Visualization tool

1. Challenge

I work for a US technology company in Spain. I am a manager in the  Operations area with 13 people under my responsibility. Our  department mission is to do process reengineering for the contract  management area (back office) of the company. We are a brand new  department. In the past months we have been struggling with some  specific areas of the department not going very well. Those areas  were, communication, and selecting a brand new set of metrics to  understand our own performance.     The team was not feeling very well. Communication wise, they  thought directors messages were not reaching all of them. On top of  that, we were not efficient enough in giving the right marketing to all  the innovative ideas and solutions that the team was finding for the  many contract management workflow issue on our table.   Related to metrics, they felt those were thought to put them under  the microscope, and check their real productivity.    2. Selection

I needed to get the team together and make sure that we dedicated  time to discuss on the feelings and emotions on these two items, and  try to help them being less emotional and more factual with the  situation. I wanted us to stop and make a complete visual list of the  things that were not really working, but being factual and simple. I  used a retrospective technique, so we thought over the last six  months of our work as a department, what went well, what could be  improved and some conclusions. To make the whole exercise an  opportunity for some team building and good fun, I told them that  we were going to be the main characters of The Divine Comedy, so I  split them into three groups one being Beatrice, another, Dante and  the last one Virgilio. As a group they had to take some minutes to  think on the questions I made and then put all their ideas in small  sticky notes in a whiteboard split into three pieces Hell ( for things  not going well), Paradise ( for those going very well) and conclusions.  I gave them a complete hour to work on this. Afterwards, we were  going to analyze their answers and look for a plan.    3. Application

The team worked together for the whole hour, I decided to play a role  of facilitator, so I could help with any questions they may have  during the process. They were very thorough and vocal, so at the end  we had a very good picture of the situation according to their point of

view. After an hour putting ideas on the whiteboard. I asked them to  stop and step back, so they could have a complete view of their work.  We also started the analysis by trying to put together similar ideas in  the sticky notes into categories, so we could address and identify  quicker the very good things and the problems.    4. Insight

I was very happy, the team had good fun, but even more important  they have transformed all their emotions into factual data to analyze  and look for possible solutions and action plans based on their  feedback. It was extremely useful the visual side of the exercise,  since immediately we all could see that there were a lot more things  going well, than things that should be improved. That make the team  have a positive reaction that facilitated their approach to look for  solutions for the improbable items. I gained a lot of good data on the  team, their needs and points of view. That exercise was an important  milestone in the department life.    5. Approach

I am very happy with the result of this exercise. Having said that, as  a lesson learnt, next time I would decrease the amount of time  dedicated to stick their ideas, which turn up to be too long, and I  would give more time to debate and analyze the situation described  by the team.

