One thing I love to do is show how the concepts I teach can connect to everyday life. I had a perfect opportunity arise that clearly shows that the mindsets I coach have changed my life - not just my work.
Some college friends of my wife had a house fire and lost everything. They live in north Tennessee, and it just so happened we were newly migrated to that area. My wife is the kind of person that will give you the clothes off her back and, in this situation, she immediately connected with the couple to let them know we’d love to be of assistance if they needed anything. In particular, we had a 30 foot 5th wheel RV sitting in storage that we could let them live in while they either found or built a new house. They accepted…and that’s where our story begins.
Using the Kanban Method to Serve Others
Once the couple let us know they were ready for our RV, my wife immediately said, “We need to make a Kanban board to visualize the work.” Obviously she now had my full attention.
By the time I made it home that afternoon, she had created a Trello board for our family and invited me and our daughter to join. Our first order of business was to break down the work for the project we would call “RV Prepped.” You’ll notice we named it after the desired outcome and not the work to be done. This is a great way to hack your mindset toward your work and get you excited about what your goal is.
I’m a, “Pictures or it didn’t happen” kind of guy, so here’s a screenshot of the board she made.
Once we had some free time, my wife suggested, “We should have a decomp!” With that, we broke the idea down into the necessary work cards we thought we would need and made a quick checklist in each card for the tasks that would need to get done. This lines up perfectly with one of the Kanban Practices I’ve written about previously: Visualizing your work.
Once we had the work visualized, my wife had an interesting question. She asked, “Should I go ahead and assign owners to the work?” I didn’t say a word. After no longer than five quick seconds she said, as if an epiphany had just happened, “Of course not! I should just leave it and we can pull it when we are ready.” It was music to my ears.
What my wonderfully organized wife was calling out is one of the most unique things about the method. In Kanban you manage work, not people, and the core tenant of a Kanban system is that it is a pull system. The people in the system, in this case my wife, my daughter, and myself have the autonomy to pull any of the work we think we could complete once we are ready to start the work.
The ironic thing is this actually makes the work move faster! “Tristan, how can not pre-assigning work make it go faster? No one will know what work is theirs.” It’s faster because if an item was pre-assigned to me but I was working on something else, it would needlessly delay someone else starting that work. We can dig more into that in another article. For now I’ll ask you to trust me.
Back to the story...
Prepping the RV
The day arrived when we could work on the RV prep. We hopped in the truck to drive to the campground where we had set up the RV but, before I could even turn the key, my wife said “okay, let’s have a quick stand-up.” It sent chills down my spine to hear such a glorious phrase. We spent around three minutes deciding what our highest priority was, and we were on our way.
Now, I want to call your attention to the value a stand-up can add. While we were working, I got lost in what I was doing and decided it would be a good idea to wash the bugs off the front of the camper. When I mentioned to my wife what I was about to do, she quickly asked, “Wait, what did we decide we wanted to focus on tonight?” Now, for those of you that have been married for some time, that may sound like code for, “What you’re doing right now is wrong. Stop.” It was definitely that, but it was also a valuable reminder to refocus. We had only a few hours of daylight and there were more pressing matters to attend to. That’s the value of having a stand-up as well as a method for prioritizing the work in your system. Both allow you to lean on decisions when someone on the team gets off track.
The crowning moment of the whole experience was right at the end. As I climbed back into the truck after dropping the RV back in storage, my wife picked up her phone, opened Trello, and pulled the last card to “done.” She let out a big sigh of relief and excitedly said, “Done” whilst simultaneously giving me a fist bump. That hit of dopamine was so enticing I pulled up the Trello board on my phone as well, just to look at our accomplishment. There’s just something about actually seeing a day’s hard work in the done column.
Here’s a quick picture of what I saw on the board.
We have since continued using this method for our subsequent family projects. The goal was not and will never be to follow a rigid process or set of rules. We just wanted a way to start visualizing our work, and it just took off from there. We have a place where we visualize our common goals; and it gives us a place to remember, discuss, and prioritize the important things in our life. So far it has not felt constraining.
The goal of the things I coach and teach are meant to serve people in all aspects of their life - not just while at work. Other wise, I can promise you I wouldn’t bother teaching them. My hope with this story is that you start to get a glimpse of how getting a hold of the mindset and principles behind Kanban can actually change the way you live.
Until next time, “Keep on learning, keep on growing.”