Content by Jim Benson
It’s Not My JobRole definition is important
Mon, 07/01/2019 - 12:03
If I have been on a decades-long drive to make work more flexible, Alton Brown has been on a similar one in the kitchen. There is no shortage of rants on his various shows about “unitaskers”... things in your kitchen that can only do one thing and…
Responsibility Beats AccountabilityWhy initiative is better than a blame trail
Mon, 05/06/2019 - 12:02
We need to hold people accountable. I invite you to just look at that sentence for a minute. I hear it in every organization we work with. Every. Single. Time. Look at the sentence. Now, consider for a moment, why you would say it. Go on.…
The Soul of AgileSixteen elements of responsible development
Mon, 02/25/2019 - 12:03
A few years ago, I received a call from a very frustrated vice president of development in the Midwest. He sent his staff to get trained in Scrum. He thought he was sending his team off to learn how to develop software. Instead, they came back…
You Only Control Processes You ControlYour process is your main arbiter of success
Wed, 01/02/2019 - 12:02
It’s no wonder people are scared of process. When we have a large project or goal, we assume that the process to complete that work must be equally large. That is daunting. We’d rather just do it. When we have taken the time to build a process for…
Personal Kanban: Work Not ChosenThe point of the options column is to give you the option of not doing tasks
Wed, 08/22/2018 - 12:02
‘What if there’s a task in my options column that just never moves?” This question comes up in almost every class we teach. And we ask, “What if that happens?” We get answers like, “You have to make time for it,” or, “We need to find out…
Do More Things RightDon’t focus on the negative. The kanban board shows us successes to replicate.
Thu, 07/12/2018 - 12:01
I love to cook. When I make good food and share it with others, they will take a bite and look as excited to eat it as I was to create it. They might not understand the subtleties that went into it, but they understand the product. Satisfied eater,…
The Fundamental Problem With Business ProcessYou can’t set up an operational imperative and have someone else meaningfully improve it
Mon, 06/11/2018 - 12:02
Let’s take a second to emphasize who is important in the following quotes, all by W. Edwards Deming: “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing.” “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” “…
Learning to Climb: Metacognition Is FreedomBe aware of how you think; learning will roll right in
Wed, 06/06/2018 - 12:01
Human beings are good at placing roadblocks to success and building plans that can’t be followed. We tend to fall back on our “common sense” or “snap judgement” which often makes us feel like our cavalier decisions were actually thought out. Yet,…
What? You Say You Have Too Many Projects and Can’t Limit WIP?Experimenting with new ways to visualize our work and limit our work-in-process (WIP)
Thu, 02/22/2018 - 12:02
Tonianne DeMaria and I run the Personal Kanban, Modus Institute, and Modus Cooperandi Corp-o-plex pretty much duo-handed. There’s a lot of work. The rules of Personal Kanban apply to us, too. We are constantly experimenting with new ways to…
Prioritization Is a SymptomWhat can you complete right now that has the highest value?
Wed, 12/20/2017 - 12:02
People are always asking us for help with ways to prioritize. Almost everyone believes prioritization to be an action in and of itself. They ask, “What mechanisms do you use to prioritize?” However, we find most often that prioritization issues,…