Licensee BadgeTraining Badge
Submitted by peterlevy on
in

Forums

I'd love to get a little more detail on examples of what a WWW/TALA session should cover.

Anyone?

TomW's picture
Training Badge

Have you listened to the Hotwash podcast already? That covers it rather well I thought.

peterlevy's picture
Licensee BadgeTraining Badge

Thanks Tom!

I knew it was there somewhere, but couldn't find it. I'll go check the Hot Wash 'cast right away.

TomW's picture
Training Badge

[quote="peterlevy"]Thanks Tom!

I knew it was there somewhere, but couldn't find it. I'll go check the Hot Wash 'cast right away.[/quote]

That was a pretty early one, back in Feb 2006.

The short answer: pretty much everything. I think they even said that a staff meeting could end with one covering the staff meeting.

Mark's picture
Admin Role Badge

Yep.

Mark

_sms_'s picture

WWW = ?

TALA = ?

Thanks!

HMac's picture

_sms_:

They're part of a great facilitation technique, used to quickly raise comments about the good and not-so-good experiences of a recent project:

WWW= What Went Well
TALA = Take A Look At

Check out the 'casts that are referred to on this thread (Hot Wash, Effective Staff Meetings) for detailed explanation about using WWW/TALA.

-Hugh

jjohnson's picture

I am an Architect without any specific directs, but I often work as a Team Leader/Project Administrator with many different teams within our office.

I ran my first Hot Wash session today and it went GREAT! Eventhough I didn't announce the concept prior to the job we were working on, and some of the members couldn't stop talking about solutions to the TALA side, their was a great deal of valuable information collected.

The one thing that I noticed is that some people like to talk about subtle nuances that tend to get lost in the mix if you just jump right to a decision. The high D/C in me (doesn't like to listen to people very long because I tend to jump to conclusions of what I THINK is being said) thinks things get done by doing not talking about doing. Because I kept thinking this is for them to understand and not me, I was able to resist jumping ahead and we now have the ability to make large, medium and even small changes to adjust our process to make it extremely efficient.

Team buy in is tremendous at this point as well. Believe it or not, not every sees the logic of a :roll: C and now I can use this info to not only help them specifically, but also get things done on standards development. People feel good and I get a ton accomplished! Score, baby!

Overall, it was probably one of the most effective meetings I have ever run and I thank you guys for helping me with these new tools.

Please keep up the great work!

Jeff

6-2-2-4

jhack's picture

Great story!

John

HMac's picture

[quote="jjohnson"]The one thing that I noticed is that some people like to talk about subtle nuances that tend to get lost in the mix if you just jump right to a decision.

Because I kept thinking this is for them to understand and not me, I was able to resist jumping ahead and we now have the ability to make large, medium and even small changes to adjust our process to make it extremely efficient.

Team buy in is tremendous at this point as well.[/quote]

Jeff - I think you're making this point, and I agree: team buy-in is a RESULT of your approach. Nice going!

-Hugh

Mark's picture
Admin Role Badge

Well done sir!

Mark

jjohnson's picture

John, Hmac and Marc,

Thanks for the feedback!

JJ

US41's picture

The hot-wash technique can be used at the end of almost any event, project, meeting, or anything at all. I recently had my team on a huge support effort during a market launch. When we got back into the office, I used just 15 minutes to do a hot wash.

I felt there were some things they did not do so well, and I was ready to take a piece out of someone.

The hot wash saves me from myself. Instead of me listing what they did good and bad, and then lecturing endlessly on the bad, they did it themselves without me contributing anything. They came up with a lot of what went well stuff I had not bothered to notice, and they named more things than we needed to take another look at than I had noticed as well.

They were both more praising and harder on themselves as a team than I would ever have been.

In fact, after feedback, coaching, delegation, and O3's, I think hot was is the fifth most powerful tool (of course it depends entirely upon brainstorming). After assigning a task and then not getting delivery repeatedly and then finally getting what I wanted, I can do a 5 minute hot wash with an employee and they will most often hold themselves accountable and introduce things I could have done differently (love it!) as well as things that actually went well which were surprisingly complex and unexpected.

The hot wash is about getting closer to the truth and farther away from inaccurate perception using collaboration and the power of teams. Very, very strong stuff.

Breath it like feedback.

Mark's picture
Admin Role Badge

What US41 said.

:wink:

Mark

jjohnson's picture

US41,

Yeah! That's what I'm talking about. You said it ten times better than me, but yeah.

I especially like the seeing the actual facts instead of perceptions part and the self policing aspect. Most people in my business are very self critical and harder on themselves than anyone else can be.

JJ

ctomasi's picture

US41,

Great story. By the team coming up with the WWW and TALA items, they take more ownership/responsibility/credit for them. They don't become "This is what the boss said so I guess I have to fix it."

I like it!