UNTRAINING™ EXAMPLES & APPLICATIONS

Issues

• Coding Group had a different product development vision than the Owners

Our Solution

Before going into the gauntlet, we wanted to understand the issue, what was behind it, and what it was causing for the firm. There’s always more to the story.

Our coaches met informally with the 3 founder-owners, groups of coders 7 at a time, the sales team, and others in the front office. We got more than we bargained for, hearing things like –

• Coders – “the owners won’t let us use the latest technology”
• Sales – “we’re having a harder and harder time explaining to customers why the new features they’re promised are being delayed sometimes up to a year”
• Coders – “we’re falling behind our primary competitor; we bring ideas for new features to the owners, they turn most of them down and then our competitors launch the same features before us, so we’re always playing catch-up”
• Office – “the manager of the Coding department is hated by most of the coders”
• Sales – “the owners don’t respect the young coders who have great ideas; we go to those guys to help us fix the bugs our customers complain most about”

While the project could have gone multiple directions, speed was essential because the Sales manager and 8 of the coders were threatening to leave to start their own firm. We figured we had 3 months to change the atmosphere.

Our coaches started a small new product development team, with the goal of defining and developing 3 major new product features to review with the owners at the end of 3 months. We met 3 times a week for 2 hours with the 9-member cross-functional team. The team included 2 representatives from the firm’s high-profile customers – the first time ever the firm formally included customers in the working environment.

During the first week, our coaches helped the team lay out a Team Charter, complete with goals, metrics and timelines for how we would break the speed record for any new product feature. The owners liked the Charter, and agreed they’d okay the 3 new product features if we could prove we could launch them successfully at the end of the 3 month project.

Here’s how this rolled –

• The first few team huddles we gathered ideas; there were lots of conflicts between what the coders thought were the best ideas vs. Sales vs. the customer representatives
• We developed a novel way to prioritize the ideas using a series of criteria; the firm had never done anything like this in the past
• Team members were surprised to discover the customer representatives had the top 3 ideas; this was tough on the coders, but they agreed the criteria we developed were fair
• As coders developed the product features, the customer representatives agreed to pilot the features in their installations and gather user feedback
• User feedback provided all sorts of insights into the firm’s ERP functionality, insights far beyond those associated with the new features

Our coaches helped team members find new ways to communicate, using data and customer feedback, to help team members get past the “I say, you say” arguments that had stifled communications and caused myriad conflicts in priorities in the past. They shared this with the owners in the presentation at the end of the 3 months.

Results

The team delivered. They defined, developed, piloted and were prepared to launch 3 major new product features at the end of 3 months. This quick win changed the dynamic in the whole firm; from a quiet atmosphere where most everyone stared at his or her computer all day, to one where joking was plentiful, customers were welcome, and every new product feature launch was celebrated with an after-work pizza party.