Jim Benson
Every organization has elements of efficient collaboration and elements of inefficiency and waste. Collaboration is something that people do naturally, but with individual styles. The best products result from well-run group projects. However, a group needs clarity of purpose, product, and plan in order to be successful. Given that people approach problems from different cultures, styles of learning, and ego states, this can prove challenging.
Jim Benson’s career has included psychology, urban planning, government technology planning, software development, and corporate change management. During his 20 years of experience, he has acquired an appreciation for how people, teams, and organizations process information, set goals, and achieve their objectives. A fundamental part of this appreciation involves the identification of opportunities for waste reduction and innovation in knowledge work.
Knowledge work is fundamentally tricky to gain focus around. Knowledge workers are by nature inventive, but highly susceptible to political shifts and misdirection. Invention, innovation and politics can be unpredictable. For the past two decades Jim has worked at uncovering ways for groups to find clarity in unpredictable and amorphous environments. He has led expansive teams including social scientists, computer programmers, urban planners, business developers, concerned citizens, and writers to successfully create complex rapid-release products. He has led these teams both in-person and on-line.
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My career path has taken me through government agencies, Fortune 10 corporations, and start-ups. Through them all my passion remained consistent – applying new technologies to work groups – in each case asking how they can be leveraged to collaborate and cooperate more effectively. I love ideas, creation, and building opportunities. I love working with teams who are passionate about the future. I love pushing boundaries. I love inclusion. My goal with all technologies is to increase beneficial contact between people and reduce the bureaucratic noise which so often tends to increase costs and destroy creativity.
Personal kanban is an idea that arose from necessity. I began a personal kanban prior to startingModus Cooperandi, but it didn’t translate as cleanly from the programming and industrial world as I would have liked. It wasn’t until one day when Corey Ladas and I sat down and really started to talk about the differences between industrial kanban and personal kanban that things really started to gel.
For about a year, Corey and I worked with the personal kanban for Modus. We tweaked it, watched it closely, and discussed what was working and what didn’t work like we expected.
Then in the first half of 2009, I found myself with more commitments than I could process. Multiple companies, projects, and clients were working hard to destroy my personal life. That’s when the differences between personal kanban and industrial kanban began to crystallize. Those differences, coupled with the need to quickly remove a disparate, overwhelming backlog set into effect a series of epiphanies.
These included:
- Tasks were unruly
- WIP was harder to manage
- The only way out is often through (you can’t delegate, procrastinate, or ignore personal work)
- Personal projects were often short lived, but with definite value streams
The approaches to personal kanban I initially wrote about were all kanban variations I used to get through those frenetic months. While people could hear me screaming from time to time, I burned through an amazing amount of work and – when it was over – I knew exactlywhat I’d done, how long it took, what held me up and why.
Kanban itself is a time proven process management tool. It is simple to learn the basics and to get started.
After that, the kanban teaches you.
Please join the growing personal kanban community. See what others are saying about it. Let’s take this meme and run with it.
Retain Jim
I help companies and government agencies of all sizes solve management, innovation and efficiency problems through collaboration.
I am easily reachable at jim@moduscooperandi.com
