“Thank you – you’ve helped me keep my head above water!”

Head of Professional Services: “Thank you – you’ve helped me keep my head above water!”

Recently I’ve been working with a professional services team in a company who have loads of products (that can all interlink)

They get requests from sales and customer services, understand & define what needs done and then co-ordinate the delivery of the solution.

Sometimes they do product configuration and customisations,
Sometimes other product teams create new features,
Sometimes other internal teams are needed to do the work.

They were pretty busy and were good at responding to new work coming in

This had resulted in some stuff getting resolved quickly, and other stuff just hanging around after initial conversations, not actually being worked anymore

There was a huge list of in-progress cases and it was clearly worrying the team – I was asked to review the list

btw, I know very little about this companies products, but I have some experience and understanding of:
– how work flows though organisations
– solving dilemmas where there is no simple solution
– working with multiple interdependent teams

So for each case I followed the trail and asked questions with fresh eyes

It involved finding the right people from multiple departments, listening to their point of view and capturing the story

Then putting the data in front of the experts and decision makers to help them generate options and the best next steps

And finally ensuring the next steps were clear, agreed and on the right teams to-do list

In a couple of weeks 20% of the work list was closed out, customers had answers, the team was happier

Director of Infrastructure: “This stuff has been hanging over us for ages but no-one has been owning it”

Yes you need experts focused on doing the work,

but you also need someone to focused on the work itself and helping the team(s) get to decisions and closure!

If you are swamped by a similar pattern, do some reading around Limiting WIP – it really helps!

or give me a shout

#WIP, #innovation, #coaching