Doing it All is Not a Good Strategy

Product teams in the midst of change at one of the biggest US insurance companies came up with an experiment they called “Doing it All.” The sarcastic title was intentional, as it magnificently described the nature of a theme that I observe across multiple industries. From finance to insurance to transportation, carving out capacity for you and your teams to implement a new way of working requires herculean efforts.

Change takes time. It’s not enough to just give teams approval to do something. They also need time allocated to do so during regular business hours. Some people at the insurance company I mentioned above were working sixteen-hour days to meet expectations. Leadership may agree to change and approve the budget for a transformation, but if teams are not given the capacity to learn new tools and processes on top of their existing load, then “doing it all” burdens the teams with too much cognitive overload, creating resistance and resignation.

Those struggling with conflicting priorities and caught up in “doing it all” can improve their situation by helping others understand the impacts to their business bottom line using metrics. Measuring the value you’re delivering for the business is a useful way to address common objections to develop a healthier, more resilient partnership.

When people complain that things take too long, technology leaders should be positioned to demonstrate just how long things actually take to do in a way that others can see, helping to show that “doing it all” is not a good strategy.

When the VP of Sales (or anyone else) claims that things take too long, it makes sense to measure and show how long things actually take. This measure of speed (flow time) is helpful to start a data-driven conversation on objections and offer a thoughtful response.

This and other objections that you might encounter are listed in the table below, along with suggested responses and useful metrics to use when building your argument.

It may seem as though conversations like these are adversarial. However, they are essential for partnership building discussions. Every good objection has a worthwhile objective to consider.

As objections come up from business leaders, be prepared to address these and see other people’s perspectives. Two people may bring their opinions to the table. The outcome is that they both walk away with a third option that is better than either of the original two. Consider different perspectives as feedback to move toward a shared path forward.

This post was excerpted from the second edition of Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow by Dominica DeGrandis.

- About The Authors

Dominica Degrandis

Dominica DeGrandis is the foremost expert in Kanban Flow within the IT industry today. Her work has shown working IT teams how effectively improve workflow and optimize throughput to produce the best result throughout the value stream. Her passion involves the use of visual cues and transparency across teams and organizations to reveal mutually critical information. As Director of Training & Coaching at LeanKit, Dominica combines experience, practice and theory to help teams level up their capability. She blogs at ddegrandis.com and tweets at @dominicad.

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