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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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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!