Every company, team and person has established patters of What, Where, When, Who and How something gets done. It ranges from simple things like arriving at work and when we take a break to complex things like employee onboarding and hiring practices. Taking time as a team to challenge existing presumptions and work to create small steps, can break inertia (stuckness) in how your project team operates, while creating a shared understanding of why we are here and how we can improve things.
www.create-learning.com
3. The insidious thing about the causal point of
view is that it leads us to say:
“Of course, it had had to happen like that.”
Whereas we ought to think: It may have
happened like that – and also in many other
ways.
(Wittgenstein „Culture and Value‟, p.37e)
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
4. What’s in it for me?
Taking time as a team to challenge existing
presumptions and work to create small steps, can
break inertia (stuckness) in how your project team
operates, while creating a shared understanding of why
we are here and how we can improve things.
Outcomes from Broadening Assumptions to Find a
Better Way
Understanding and various uses of the Current
Method :: Better Way Matrix.
Use of Current Method :: Better Way Matrix to illicit
feedback from various people who work at the site of
the problem.
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
5. What Where When Who How
Current
Method
What
happens?
Where is it
done?
When is it
done?
Who does it? Why is it
done?
Reason Why do it? Why do it
there?
Why do it
then?
Why them? Why do it this
way?
Better Way? Can we do
something
else?
Can we do it
somewhere
else?
Can we do it
some other
time?
Can
somebody
else do it?
Can we do it
some other
way?
Current Method / Better Way Matrix
Reference: First saw this technique in „The Team Handbook‟ by Scholtes, Joiner, Streibel.Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
8. Finding what works and
doing more of it.
People & decisions are
drivers of innovation.
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
9. “When you take all non-verbal judgment out of a
decision it becomes a calculation and not a
decision. The possible outcomes are predictably
limited, and you can mechanize (computerize) the
process – under the W = FS process of mechanics
(Work = Force through Space).
Human work is the application of mental
concentration over target time: W = F / TT (Work =
Force over Target Time) and the possible outcomes
are always unpredictably open.”
- Elliott Jaques Requisite Organization
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
10. Closed Decisions
“determinate and
tractable and has a clear-
cut objective.”
Open Decisions
“loose multidimensional
nature of our
objectives, the subtleties
of our interactions with
others, the complexity of
the systems we handle.”
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
12. Decision Making in a Closed & Knowable Environment
There is one & only one solution, and when it is identified we know we
have found it. Objectives are clear and constant.
The implementation or action decision is not influenced by the responses
of others to one‟s actions or decisions. Interactions with others, if they
are relevant at all, are limited and controllable or predicable.
There is a complete list of possible actions, and we know that all the
potential actions we consider are in fact available to us. Even if we do not
know what will happen in the future, we know the range of possibilities
and can sensibly attach probabilities to them. The problem is closed.
The number of alternative ways of completing the task, although running
into many millions, is nevertheless sufficiently small that all can, at least
in principle, be evaluated. Complexity, even if extensive, is bounded.
- Obliquity. Why our goals are best achieved indirectly; James Kay pp. 72
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
15. Current Method /
Better Way Matrix
Purpose / Objective:
Challenging assumptions about
what is possible.
Team Project tool to create
shared language of progress &
regress
Innovation tool
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
16. What Where When Who How
Current
Method
What
happens?
Where is it
done?
When is it
done?
Who does it? Why is it
done?
Reason Why do it? Why do it
there?
Why do it
then?
Why them? Why do it this
way?
Better Way? Can we do
something
else?
Can we do it
somewhere
else?
Can we do it
some other
time?
Can
somebody
else do it?
Can we do it
some other
way?
Current Method / Better Way Matrix
Reference: First saw this technique in „The Team Handbook‟ by Scholtes, Joiner, Streibel.Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
19. The reason you used it?
We recently had a global team meeting with 20+
people from our organization around the world. Our
objective was to develop an updated training
strategy.
We used the current/better way method to get the
discussion started. By first talking through the
current training strategy, we were able to start to
build the team trust (since everyone pretty much
knew how it was today). Once the trust was build,
we were able to get people to open up to talking
about/brainstorming the better way to do things.
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
20. What about the tool you found useful?
For us, it worked as a teambuilding tool and helped
open the communication door. First we talked about
something most people were comfortable with
already, which them allowed them to open up into a
broader area of discomfort.
We also used the tool to really break down different
components. We talked about the current/better way
for different pieces of the training (such as the online
prework, then the classroom work) versus the
training program as a whole.
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
21. Some concrete and abstract results?
Where you are now maybe from using the
tool?
The current method/better way team discussion led
into a 3-day work session completely redesigning out
training program. This was unplanned, but a
wonderful surprise that the group opened up to this
and accomplished so much. The strategy has been
well received by upper management and will be
piloted later this year.
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com
24. Uses & Questions
Coaching & Development
Thinking tool
As a team
As individuals
1 to all Meeting individually complete
Current Method / Better Way. At
meeting share ind. responses
2 Project Teams a) Control current
problem b) Develop solutions
Michael Cardus - www.Create-Learning.com