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1.0 BELIEF

Open up your work in progress

We’ve all had that one stakeholder who, no matter how many caveats you put on your draft, gives you feedback as if you’ve been working on your project for 200 days instead of 6. Don’t let them stop you from getting the feedback you need and doing it early and often. We’ve got your back.

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1.0 Ritual - Open up your work in progress

Make your updates followable

Most people know more about what’s trending on social media than they do the projects happening on their shared teams.

If we share project updates as easily as we share life updates to our network, we can open our work to get input from the right experts at the right time.

While frequent feedback can feel overwhelming, research shows that teams who receive feedback regularly are more engaged in their work.

To reap the benefits, design your project workspaces and rituals to enable non-team members to give quick, phase-appropriate feedback. Bring your work to them by creating a mechanism for them to subscribe to your salient updates without getting lost in the details.

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PRACTICE with your team
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1.1 technique – Open your wip
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Magnifying important text

Create reference-able handles

Your project needs an identity. We’re spending too much time answering clarifying questions and not enough time exploring ideas together. Adopting a company-wide naming structure (think Dewey Decimal system for all those over 25) helps teams-of-teams navigate, discover and discuss pertinent project across functions far and wide. For example: ATLAS- 1, ATLAS-2, ATLAS-3

How to set up the technique

Step 1

Gather the leaders who are responsible for teams who own projects that will be tracked

Step 2

Decide on the descriptor for your project (usually by department [MKT, RD, FIN], one for the whole org [ATLS, SHOP, etc.] These should not be temporal. Don’t change your naming structure more than once every 5-10 years.

Step 3

Agree on a numbering process. Typically the first project starts at 1 and additional projects numerate up from there.

Step 4

BONUS Propose and agree on guidelines for what types of projects should be tracked in this system (i.e., project that involve 2+ people for 2+ weeks).

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1.2 technique – Open your wip
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Magnifying important text

Open up comments & questions (avoid 1:1 messages)

Feedback inspires ideas. The more open your feedback is, the more useful it will be. For example copy suggestions made on an open doc may help a designer think differently on how to build a webpage (and vice versa!).

How to set up the technique

Step 1

Gather project owners or leaders of project owners. Ask them to come with a list of their 1:1s and a list of their group sparring sessions.

Step 2

Count the number of collective hours spent in 1:1s.

Step 3

Identify a target number of weekly hours in 1:1s.

Step 4

Use Stakeholder Communication Plan play to draft the recommended channels and audiences for department or org-wide project communication rituals.

Step 5

Setup new channels and meetings (and remove existing) as needed.

  • Examples:
    • Slack channels with #feedback-
    • Sharing your work in a open tool with comments (Confluence, Asana, Notion, Google Docs)
    • Cross-functional parring meetings/demos with leaders over 1:1 meetings (Pixar’s PBT)
Step 6

Schedule a follow-up meeting to assess efficacy of new plan and measure against target reduction in hours in 1:1s.

1.3 technique – Open your wip
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Distribute updates in channels where teams live

Don’t force designers to use tools for financial planning (or vice versa!). It’s easier to get in the flow when we use tools that support our work style and function. Context switching takes brain power, so making your updates consumable is important. Bring them to the tools they’re working in, whether it’s Slack, email, Jira, or Asana.

How to set up the technique

Step 1

Interview cross-functional stakeholders to assess what tools and forums they are spending their days in.

Step 2

Gather a quorum of project or group leaders to review interview findings and group stakeholders by common themes (ie, uses mostly email, subscribes to company blogs, etc)

Step 3

Agree on a cadence and distribution channel for each group of stakeholders.

Step 4

Create new workflows or channels as needed to distribute project updates.

Step 5

After 3-4x reach out to stakeholders to have them rate their satisfaction with the project updates they are receiving. Continue to ask for feedback until satisfaction reaches steady, desired level.

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Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.

Dr. Brene Brown

NY Times bestselling author

Explore all the Loop techniques


1.0 Open up your work in progress


1.1   Create reference-able handles


1.2   Open up comments & questions (avoid 1:1 messages)


1.3   Distribute updates in channels where teams live


2.0 Curate, don't automate


2.1   Character constrain your updates


2.2   Update async, spar in real time


2.3   Balance qualitative + quantitative


3.0 Common vocabulary over common tooling


3.1   Define your project’s what, why & how


3.2   Agree on “what is a project” and phases


3.3   Define your status markers (On Track (green), At Risk (yellow), Off Track (red))


4.0 Show that you are paying attention


4.1   Level your feedback in line with phase/fidelity


4.2   Create a read receipts mechanism


4.3   Follow relevant projects & celebrate wins together