its bound for the front page of Reddit.

The failure in your resolution isn’t your fault, its in the way we all set resolutions to execute on our vision for a better self. So this year, break your resolution early, and start experimenting! Instead of setting a 365-day goal, use a iterative approach and set a 14 or 30 day goal. For instance, rather than committing to a year of getting up early to write blog posts, commit to sleeping from 9pm-5am in January to get up early to write your blog. At the end of the month, have a personal retrospective. Did that work and you saw the benefits? Great, do it again in February! Did it not work? Then pivot and sleep from 10pm-6am, or find some other time to write blog posts! Whether your experiment passes or fails, you’re not a failure, and you’re sure to learn a lot about yourself. And now you get 12, 24, or more opportunities to find your next breakthrough in personal happiness, performance, or whatever your vision for 2018 has in store. Resolve to experiment!

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Wear Your Hats For Better Decisions

“Hats, hats, hats…” by Bob Mical via Flickr

Did you know that wearing a hat can lead to truly understanding problems and comprehensive solutions? Wearing a hat changes your perspective and stimulates your mind. And the best part is, it doesn’t even have to be a physical hat! With Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats framework you can focus your mindset on different aspects of problem definition and solution creation in a matter of minutes. Let’s take a look a brief look at the six hats and how you can use them every day.

The six thinking hats are six states of mind that we all go through, each represented as a colored hat:

White – a factual mindset. White is clinical and pristine without being sullied by opinion. What are the facts for our problem or solution? What, if we knew it, would change our outlook? How could we get more data? What do the trends of the past tell us about today and the future?

Red – an emotional mindset. Red is the color of passion and emotion. This hat gives credence to our gut reactions as we trust what our mysterious subconscious is telling us. How do we feel about this problem or solution? How would or do others feel about it? Is there FUD?

Yellow – an optimistic mindset. Yellow is the sunshine giving a happy positive outlook. What are the upsides of the problem or solution? What does stunning success look like? What advantages and opportunities do we have? How can we take advantage of our strengths?

Black – a pessimistic mindset. Black is the night casting shadows on your decisions. This mindset lets you play the devil’s advocate to holistically consider all aspects of your problem or solution. What does failure look like? What are the risks? What will be the first roadblock? Why is this an impossible situation?

Green – a creative mindset. Green is the color of life and growth. No idea is too crazy. What are we not considering? What are ways to avoid the problem entirely? What is the second best solution to our problem?

Blue – a control mindset. Blue, like a police uniform, enforces process. Did we consider all our hats? What do see after exploring all our mindsets? What outcomes or actions will we take going forward?

At work, I gave a mini-workshop on this framework and it was exciting for all of us to engage with our hats as the framework’s language is very accessible to everyone. We all have our favorite hats, and as product leaders we often find ourselves wearing different hats depending on our group. If a Team is being data-driven with white hat thinking, we can bring emotional red hat thinking to give passion to a problem. Or too much yellow or black hat thinking deserves the complement to ensure we’re being realistic in our assessments. Practicing the six hats can ensure we have the skills when a hat is needed. For example, I personally lean towards blue and green hats, and struggle with red hat thinking.

In our workshop, we took one of our company problems and trusted the process by going through the hats in order. We started with blue to outline the process for our session, went through each hat for about 5 minutes each, and finally came back to blue to tie it all together with an outcome or next actions. Using a whiteboard divided into 2 rows of 3 columns, one cell for each hat starting with white, is a great way to collaboratively take notes and show the progress through the hats. The results were great and we were all stunned by where we got in a short amount of time. It’s certainly hard to focus on only one hat at a time, but we got there after some practice.

If you’d like to learn more about the six thinking hats, there are many summary articles that go more in depth, or there’s the full book Six Thinking Hats. With it being such an accessible model, it can be a great choice for a new product manager as well as they learn decision making through shuhari. By starting with a semi-prescriptive framework they can build the confidence to start experimenting with their own decision making patterns. For me, the best way to learn is by doing, so take some time on your next challenge or opportunity and purposely think with all your hats and see how your decision improves!

What’s your favorite hat? What hat needs improvement for you? We’d love to hear your stories in the comments.

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Learn From Each Day

“…Time…” by Darren Tunnicliff via Flickr

Growth is a constant process. Everyday we strive to be our best, either succeeding or failing, but always learning. It’s important that we take the time to internalize those learnings lest we lose the day’s growth. And the simplest process, Think Time at the end of the day, can turn each day’s lessons into a habit for years.

Think Time is a daily ritual of spending 5-15 minutes at the end of each day reflecting on how the day went. Where did you win? Where did you fail? What can you learn? How can you take today’s lessons into tomorrow to continually grow? You can do it at the end of the workday, on your commute home, before bed, or whenever you’d like. Just try to make it a consistent time so you build a habit. I personally do it before leaving work, around 4:30, and use a set of questions to help me appreciate the day’s gifts and focus on where I want to improve. My current list:

  • Where did I fail today, and what did I learn from it?
  • Who did I appreciate today? If no one, who can I appreciate before I go home?
  • Who inspired me today?
  • What did I do today that scared me?

As an example of using these to enforce habits, the question “who inspired me today?” was added after I realized my natural reaction to others’ successes is to be jealous. To help break that reflex, I try to purposely frame that jealousy into inspiration at the day’s reflection.

Think Time is also a great way to help others in their career by coaching them on a set of questions they can ask themselves each day to create healthy habits, change mindsets, and always appreciate personal growth. Hopefully you have success with Think Time as well, and we’d love to know your favorite daily reflection questions or thought points in the comments.