Hope is Not a Strategy Return on Investment In You YOW!2016 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Hope is Not a Strategy

Return on Investment In You

YOW!2016 Brisbane December 5-6, 2016

Lisa Montgomery @GamelyMotorsIn

Is this a Familiar Experience?

Return on Investment in You!

Or, If You’re an Independent Consultant…

Return on Investment in You!

ROI-Y

• You’ve expended time, energy, and capital to

attend this conference.

– Do you expect a return on that investment? – In what ways might you measure different types

• f value?

– How do you know if you’ve made a wise investment? Do you care about Return On Investment in You?

Return on Investment in You!

A Different Look at Personal Investment

• You are your own most valuable resource.
• How you invest yourself determines how your

personal portfolio does.

• Sound financial strategy recommends a

diversified portfolio, in our personal lives we have to diversify ourselves across those things that matter most to us.

• A sound strategy requires sound planning.

Return on Investment in You!

Change is Hard Improve the Odds

• The odds of making a change in our lives

are not in our favor.

• Nothing changes if nothing changes.
• To give ourselves every opportunity to

succeed, we first have to address some fundamentals.

Return on Investment in You!

Sleep Matters

• Lack of sleep impacts our physical and cognitive

performance.

• Lack of sleep impacts our mental well being and
• ur short-term and long-term health.
• Sleep deprivation and fatigue have been identified

as causes in accident investigations.

• We say we know sleep is important, yet the impact
• f fatigue and sleep deprivation remains high.

If we want to improve our performance, sleep is fundamental.

Return on Investment in You!

Technical Debt and Sleep Debt

Technical Debt

• Taking on technical debt is

not necessarily a problem. Not having a plan to pay it back is a problem.

• The tricky thing about

technical debt, is that unlike money it's impossible to measure effectively. The interest payments hurt a team's productivity, but since we can’t measure productivity, we can't really see the true effect of our technical debt.

• Martin Fowler -

Sleep Debt

• Sleep debt, like financial

debt and technical debt, incurs interest penalties.

• A 2013 study found that

while the effects of mild sleep deprivation during the week can partially be made up by weekend recovery performance deficits were not recovered.

Return on Investment in You!

Are You Carrying Excessive Debt?

• There are a couple of tools that can provide

information and context. Taken together they provide information about how often sleepiness is an issue and how quickly we fall asleep.

• Stanford Sleepiness Scale
• Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT)

– Stanford Sleepiness Scale – Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT)

• A partial assessment looks at multiple napping opportunities

and how long it takes to fall asleep.

Return on Investment in You!

Stanford Sleepiness Scale & MSLT

Stanford Sleepiness Scale

An Introspective Measure of Sleepiness

Rating

Feeling active, vital, alert, or wide awake

1

Functioning at high levels, but not at peak; able to concentrate

2

Awake, but relaxed; responsive but not fully alert

3

Somewhat foggy, let down

4

Foggy; losing interest in remaining awake; slowed down

5

Sleepy, woozy, fighting sleep; prefer to lie down

6

No longer fighting sleep, sleep onset soon; having dream-like thoughts

7

Asleep

X

• MSLT looks at how long it takes a

subject to fall asleep with multiple napping opportunities during a single day. – 0 - 5 minutes is severe – 5 - 10 minutes is troublesome – 10 – 15 minutes is manageable – 15 – 20 is excellent

• The severity can be defined as Mild,

Moderate, or Severe.

Return on Investment in You!

Fatigue Is A Safety Issue

• Fatigue/Sleep Deprivation as Contribution Cause

– Go! Flight 1002 (2008) & AA Flight 1420 (1999) – Chernobyl (1986) & Three Mile Island (1979) – Exxon Valdez (1989) – Challenger (1986)

• Four Fatigue Factors

– Sleep loss – Continuous hours of wakefulness – Circadian/time of day – Sleep disorders

• Performance Effects of Fatigue

– Degraded decision-making – Visual/cognitive impairment – Poor communication/coordination – Slowed reaction time

Return on Investment in You!

Get More Sleep

• Get a baseline
• Iterate

– Go to sleep 15-30 minutes earlier each week – Experiment with a ‘pre-sleep’ routine

• Assess - tinker with your sleep and pre-sleep

schedule

• Invest

Return on Investment in You!

Key Questions to Ask About Sleep

• How is my sleep health?
• Am I fatigued or sleep deprived?
• How much sleep debt am I really carrying?
• Is this a short-term or long-term problem?
• How soon can I begin to get out of sleep debt?
• Do I have a plan to do so?

Return on Investment in You!

Willpower Matters

• Willpower is an important component of change.
• Willpower is our mental energy that allows us to direct
• ur actions in four categories of behavior:

– Thoughts – Emotions – Impulses – Performance control

• Willpower regulates all these different categories, but

unfortunately each category doesn’t have its own distinct supply.

• There is one willpower supply that is shared.

Willpower is a limited resource which can be depleted.

Return on Investment in You!

Return on Investment in You!

Willpower Depletion

• Casualties of Depleted Willpower

–Decision Making –Ability to Compromise –Emotional Equilibrium

Return on Investment in You!

Get More Willpower

• Conserve it

– Change the environment – If-then – Autopilot

• Strengthen it

– As exercise makes muscles stronger, it is possible to strengthen willpower. Practice, over time, may lead to improvement. – First, try small efforts that require concentration to change behavior (posture, writing off-hand, speech habits). – Then, try to maintain the behavior. – Work up to trading bad habits for better ones.

Return on Investment in You!

Work Situation Matters

• The positive brain is more productive than the brain in a neutral,

negative, or stressed state.

• Conversely, studies have shown being unhappy with or unfulfilled

by work can take a toll on health, relationships, and even lifespan. Those in unhealthy work environments tend to gain more weight, have more healthcare appointments, and have higher rates of

• absenteeism. Stress from work can also impact family life, mental

health, and even increase risks for chronic illnesses and heart attacks.

• Some things to consider

– Less than one-third of employees are happy with their work. – Half of the workforce is “checked-out.” – Eighteen percent are so unhappy with their current position that some even sabotaging the success of their workplace. – One surveys finds that only 13% of employees are actively engaged at work.

Is your work situation a positive in your life?

Return on Investment in You!

SLACK

Tom DeMarco (2001)

• Slack is the capacity to effect change.
• Efficiency is optimized at the expense of agility.
• Without slack there are no available resources to

deal with the inevitable unexpected.

• Multi-tasking and task switching incurs a penalty.

– Task Switching Penalty = Switching time + Rework + Emersion Time + Frustration Cost.

• What is your workload actually like?

Can you create positive slack in your work day?

Return on Investment in You!

Self Audit

• How many hours are you working?
• If you are part of an organization with traditional

job descriptions, how closely does your daily work align with your actual job description?

• Are there activities that take up time that are not

part of your job description?

• How much are you multi-tasking or switching

between tasks?

Consider an audit like a check-up. How are your baseline numbers?

Return on Investment in You!

Rounding Out the Picture

• A self audit can provide useful information, but it may be

incomplete.

• Other assessments may help develop a clearer picture of your

actual day.

– 80/20 rule – Urgent/important (Eisenhower/Covey) quads – Daily time tracking (multi-tasking, task switching) – Printable CEO (Dave Seah)

• If you know the as-is reality you can start to

look for ways to make positive change.

• Just as with good project planning,

quality information makes for better decisions.

Return on Investment in You!

Return on Investment in You!

Printable CEO

http://davidseah.com/2005/11/the-printable-ceo-series/

Organizational Culture Matters

• Organizational culture can have impact even

when not at work.

• Healthy organizational culture generally has a

positive effect on performance.

• Organizational dysfunction can impact your

health, sense of well-being, and efforts to manage your work day in a way that supports your personal professional development.

Return on Investment in You!

Key Questions to Ask About Work

• How do I feel about my work situation?
• How many hours am I working?
• If I’m working more than 40 hours/wk is this a short-

term or long-term problem?

• Is overwork the norm in my organization?

– If so, why is that?

• Are you working extra hours because of passion or fear?
• Can you optimize your work to eliminate low-value tasks
• r otherwise better adjust your allocations? Will you be

allowed to?

Return on Investment in You!

Key Questions to Consider About Your Organization

• Do you fit in with the organizational culture?
• Does the organization walk their talk?
• Is this true throughout the organization?
• Is the organization open or fearful?
• Is your organization structured or chaotic?
• Do you know how much time you spend responding to fire drills?
• Do the topics that interest you have potential value in your organization?
• How does the organization handle performance reviews?
• Does it make sense to you to share your personal development plans with

your supervisor? If not, what does that tell you about your organization?

• How long to you anticipate being with your current organization?
• Is the investment you’ve made in your organization one

which is delivering acceptable returns?

Return on Investment in You!

Honestly Evaluate Time

Technical projects suffer when saddled with unrealistic schedules and insufficient staffing. Likewise, unrealistic assumptions about time and availability can derail our personal development efforts.

• Assess personal time.

– Pay yourself first - set aside sufficient time for what matters most. – Block it off as non-negotiable.

• Assess your work situation.

– If there are known time-intensive critical periods at work block that time. – Determine how much time you can realistically carve out for growth and development.

Remember, the goal is to improve your life – not make yourself crazy.

Return on Investment in You!

Possible Categories

Acquire New Knowledge Deepen Existing Knowledge Share/Demonstrate Knowledge Optimize Time/Improve Efficiency Explore New Possibilities

Return on Investment in You!

Long Term Short Term Minor Effort Major Effort

Finally, Imagine

• Don’t rush your imagination.
• Give yourself time to consider multiple

possibilities from multiple perspectives.

• Be willing to reframe your ideas

Return on Investment in You!

Evaluate Feasibility

• You’ve generated ideas and done some preliminary

sorting.

• Now consider some scenarios and lightweight project

planning.

– Minimum success criteria – Expected value – Rough timelines – Is there a point to cut losses

• Go back and look at your time availability.
• Which possibilities give you the best return given your

specific situation.

• Consider short-term and long-term plans.

Return on Investment in You!

Decision Analysis

• Use for any decision where you are allocating a resource.
• Look at Alternatives, Probabilities, Preferences.

– What you can do – What you know

• Uncertainty
• How what you can do might effect

the future

– What you care about most

• Time (can you wait for it)
• Risk (do you have the stomach for it)
• The aim is not burdensome analysis, but sufficient

analysis and self-reflection to get thinking and underlying assumptions out in the open.

Return on Investment in You!

Comfort in Quality

Solid problem definition Creative yet realistic alternatives Meaningful , accurate information Define values and tradeoffs Solid reasoning Plan for action

• Assessing the quality
• f the decision-

making is an extension of Decision Analysis.

• Understand the

factors that go into a good decision before making one.

Return on Investment in You!

Meaningful Metrics Monitor Performance

• Measure not just performance toward the new

goal – have a light-weight way to monitor leading indicators.

• Monitoring also helps improve subsequent

planning.

• Measuring helps to see progress (contentment).
• Measuring helps to gage next steps and

milestones (motivation).

Return on Investment in You!

Possible Personal Project Formulation

• Identify the most interesting improvement possibilities.

– Look broadly at goals and opportunities. – Consider multiple options and determine value propositions. – Don’t neglect to consider different time horizons.

• Look at Alternatives, Probabilities, Preferences and weigh
• ptions accordingly.
• Prioritize goals.
• Define minimum success criteria.
• Consider how you can monitor progress and what

might be useful metrics.

• Define not just milestones but smaller incremental steps

to progress.

• Draft a schedule – with contingencies.

The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution.

Return on Investment in You!

Worth Some Worry

• Sleep deprivation/debt is a long-term issue.
• Fatigue and sleep debt are the accepted norms in my
• rganization.
• I am responsible for more work than can be done by
• ne person.
• My organization is always in fire-fighting mode.

Return on Investment in You!

Investment Basics

• Planning should include all facets of your life.

Establish key motivations.

• Have no more than 6-10 goals across a year.
• Due dates (or date ranges) - no more than three

a quarter.

• Written goals are important.
• Make it visible, and include enough detail to

know what success looks like.

• Include goals that make you uncomfortable.

Return on Investment in You!

Simple Investment Strategies

• If you only invest 3% in yourself

– Get more sleep. – Add 45 minutes to your sleep schedule. – See what impact this has on performance.

• If you invest 6% in yourself

– Sleep first.

– Streamline simple decision-making to buffer decision fatigue. – Audit yourself - know where your time goes. – Identify low value tasks and eliminate, automate, or otherwise minimize them. – Invest the rest of the time in building slack into your work and life. Slack is necessary for future change.

Small investments can provide meaningful returns.

Return on Investment in You!

If You Manage People

• Get at why
• Walk the talk
• Trust and Reliability
• Invest time throughout the year
• Iterate together

Return on Investment in You!

To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together.

Some Bedtime Reading

• It’s Your Ship: Management

Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy – Michael Abrashoff

• Peopleware: Productive Projects

and Teams – Tom Demarco & Tim Lister

• The Marshmallow Test: Mastering

Self-Control – Walter Mischel

• Watership Down – Richard Adams

Return on Investment in You!

Closing Thoughts

• There is No Silver Bullet, not for software development and not for

professional development.

• What both require is accurate information and the discipline to use

that information wisely.

• We are worth the effort to be disciplined about our development

because we are our own most valuable resource. Being careless with the investment of self does not serve us well.

• When we choose to devote so much of our energy to work that we

have no slack to invest in our personal growth and improvement, we are in fact undermining ourselves – ourselves today as well as our future selves.

• You are a valuable resource, so invest that resource wisely.

Put yourself first, invest generously in yourself, do great things, share your experiences.

Return on Investment in You!

Be a Priority in Your Own Life

You are worth it! Thank you!

Return on Investment in You!

ADDITIONAL

Return on Investment in You!

Project Failure: Sound Familiar?

• “Fuzzy business objectives, out-of-sync stakeholders, and excessive rework,” meant that 75%
• f project participants lacked confidence that their projects would succeed.
• Additionally, 78% of respondents reported that the, “Business is usually or always out of sync

with project requirements”.

• A survey conducted of technical professional unsurprisingly reported a similar lack of

confidence - 70% of respondents report they had been involved in a project they knew would fail right from the start.

• Underestimation of complexity was listed as a factor in 35% of projects.
• A study from 2008 found 413 of 840 (49%) federally funded IT projects are either poorly

planned, poorly performing, or both.

• A survey of European executives found that 35% of their organizations abandoned a major

project in the last 3 years.

• A 2005 study of IT professionals found that 86% of organizations reported a shortfall of at

least 25% of targeted benefits across their portfolio of projects and that many organizations fail to adequately measure benefits so they are unaware of their true status in terms of benefits realization.

Return on Investment in You!

Project Failure does it apply to learning

• Have you defined for yourself why you want to undertake the effort? Are there any potential

supporters or blockers in your organization/ How confident are you in your analysis?

• How does the planned learning effort advance your current work situation or bring an envisioned

future situation closer to reality?

• Are there any foreseeable resistance to your efforts? Could your colleagues or manager(s) feel

threatened? Does the culture favor maintaining the status quo over change? Do you expect your immediate supervisor will be supportive?

• How thoroughly have you considered the complexity of the learning challenge and have you

considered what level of mastery is useful for your purposes?

• In what ways might you measure your time commitment, lost opportunity costs, and ROI?
• Are there easy steps you might take to improve your planning compared to the last personal

development project you tackled? What might be signs that your effort is not going as well as you planned? Is there a hard deadline? If you miss that deadline does the project lose its value?

• Is there a point when abandoning the effort makes sense? (sunk costs)
• How would the benefits of the learning be assessed? Are there tangible and intangible benefits?

How might you assess both kinds?

• If the originally considered effort feels too big to tackle, would it be appropriate to take a smaller

step with a higher likelihood of success?

Return on Investment in You!

Consider a typical meeting

• Have you ever thought your co-workers exhibited

– Reduced alertness – Shortened attention span – Slower than normal reaction time – Poorer judgment – Reduced awareness of the environment and situation – Poor decision-making skills – Poor memory – Reduced concentration – Mental ‘stalling’ or fixating on one thought – Moodiness and bad temper – Inefficiency – Low motivation – Errors of omission – making a mistake by forgetting to do something – Errors of commission – making a mistake by doing something, but choosing the wrong option – How much of your organization is possibly sleep deprived

Return on Investment in You!

The Marshmallow Test

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX_oy96

14HQ

Return on Investment in You!