Posts Tagged small

The Yellow Tag Interview- The Dynamics of Innovation in a Large Corporation

Aug 12

Posted by Steve in stevebendt.com | 7 Comments

 

Geek Squad Founder and Chief Inspector Robert Stephens interviewed Gary Koelling and me to hear the origins of BlueShirt Nation as well as the obstacles that we’ve encountered since the site went live in 2006.
We also went into a pretty deep conversation about  the dynamics of innovation in a large corporation.

This video is part of a series called the Yellow Tag interview.  Its purpose is to get an intimate look into the lives and thoughts of Best Buy leaders, employees, and outside partners.  I’m trying to get all the videos of the series posted to www.YouTube.com/bestbuy.   Hopefully they’ll be up in a couple weeks- just have to edit them down.

 

 

 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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The Crucible

Jul 21

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I wanted to post a story about an experiment we tried this year- we called it the Crucible.  It was a way to work differently, to get focused, to work faster.  It turned out to be a brutal ordeal with both some good and bad effects on the team.

Our team has been practicing agile the best we can.  I say practicing because its hard work, and its hard to get it right.   We’re about a year into it, and we’re getting better- some weeks are better than others and after a year, I think we’re hitting a good stride.

In January of this year, we made a change with our development team to try to get better at agile.  In my opinion, we were suffering from sitting in a stale corp environment and communication wasn’t all that hot.  We had a deadline looming for development on Giftag- it was an important one- without meeting it, the project would have died.  So we did something drastic (for our team)- We went from sitting in cubes and being nice and comfortable to 6 guys sitting in a conference room for up to 12 hours a day.

Doesn’t sound too bad I’m sure, but imagine 6 guys in 1 small room for 3 months.  It smelled.  Each person sat across from everyone else.  There was no hiding.  There was no privacy.  There was heat- extreme heat from emotions, failures, wins.   It was the Crucible.

The Crucible was great on a couple levels.  Communication was great.  Not always nice, but great.  You couldn’t hide in the crucible so if you had a problem you had to bring it up.  If you had an idea, everyone could help shape it.  If you needed help, you turned to your left and there it was.

Our productivity was awesome- we did 13 releases to Giftag in that 3 months- great progress. Deadline met.  Project lived on.

We would have stayed on in the Crucible if it weren’t for one small detail- the Crucible wasn’t sustainable.  After a couple months, it got hard to come in everyday.  That kind of heat is draining, the pace was too frenetic.  People who were friendly with each other were now having personal spats.  It got annoying.

So for the good of the team, we left the room and  tried a different experiment.  We went to the opposite extreme- everyone got to air out.  Work from where you want.  We had 1 weekly meeting in person and the rest of the week, the team got their work done how they wanted.  We stayed connected through chat.

So what happened?  Probably just what you think.  The team continued to work hard, but communication suffered again.  We ran into more problems.  Our recovery from those problems became slower and still had some personal vendettas attached.  Our releases slowed a bit. 

As I write this, it seems obvious that it would happen this way.  And we thought it might before we tried it.  But it was still important to do.  We had to find a balance for our team- one that motivated them, kept communication open, and allowed for fast recover from failures.  It took us 6 months of trying, but today I think we found it. 

We have a new space and new process. The new space is open.  It lets developers pair if they want.  We meet in person 3 days a week at a minimum.  We hold a daily status scrum on chat at 10AM every morning.  Our development is picking up- we’re recovering more quickly, new ideas are flying, and people are taking a new level of ownership. 

The question will be, is this model sustainable?  Stay tuned…

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BlueShirt Nation Bazaar

Jul 9

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This week we started a new test on BlueShirt Nation.  After a lot of conversations among and with the employees on the site, we decided to create an area where some of our key vendors/partners can join  employee conversations.

This was a tricky one- it was made clear from the beginning that the community didn’t want vendor partners involved in the main conversation.  Essentially, its our place, not something for outsiders:)

But on the flip side, this is a place where some of our most engaged employees go to talk.  They can learn a ton from vendors and even more importantly, our vendors can learn from them.  In theory, in the end, our customers are the ones that benefit.

So we built rooms called the BSN Bazaar.  It lets our employees go into those rooms to talk to our vendor partners, but doesn’t allow the vendor partner to access the main conversation on the site.  Employees enter if they want to but you don’t have to.

This week, we had our final call with our final test partner.  We have 3 partners that we’ll test with over the next few months- a large gaming vendor, appliance vendor, and mainstream electronics vendor (HDTVs, Computers, Audio equip, cameras etc…)

Its going to be interesting as both employees and vendors have to decide, what kind of relationship am I ready to have?

Will employees really want to talk to our vendors like they said they did?

And if so, how will our vendors act?  Will they act like its another place to push content and training at our employees?  Or will they be ready to engage in real conversations?  To be brutally honest.  To admit when they’re wrong.  Or take the feedback they’ll get and use it as the gift that it is.

More to come….

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