Niko-Niko practice during COVID-19 Pandemic
VUCA — Volatility — Uncertainty — Complexity — Ambiguity
Volatile — The environment demands one to react quickly to ongoing changes that are unpredictable and out of control
Uncertain — The environment requires one to take action without certainty
Complex — The environment is dynamic, with many interdependencies
Ambiguous — The environment is unfamiliar, outside of one’s expertise
COVID-19 Pandemic has reassured that the environment we live in is VUCA and is the new normal. Life in my IT division is no different. Fight against Pandemic within the organization started from IT with the help of leaders.
Business continuity was the need of the hour.
The New business case emerged — Remote Working Setup (RWS)
Impact
Sum of all variables that create business results — Business Continuity in the organization
Outcome
A change in human behavior that drives business results — Remote Working Set-up in the organization
Output
Increments of delivery that generate outcomes — Activities ranging from issuing accessories till taking care of business continuity of on-premise servers
For people who have never experienced carrying even an office accessory home, setting up remote working is a nightmare. Yet, the team worked round the clock to meet almost all the needs for an RWS. Name it, and it is done!
Situation:
- Business needs shifting by the hour
- Close to 2000 people who have never experienced remote working has to start working from home at the earliest
- Extremely short windows for decision making and execution
How can it be possible?
Be Agile. As simple as that. Easier said than done!
“Being Agile” doesn’t mean throwing all rules and processes out of the window. Being Agile does mean working in a highly responsive way so that you deliver your services in the way the business wants and at the time the business needs them.
The team evidenced it, through the following
- Decentralized problem solving & execution [Self-Organization within the boundaries]
- Collaborations with various groups — Right from transport team to deliver RWS set up to the door-step
- Flexible work patterns
- Leveraging the best of local capabilities
When the COVID situation emerged, we were in the middle of a two-week iteration, we had canceled the sprint and started working on the COVID preparedness. It was chaos.
A simple Kanban board was set up on a glass wall and used as a medium to visualize the flow of work to achieve the outcome.
Then to make it transparent to the team, we used JIRA and created a new cadence with an agreed time-box.
Then to make it transparent to the team, we used JIRA and created a new cadence with an agreed time-box.
The team moved away from
- Two-week iterations with a fortnight planning to a Daily iteration with Daily planning
- Committing a goal for two weeks to need of the hour commitment (Pull based work)
- Fortnight Retrospective to a Daily check-in
Niko-Niko Calendar
Daily business update calls were set up at the beginning of the day for any official updates. It served its purpose. For more than a week, this call was filled with problem-solving.
With so much happening around, there was little thinking on personal well-being. We took a step back and reflected ourselves.
Empathy is a virtue. We tried being kind on ourselves. We decided to look back at ourselves and see how we were feeling. I shared the Niko-Niko practice with the leadership group. Initially, there was hesitance to do this, as we weren’t aware of how everyone will take this. We were even thinking if it is safe to ask how everyone was feeling in an open forum.
At the start of the third week, a short zoom poll was rolled out to sense the emotions people went through in the last week. It had good responses, with people opening up.
The next day, we tried out the zoom annotation option on an emoji wall. This time it was made informal and asked people to mark the feelings that they are going through and talk about it (Niko-Niko calendar from M3.0 practice). People opened up a bit more, and responses were good. We continued the second option from then on. Initial days we still had a few talking about business updates. But over time, it was close to completely informal. Screenshots of the annotation are captured and added to the wiki.
Now the business update call transformed to a Daily well-being check-in. When teammates shared personal things daily, people become aware of their differences and similarities which inturn improved trust as well as empathy. Also, this helped the leadership group help individuals in need by giving personal attention.
On a lighter note, we even started inheriting few physical stretches, eye exercises for the first 3–5mins, before Niko-Niko practice.
Some of the evidence that the Niko-Niko check-in is going well.
One of the colleagues felt this check-in lifts their feeling for the day.
Another said, whatever feeling he may carry to the call, at the end of the meeting it makes cheerful.
This is my own experience with Niko-Niko, I would leave it to individuals to try based on their environment as we believe you are the judge and jury of your environment.
