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Sometime back read an article about how proximity to goals motivates individuals to move faster towards the goals. It is very important for people to know their progress to understand the proximity to the goal. I found that it worked on me when I was driving back to town and finished the last 30 kms significantly faster than the average speed during the rest of the journey though the travel conditions were almost similar. I also observed this behaviour with my niece & nephews in kindergarden; I used to carry them from school to home but the moment they see the house, they jump off and run inside.

How do we relate to this at our workplace? No, I am not talking about the carrot and stick approach. It is like having feature completeness charts, burn down charts and other visual indicators at work that helps visualize progress. Brain tends to reward itself with dopamine which gives a sense of accomplishment. Completing a small task does not give much of a sense of accomplishment, but pursuing a tough task may be daunting.

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If people are helped with progress indicators then the task becomes easy. It is the most commonly used part in the loyalty points, people are found to be rushing their last two coffee purchases for a free coffee than the speed in which they consumed their first few. It has also been observed that people will slow down once the milestone has been achieved, they would not be buying their 11th coffee at the same speed they got their earlier onces before their reward. That is because we want to be in a state of Anxiety Neutrality (otherwise known as Comfort Zone) that we would  not kick start something. An illusion of progress or things already started may get people started.

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In the above illustration both coupons have the same target of 10 coffees but people are likely to get started on the second one faster as already two of them are struck out. This illusion of getting started is used by many organisations which run loyalty programs by giving joining bonus. At workplace I have observed that people at work in long duration projects initially start out slow for few weeks~months and then increasingly put hours to get the project out. Once the project is over then the resetting to a slow pace happens.

I figured out that this kind of behaviour is less common in an iterative approach and there is always a healthy sustained pace. If we plan entire work in small chunks then visualisation of progress get much easier, which gives a sense of progress and creates multiple short term and long term goals. Goal gradient effect plays an important role in iterative development.

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One of the hardest things I face as a developer is to get the number of billable hours right in the timesheet. Traditional office work always meant to be hours present in the office to be equivalent to the number of hours worked as there was a structure and flow to the work. It is unfortunate that the knowledge workers fall into the bucket of hours of work at the workplace as a measure of billable work.

Knowledge workers have to do a good deal of home work to stay up to date. Any task at hand they pick, will involve some amount of deep thinking and application of knowledge. Thinking can happen anytime and not necessarily at workplace. Hypnagogia has provided me some solutions for some pressing problem, it is also famous for discovering Benzene ring structure. If a scientist can benefit (eventually monetary) from that kind of discovery, then why not we bill the time we spend in thinking about the problem in hand while waiting at the traffic signal lights or having a shower.

In the book Pragmatic thinking and learning, the author mentions about L-mode and R-mode of the brain; there is an example of that here. What we usually end up billing as a knowledge worker is what is done by L-mode, but the many of the inputs comes from the R-mode of the brain. The bias of billing for the L-mode makes people spend a good deal of time with tools rather than thinking about the solution and constantly striving to update themselves. It leads into a vicious cycle of working too long without success if the task at hand requires deep knowledge and application, which leads to more hours billed without any work done.

We should look at work as a whole outcome than measuring it in terms of man hours or lines of code. In that way it provides the individuals the freedom to plan their day and deliver effectively at their job.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Almost every office room meeting place has a table. Rooms of different sizes gets filled up with tables of comparable sizes barely leaving enough space for the chairs and some people to move around. Using the right tools for the right job is necessary, the same way the right meeting room setup is necessary for different types of meetings. A typical conference table usually creates a perception in the attendees that either there is a head of the table or sub consciously it is a Us vs Them debate. If a lot of collaboration is required in the gathering then the table in between the people does not help.

Anything in between people is a barrier, unless people are trained to overcome that. Tables are usually designed to fit the room such that the periphery is a usable space. A typical conference is room is bigger length wise, trying to focus on one side of the room where the presenter or the head of the table is. I have observed in many of the meetings when we need to have a huddle or a focussed discussion then most of the people leave their seats and crowd around a corner to put their ideas together and come with a common picture. Every person in the room has to shift to some other side leaving the comfort of their seats to get something done.

Increasingly we use workshop/brainstorm style meetings which requires frequent huddles and group interactions. By having a large almost square shaped room without tables to occupy the free space, we will be able to promote free movement of people. Also the square shape will not plant a thought in people’s mind that the conversation is unidirectional. The times I have tried this approach of having sessions in large rooms and easy to move furniture, I found good level of participation from everyone.

Table is definitely an important furniture but filling rooms entirely with a table for convenience will make people just too comfortable in their zones.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net