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Just try, or maybe try again


It's been a while since I have written anything new.

As I have started and gotten into a new role with a new organization, finding time for other interests has been harder.

I had couple of events over the last two weeks however that found me back in a place to share.

My new role is all about Continuous Improvement. Working with my team and the broader operations teams to drive a lot of change. This is not a new world for me or aren't responsibilities that I haven't had in the past, however it is the first time I find myself in a role completely dedicated to it.

The most important thing that you need to be able to do in order to drive change is to understand what is going on. You HAVE to ask A LOT of questions, to keep asking "... and what else?", to keep pushing past the first answers and responses you get (often these are what the business has always done, or what individuals have been doing based on their understanding).

Asking questions and pushing for understanding is not only important when understanding a current process or workflow, it is also important when trying to understand why something DIDN'T happen or isn't in place after it had been evaluated in the past.

Last week we found ourselves in a position where the system wasn't working as it should. It was too slow and taking too much time doing some prep work, and it was severely impacting the operations team trying to get everything set up for the night.

In speaking with a member of my team, he shared a solution. 

The solution is great. It works better, it's faster and is more reliable. It frees up supervisor time and ensures better business continuity. The solution however does have some impacts to other areas of the business however, which is why it was not in place.

In our exchange, we shifted the focus from why to why not. 

Why not use this solution? Why can we not find a workaround to the other business impacts? Why can we not approach this solution in phases as opposed to a completely perfect solution?

Shifting the question and shifting the focus led to a broader team meeting where everyone reviewed the situation. As it turns out, a lot had chanced since the initial negative impacts were discovered and there had been a lot of different system changes and enhancments that helped mitigate the previously identified challenges.

The solution is now back in place and testing.

Try again ... timing matters.


The second thing that caught my attention was just last night. I came back in from doing some exercise and my 8 year old daughter asked me if I had been coming in and out before. I told her I hadn't and I asked why?

She said that she thought she had heard someone coming in and out and "had to kept pausing the TV".

"Pausing the TV" I asked? What do you mean by that?

You see, I don't have a DVR. I don't have a cable box. All the "tv" in the house is a streaming service. While now you might think "ok, why is pausing the TV interesting" ... well, she wasn't the one who was controlling the ChromeCast.

She was pausing the TV by straight up pressing the "pause" button on the TV remote.

This blew my mind. The TV is 7 years old, it's esssentially a dumb panel television. The Chromecast connected to the TV is also quite old, a very early gen 1 Google device (I'm actually surprised it still works after all these years for the $50 it cost at the time).

So here is an old TV, and old Chromecast device yet the HDMI interface and the "basic / generic" commands from the remote are being properly understood by the Chromecast, translated to the Netflix app and the pause button actually pauses the show.

Try.

It made me realize that we can find ourselves in positions where our "understanding" limits our attempts.

For me personally, I would have NEVER touced that pause button as I would have expected it to not be able to do anything. In my mind, that pause button was incorporated into the remote to support other Samsung devices (dvd or bluray player) and would interact with those devices directly since they are from the same manufacturer; working with the ChromeCast and Netflix app ... never.

The key to innovative changes or being able to do things differently relies on our ability to keep pushing forward, keepy trying and letting go of our assumptions and "understanding".

The next time you find yourself with a problem in front of you, when you are looking for a new solution or workflow, think about pressing the pause button to see what happens.


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