Improve Something Today (Page 10)

Learning

Lee’s Law: a URL for every idea

“Every idea should have a URL, bonus points if one does not have to make the URL oneself.”

I’m a digital pack rat. So is my friend Lee. We studied human-computer interaction in grad school back in the day; the entire program was a warm, nutrient-rich incubator for nourishing little digital pack rats. Well, we were talking and uncovered a new rule.

I give you Lee’s Law:

“Every idea should have a URL, bonus points if one does not have to make the URL oneself.”

Here are three sites that satisfy Lee’s Law. Three different bodies of work from three distinct perspectives. What makes them awesome is this: they provide just enough information to make each idea useful. Find the page you need and use it yourself. Or share it with somebody. Try presenting directly from the page.

Bookmark these and come back to them at least once, and—congratulations—you're a digital pack rat too. One of us!

Liberating Structures: Facilitation approach and methods. Indispensable. If I could only keep 5 web sites this would be one of them.
18F Methods: Methods gallery for human-centered product or experience design. I've run entire projects straight out of this playbook.
Laws of UX: For those times when you remember what the thing is, but not what it's called.

June 22, 2025: Updated link to 18F Methods since the US Republican Party’s idiot kleptocracy shut down 18F; link now directs to the alternative 18F.org site.

Continuous improvement

Want water? Get a bucket. Want improvement? Get PDSA

Back to basics with the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle.

If you want water, you need a bucket.

If you want improvement, you need PDSA.

That’s Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA). Sometimes you’ll hear it called Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA). Same thing; the distinction is a story for another time.

Conceptually, PDSA seems simple. In practice, it’s super difficult, especially as groups increase in size and work gets complicated.

PDSA is easy

This is the whole thing:

Zero: Begin with sensemaking and understanding the problem.
One: Plan a small, reversible change to test things out.
Two: Do what’s in the plan.
Three: Study—how did it go? What did we learn anything?
Four: Act on what we learned—standardizing on good ideas, spreading what works based on the evidence and narratives we produced above.
Infinity: Begin again.

PDSA is hard

We act without planning. We plan but then don’t do any god damn thing. We plan but do something different from the plan. We plan and will not deviate from plan even when the world changes. We overlearn. We underlearn. We do just fine, but flub the reflection and decision-making. We find awesome ideas but can’t find energy for transformation. Systems revert to mean, people fall back on old ways of doing things. We skip a step. Someone laments, “we already tried that and it didn’t work!” or “we’re already running behind!” We get distracted. We are managed by crisis and punished for experimentation.

PDSA is hard because you have to do 4 steps, in order, at scale, with attention, in community.

Have bucket, carry water

Take good care of that bucket.

Run PDSA and you can improve. Take good care of that PDSA system.

I am reminded of Chiyono’s lament on a cold night 900 years ago:

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together,
and then the bottom fell out.
Where water does not collect,
the moon does not dwell.

October 7, 2024: Edited for length.

Learning

Make your next presentation a spiral, not a line

Cycling through your main point helps your audience. Here’s how.

Find your main point: one thing you want people to remember. Begin the presentation by making your main point as quickly and plainly as you can.

Then, state the main point again. Elaborate on it this time, with a little more context. Give the two most relevant examples you can.

Next, revisit the main point. Explain how it is applicable or meaningful to your audience, based on the elaboration you just did and your understanding of their situation. This is where you can get ultra specific and pile on the details. Nerd out. This works because you’ve built little gathering places into your presentation. When people get distracted or you do a shitty job explaining something, some of your audience’s attention will wander. That’s OK. Each reiteration of your main point is an opportunity for people to get back on board. It is a starting point everyone will be familiar with—since it’s your main point.

Finally, revisit the main point. Remind everyone what the main point is, and what it means for them.

Conclude with a quote or a story that emphasizes the main point.

Having a hard time organizing a talk? Plan it backwards.

Think of how it will end: the capacities, agreement, and energy your audience will have. That’s your ending.
Strip away some detail, and slot that before the ending.
Strip all but the main idea, and that’s your opening.

Facilitation

“What did you notice?” → End your meetings with this short, powerful question

A sign reading “Area Closed for Plant and Wildlife Protection”. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

The simplest technique I know.

“What did you notice?”

Asking this question is an incredible way to close out a meeting or gathering.

Here’s how it’s done

Pose the question: “What did you notice?”
Invite everyone to share an answer, or pass.
Indicate that you'll answer first and point out who’s next.
Give your answer. (I tend to say something like, “I noticed how everyone contributed in their own way and appreciated learning from each of you.”)
Go around the room. Listen. Offer the kindest attention and warmest eye contact you can muster. If someone needs help, ask, “What did you notice?” or the more advanced form, “What’s one thing you noticed?”
When everyone has had a chance to speak, you’re done.
Close with your thanks.

So, what do people say?

Sometimes people share simple things: appreciations and gratitude. For one another. For time together. For kindness or collaboration that has occurred. People might say they noticed conflict, especially if they can point to a moment where it was identified or resolved.

Then a transition happens. This is the magic trick.

It happens in a group of 5 or a group of 50. I don’t know why, but it does. I’ve done this a hundred times in dozens of different groups and each time I worry it won’t happen. It always does. The transition is:

About halfway through, responses shift away from sensory observations and towards the retrospective. Reflection, decision, statements of purpose.

The question hasn’t changed—“What did you notice?”—but the room has.

Maybe some perspective-taking happens. Or someone reinforces shared purpose, especially where there has been disagreement.

By the end, the answers to “What did you notice?” tend toward summary and action. What's next. What's the opportunity. Noticing consensus or its lack.

The group has started with “what” and moved on to “so what” and then “now what.” All with a single question and the lightest structure.

If you want a little more

There are facilitation methods for doing this with a little more scaffolding.

For example, the Institute of Cultural Affairs’ Focused Conversation method is a facilitated discussion that leads a group through stages from Objective to Reflective to Interpretive to Decisional (ORID). Focused Conversations are lovely too, and I use them often.

A simpler version is the “What/So What/Now What” Liberating Structure.

Simpler still is the “what did you notice?” question.

Try it sometime. It’s so simple, it’s magic.

May 15, 2024: edited for length.

Learning

2 ways to get better at guessing

Try out your guesses; write them down.

First way: try out guesses with small, reversible tests

Try out changes on a small scale—involving a few people for a short period of time—and in a way that’s easy to bail on.

Things tried out this way tend to be crappy or prototype-y. Good:

Use a piece of paper instead of a fancy app.
Make a spreadsheet instead of a report.
Draw a table and figures on the wall instead of a spreadsheet.
Do it manually today. Automate later.

Small: you need only enough work to figure out if your guess was any good. Don’t dump resources or spend time rushing towards dead ends.

Reversible: work this way to take the sting out of failure. Idea didn’t work? Stop and try the next one.

Test: once you can point to an initial success, gather resources and proceed with something more elaborate.

Second way: a logbook of guesses

Once you start testing your guesses, you’ll find that you make a lot of guesses, and run a lot of little tests. So keep a log. Write down:

Your guess,
What you thought might happen, and
What actually happened.
Was your test bigger or smaller than it needed to be?

Practice this and your guesses will improve over time.

Don’t take my word for it—try it in a small, reversible way, and see.

July 16, 2024: edited for length.

Continuous improvement

Some things (like pancakes) you should finish once you start

Would you rather have five half-cooked pancakes or two good ones?

Do this with me:

Griddle up a pancake on one side.
Do not flip it. Instead, remove from heat and set on a plate.
Immediately start the first half of another pancake.
Continue until you have a stack of five half-cooked pancakes. They should be crispy and fluffy on one side, oozing and dripping raw batter on the other.

Oops. We didn't make a meal—we made a disaster.

The 10x pancake-maker

I’ve met busy, expert-level cooks who spend a great deal of time making only the first sides of pancakes. Everyone is hungry, the food goes to waste, but you gotta see how fast they move. Their bias towards action. Velocity. Look at them: a “flow state.” There is always something cooking, so they must be great at this. And the incredible variety of pancakes their menu offers.

What remarkable flavors their breakfasts must have, if they ever manage to finish a single god damned flapjack.

The best pancake

The best pancake is cooked perfectly, ready for someone to enjoy.
A strongly OK pancake might be a bowl of batter next to a hot griddle.
The very worst is a pancake-in-progress, one that's started cooking, and then a doorbell rings a few rooms away. It’s easily interruptible, delicate, a liability if the mind or body wanders.

Started but not finished

Put on your continuous improvement goggles, go look for work that has been started but not finished. You’ll find it everywhere. Gross. Let it be as much cause for concern as that stack of half-cooked pancakes.

Given a pancake-in-progress, you can guess how far along it is. Pour, one side, flip, the other, serve. You can even check the batter and guess how many more you can cook.
But given a basket of nuanced, exploratory projects, everyone believes & reports each activity to be 85% complete… but the reality can be obscure. Plus, everybody is too busy starting all these other projects to quite finish any of them.

It’s enough to put you off your breakfast.

August 5, 2024: Edited for length.

Improve Something Today

Posts on page 10

PDSA is easy

PDSA is hard

Have bucket, carry water

“What did you notice?”

Here’s how it’s done

So, what do people say?

If you want a little more

First way: try out guesses with small, reversible tests

Second way: a logbook of guesses

The 10x pancake-maker

The best pancake

Started but not finished