When we face a challenge what we often see is the 85% things which we might not have control over and end up feeling helpless. Being in a VUCA(Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world we face situations like these quite frequently both in professional and personal life. Imagine if you are in one such situation yet you get good results, how great it would be? Because there are still a few things which we call the 15% solution to a problem which we fail to see as its like our shadow and best seen by others.

15% solution is similar to moving a few rocks to change the course of a river. This activity is exactly about moving a few rocks to find great solutions to the challenges we are facing NOW, just thinking about what is the best you can do without more resources, authority or permissions, by just doing the things in your control

In this session we would explore 15% solution along with Troika

Liberating Structures are a set of easy to learn rules that make it easy to include and unleash everyone in shaping next steps. When used routinely they make it possible to build the kind of organization that everybody wants.

“They introduce tiny shifts in the way we meet, plan, decide and relate to one another. “

Unlike the traditional discussions or structures where the control of a discussion lies with one person, Liberating Structures make it possible to include everybody regardless of group size and distribute the control among all participants.

As a business Analyst I have to do a lot of workshops, interviews and sessions day in and day out with Stakeholders and users. And these techniques come in very handy. For a newbie who wants to learn them the techniques are beautifully clubbed in packs according to your needs of whether you want to plan, share, do a retro etc. Pick the one you need that suits your needs, read the very clear and concise instructions and you are all set to include and unleash everyone.

In this session I plan to introduce you the set of 30 plus Liberating structures and demonstrate 2 of them. The session is going to be fun filled with a lot of hands on, through which you can communicate and collaborate better immediately and the best part is you do not need any special skills.

Every organisation hopes / expects / demands high performance from their employees and teams. It's not very long ago when most effective organisations in the world had a ritual called yearly goal - setting. Many organisations still continue with this where the HR cascades a set of goals set by the organisation's leaders for their employees. This is usually followed by a quarterly to yearly review cycle which with most organisations are linked with incentives. In general terms, there ain't any flaw with this system; goal setting is an efficient way to continuously improve oneself. However, the execution of this process may be flawed and may lead to unoptimized results.

With the advent of business agility, this focus shifted towards continuously learning & improving organisations. This meant that faster feedback was highly recommended for performance improvement and the idea of year-long goal setting seemed a talk of the yesteryears. Many organisations embraced this change by completely abolishing the yearly goal setting practice and instead relying on mentor relationships for an individual's performance improvement. This did improve relationships at the same time hindered transparency since the organisation goals were no longer directly accessed by every employee.

When seen from the perspective of game theory, it's evident that optimum results are obtained when employees achieve goals which are highly beneficial to them at the same time aligned with the organisation's goals. With the former approach explained above, it's pretty clear that the employees in the first case were aware of the organisation's goals, even if the goals were not aligned with their personal goals. Whereas in the latter case, the lack of transparency meant that the individual's goals were highly focused and may not be in-line with the organisation's objectives.

This is where Performance Kaizen aligns these two systems with a flavour of Management 3.0 in order to create an optimum setup where high performing individuals, teams, and organisations can thrive. In this session, we present a case study of this implementation at Springer Nature along with our results and learnings; followed by a brief hands-on exercise for the attendees

During Agile India 2019, I presented SLICE as a way of conducting experiments to embrace and improve agility. Here's the sequel to the original experience report.

This workshop aims at assisting the audience to experience the SLICE way of experimenting in a Liberating Structures based setup. The workshop starts with

1. S election of Hypothesis using "25/10 Crowd Sourcing" Liberating Structure.
2. L earn more about the hypothesis using "1-2-4-All" Liberating Structure. Create groups.
3. I mplement the hypothesis with the most apt Liberating Structure as taught by the facilitators (4 facilitators).
4. C reate collaterals after the timebox expires.
5. E xpand collaterals to other teams and repeat (thrice)

The purpose of this workshop is to provide the audience with an experience of SLICE and Liberating Structures in a pragmatic manner.

During Agile India 2019, I presented SLICE as a way of conducting experiments to embrace and improve agility. Here's the sequel to the original experience report.

This workshop aims at assisting the audience to experience the SLICE way of experimenting in a Liberating Structures based setup. The workshop starts with

1. S election of Hypothesis using "25/10 Crowd Sourcing" Liberating Structure.
2. L earn more about the hypothesis using "1-2-4-All" Liberating Structure. Create groups.
3. I mplement the hypothesis with the most apt Liberating Structure as taught by the facilitators (4 facilitators).
4. C reate collaterals after the timebox expires.
5. E xpand collaterals to other teams and repeat (thrice)

The purpose of this workshop is to provide the audience with an experience of SLICE and Liberating Structures in a pragmatic manner.

Every organisation hopes / expects / demands high performance from their employees and teams. It's not very long ago when most effective organisations in the world had a ritual called yearly goal - setting. Many organisations still continue with this where the HR cascades a set of goals set by the organisation's leaders for their employees. This is usually followed by a quarterly to yearly review cycle which with most organisations are linked with incentives. In general terms, there ain't any flaw with this system; goal setting is an efficient way to continuously improve oneself. However, the execution of this process may be flawed and may lead to unoptimized results.

With the advent of business agility, this focus shifted towards continuously learning & improving organisations. This meant that faster feedback was highly recommended for performance improvement and the idea of year-long goal setting seemed a talk of the yesteryears. Many organisations embraced this change by completely abolishing the yearly goal setting practice and instead relying on mentor relationships for an individual's performance improvement. This did improve relationships at the same time hindered transparency since the organisation goals were no longer directly accessed by every employee.

When seen from the perspective of game theory, it's evident that optimum results are obtained when employees achieve goals which are highly beneficial to them at the same time aligned with the organisation's goals. With the former approach explained above, it's pretty clear that the employees in the first case were aware of the organisation's goals, even if the goals were not aligned with their personal goals. Whereas in the latter case, the lack of transparency meant that the individual's goals were highly focused and may not be in-line with the organisation's objectives.

This is where Performance Kaizen aligns these two systems with a flavour of Management 3.0 in order to create an optimum setup where high performing individuals, teams, and organisations can thrive. In this session, we present a case study of this implementation at Springer Nature along with our results and learnings; followed by a brief hands-on exercise for the attendees.

Agile is not limited to our office or project work. This talk is on a small experiment we performed while we were helping my sister Dr. Dipti to plan, set up her Clinic. Starting with working on the rented space interiors to the Inauguration ceremony and pre and post marketing.

With not much planning, Dipti jumped into execution looking at the numbers of days in a hand, which was 3 weeks then. Beginning with execution, 'A Classic mistake' and a sure 'Recipe to Failure' as we would term in the IT world. At the end of week 1, things were all over places and needless to say she was in a soup as she had invested good enough already and was working on a tight budget.

Week 2 -Day 1, I was back in town from a Business trip, she tensed not able to sleep and me jet lagged, we started chatting, I could sense the feeling of misery in her voice and thought to myself why not try something new; after all, given the situation she was in there was nothing to lose. Thus it all began, an experiment of bring Agile concepts to set up 'Manas Ayurved' - Counseling and psychotherapy Clinic.

We started with identifying high level themes like Interior decoration, Branding, Inauguration ceremony etc. Below each theme were identified the tasks which on completion would mark the task complete. Eg : For Branding as a theme the tasks were Getting quotations from graphic designers, Finalizing a designer, Designing a logo, Designing Branding material (Brochure, leaflets, visiting cards, etc), Printing the branded material and Stationery, Deciding on Modes of advertisement, etc

Post all the tasks were identified, we assumed that we have only half the time of the original duration, i.e. we had 2 weeks for inauguration but we assumed it to be just one week. Now considering we just have one week in hand we only picked the bare minimum required to make a decent inauguration successful.

Post identifying the bare minimum required, we created a countdown timeline from day 14 to day 1, with day 0 being the inauguration day, this time considering the original 2 weeks in hand.

On this time all the bare minimum tasks were posted with the most important tasks starting day 14 in a decreasing priority towards day 1. The tasks which were ‘Nice to Have’ were accommodated in week 2 only after the bare minimum tasks in week 1 were over. This was to ensure we have the basic necessities in place before the delighters and even if we are not able to complete the last few days tasks we can still have a successful inauguration as we have all the required things in place

Later the tasks were assigned to individuals and all of us met everyday post dinner to discuss the progress and impediments and strike of the completed tasks. A physical wall not only helped all of us to get an idea of what was remaining but it also gave us confidence and motivation to look at the remaining work and try and stick to the schedule.

The inauguration is next week and this experiment is still work in progress, but it was a fun way to implement something in a planned way along with tracking it daily. The idea was such a hit among my family members that we now have a Kanban board in our Dining room which has a ‘To Do’, ‘In Progress’ and ‘Completed’ column with all our upcoming tasks like - charging inverter battery, Pest Control, Monthly grocery shopping, etc mentioned on this it. We have brought agile to our day to day lives… Would you like to try it too?

Every organisation hopes / expects / demands high performance from their employees and teams. It's not very long ago when most effective organisations in the world had a ritual called yearly goal - setting. Many organisations still continue with this where the HR cascades a set of goals set by the organisation's leaders for their employees. This is usually followed by a quarterly to yearly review cycle which with most organisations are linked with incentives. In general terms, there ain't any flaw with this system; goal setting is an efficient way to continuously improve oneself. However, the execution of this process may be flawed and may lead to unoptimized results.

With the advent of business agility, this focus shifted towards continuously learning & improving organisations. This meant that faster feedback was highly recommended for performance improvement and the idea of year-long goal setting seemed a talk of the yesteryears. Many organisations embraced this change by completely abolishing the yearly goal setting practice and instead relying on mentor relationships for an individual's performance improvement. This did improve relationships at the same time hindered transparency since the organisation goals were no longer directly accessed by every employee.

When seen from the perspective of game theory, it's evident that optimum results are obtained when employees achieve goals which are highly beneficial to them at the same time aligned with the organisation's goals. With the former approach explained above, it's pretty clear that the employees in the first case were aware of the organisation's goals, even if the goals were not aligned with their personal goals. Whereas in the latter case, the lack of transparency meant that the individual's goals were highly focused and may not be in-line with the organisation's objectives.

This is where Performance Kaizen aligns these two systems with a flavour of Management 3.0 in order to create an optimum setup where high performing individuals, teams, and organisations can thrive. In this session, we present a case study of this implementation at Springer Nature along with our results and learnings; followed by a brief hands-on exercise for the attendees.