How to be an efficient manager in a remote collaborative project?

Because of the nature of my research, remote collaborations have become essential. Here are some notes on what I found useful on how to better manage these remote projects. There are many more, but I list only three points here, which seem to work in my team in my area of the research. Hope this may be useful to some people!

Table of contents

1. Toyota Matrix & Trello Board
2. Attach the estimated date to finish on every item on the ToDo list
3. Try to make each goal concrete, following the MAC principle

1) Toyota Matrix & Trello Board

In our lab, we have been implementing a method, called the “Toyota matrix”. It consists 4 regions, each of which lists various items related to the project. “Todo”, “Next”, “Problems” and “Awesome”. There are lots of similar techniques, called in different names, like WOOP etc.

As a Toyota matrix, we have used a whiteboard and Google Doc, which works well. Recently, we migrated into Trello, which is better in some aspects. One advantage of Trello is that the owner of the board can move items in “ToDo” into “Done”, which the team can review later.

The most important among 4 regions for me is “Awesome“. Share the “Awesome” goal among the team is quite important. The video from Spotify is inspiring. https://vimeo.com/94950270

If the team doesn’t align with the Awesome goals, collaboration can collapses.

Next important is “Problems“. This can be a difficult component of the matrix to fill if the team consists of all optimists. When we have realists / pessimists, they can come up with all sorts of potential failures. This is very useful. According to the science of the planning, we improve the success rate of the project if we are aware of problems. As I myself is optimistic, these negative comments are useful to keep. If they turn out not big problems, that’s also fine. Explicit listing of these potential problems are also good for pessimists. If they keep on thinking and ruminating these concerns, that can be harmful for the progress. I have seen many cases where these concerns are irrelevant in the end.

In our team, we use “Todo” to list goals and projects that the owner of the board plans to complete soon. We usually meet once a week or two weeks. So, anything that we plan to do before the next meeting comes under Todo.

Anything that won’t finish before the next meeting will go into “Next” area.

So, that’s the first step.

2) Attach the estimated date to finish on every item on the ToDo list

Next thing, which I recently found super important, is to estimate a date of completion for each ToDo item.

It’s known that >40% of items on ToDo list is never finished, if it doesn’t have a date.

There are several problems with the ToDo items without dates.

a) We can’t agree on the priority of the items.

b) We can’t understand each other what is causing the delay of each step. (Or, sources of the under- and over- estimation of these delay).

Having estimated dates of completion makes these issues manageable.

I find it’s better to use a term “estimated dates”. If we call them “deadlines”, it puts unnecessary pressure to the team members.

With these estimates, it becomes clear that almost everyone has significant biases. The biases may be due to perfectionism, planning fallacy, etc.

It seems many struggles come from poor planning of goals. We can improve the quality of goals by making it more measurable and actionable.

3) Try to make each goal concrete, following the MAC principle

M – Measurable

A – Actionable

C – Competent

I’ll skip the C part, for now.

I found that abstract goals, such as “Understand LME”, are not suited to put in ToDo. (Although, these abstract goals can be very effective and important in Awesome).

The problem of the abstract goals is that the team cannot assess whether we achieved them or not. It is better to make each item “measurable”. Compared to “understand LME”, “Read Chapter on LME” is better. “Apply LME to analyse the data” is even better.

Actionability follows a similar principle. If the goals are not something that we can do with concrete actions, it’s hard to see if we are doing something.

Once you get here, breaking down the items further, so that the owner of the board can achieve 4-5 seems to work well. Having many achievable goals makes achieving these feels like a game!

Planning to fail for better achievement

Recently, our lab members have started using Trello boards for project management. For collaborative projects, we have been using something like this for a while. Recent improvements in Trello make it easier to use than alternatives.

In the course of using Trello, I noticed several typical patterns in micro failures. These failures tend to happen when the members:

1) do not estimate of when to finish an item in “To Do”,

2) overestimate what they can do at a given period, and/or

3) do not plan for the time or possibility of failure.

1) is something I have noticed myself over the years. A certain percentage of items in my “to do” list remain there forever! This has put me under some stress. These accumulated items make me feel that I can’t achieve many things. But I’m not an exception. Psychological studies seem to have shown that ~40% of the items in the To-Do list are never completed!

These studies also point out several disadvantages of the ToDo list. One obvious disadvantage is that all items on the ToDo list look similar in priority.

A pretty effective way to deal with this is to put a self-estimated “time to complete” for every item. This also allows one to realize how much one can do a given task at a given time, which relates to the 2nd problem.

We are pretty bad at estimating how long any project will take. This is known as Planning Fallacy.

Combined with 1 and 2, 3 makes things worse. Many ambitious members have estimated the time to complete as if they are a perfect person. No failures are planned. This makes the planned date to be never achieved.

There are two ways to reduce your planning fallacy. One way is to ask other people to give the estimate. Other people’s judgement seems more registrant against this fallacy. 

Another way is for you to estimate the time as if your colleagues were to do it.

There are two great practices that I’ve tried, which worked very well for me!

I) Know thyself. Record as many activities for at least 2 weeks. Get an estimate of how fast you can do a given task per unit time. I recommend a combination of “the Pomodoro technique”.

II) Include ~15% of CHEAT time / day for your schedule. Planning roughly 1-2 hours per day and 1 day per 2 week as a CHEAT day. This seems to improve the success rate of timely achievement of the project.

現状維持バイアスは諸悪の根源か？

現状維持バイアスは認知バイアスの１つ。今までやってきたことと、新しいこと。どっちをとるかという選択に迫られると、どちらも同じ確率で良い悪いの結果がえられるという状況だとしても、人は今までやってきたことを選んでしまいがち。

私自身は、おそらく他の人と比べると、現状維持バイアスがもともと低いのではないかと思う。前世は破壊神だったのかもしれない。

科学者はみんな新しいことやるはずだから、現状維持バイアスは低いはず。と思うかもしれないが、実際はどうか？ 私の経験では、科学者は一般に、ある特定の分野、特に自分が専門とする分野に関しては、現状維持バイアスは少ない、かもしれないという印象がある。しかし、一歩自分のcomfort zone を出た途端、ゴリゴリの現状維持バイアスの権化みたいな人は多い。全般として、現状維持バイアスの度合いは、おそらく、他の職業の人と変わらないのではないか？

現状維持バイアスは、長い間の狩猟採集民時代に脳に刻み込まれたのだろう。他の認知バイアスも多くがそうだと考えられている。現代の人類学では、~200万年から１万年前という長い期間、人類は似たような生活を送っていたと考えられている。そんだけ時間があれば、狩猟採集民としての環境に合うような人が生き残ってきたはず。

狩猟採集民だった時は、新しいこと ｖｓ 現状維持という選択を迫られたら、多く場合、現状維持の方が有効だったんだろう。フグとか毒キノコ食べたりしたら死ぬし。新しく入ってきた人が「これ良いよ」って言ったからって「うちにはうちのやり方がある！」ってのが有効だったんだろう。

ただ、現状維持バイアスは現代、特に最近では破綻している。個人、家庭、集団、組織、それ以上、それぞれのレベルでの問題の大きな原因の一つはこれだと思う。（逆に解決の仕方もわかっているから、未来は明るい）。

現状維持バイアスが、現代人に全くフィットしない理由は少なくとも３つ。

第一に、科学のおかげで、さまざまなアイデアが replication 可能な形で、効果量も測定できるレベルですでに試されていること。registered report, meta analysis, structured review などの比較的新しいやり方のおかげで、この動きはますます加速している。新しいやり方が上手くことがある程度、統計的に保証されていることが多い。Daigo氏や鈴木祐氏の本はそういう結論をまとめてくれている。

第二に、新しいことを試して失敗する時のコストは、狩猟採集民の時に比べて激減していること。大概の新しいことはトライしても死なない。

第三に、めちゃくちゃ多くの新しい手法、しかもそのAlternativesを簡単に知れる。情報の溢れ具合は半端ない。

なので、今の問題点・改善可能なポイントを洗い出し、現状維持バイアスに反抗して新しいことを試し、良かったら新しい方法を残す、というサイクルを回すと、色んなレベルで問題が解決・改善すると思う。なんて明るい未来！？

この方法で、最近は私自身は少なくとも、どんどん改善していけている感じがしている。目標は、毎日昨日の自分を恥ずかしく思えるようにすること（＝成長）。

こういう思想は、どうやって家族・私のグループ・私の所属するグループを含む組織に共有してきたい。それができるかどうかが今後の課題。

How wrong was I about almost everything 10 years ago? Or 1 year ago? Or am I just growing?

Since 2020, we had the longest lockdown in Melbourne, Australia. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-03/melbourne-longest-lockdown/100510710

On any dark side, there is always a sunny side as well. Initially, there was some stress in my family. In retrospect, the fact that I was at home all the time was the biggest source of the stress!

As for myself, I actually appreciated the fact that I gained more time. (We were lucky as our children are big enough to be able to control themselves etc.)

Using this additional free time, my life has changed so much in a better way over the last 1.5 years. After many things settled down, I started various life hacks at a faster pace since this year, probably after around April. There was no single magic bullet that changed everything. But accumulation of many changes have culminated in substantial changes.

In some meetings, I have been suggesting some life hack techniques to my lab members. Some seem to have liked it and have been implementing it. It seems to have improved their life as well. Hope to see their improvement in productivity soon!

As I talk with these younger people, now I realise how bad my style was in almost every aspect of my life 10 years ago. Food, exercise, sleep, time management.

And I have now realised how wrong I was 1 year ago, almost about everything. I mean, the way I was doing things was definitely not the best for me. I’ve found a lot of better alternatives now.

In the course of these events, one key factor that I learned was 50% of our everyday life consists of automatic habits. So, knowing the way to change habits is pretty efficient as a starter.

For that purpose, one of the most useful books may be “9 things successful people do differently” by Heidi Grant Halvorson https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Things-Successful-People-Differently-ebook/dp/B073SCL2GJ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1636143886&sr=8-1

This short book was extremely useful for me to start new habits and quit old ones.

How far can I go with this? Alas, the lock down is finally lifted! Hopefully, there is a bright side to it, too.

死ぬまであと４５年＝５４０ヶ月＝３０００週。何ができるか、何がしたいかを考え直してみた。

Die With Zero という本は、死ぬときに貯金を０にするように、貯めて貯めて、アリのように生きるのはこれからの時代にはあわないという本だ。寿命が伸びること、伸びた分の年老いたときにお金を使っても、対して楽しめないこと、人生の目的は思い出づくりだ！ など、読んで考えられさせられるところが色々あった。

Die with zero を読んでいるうちに気になって、自分の寿命予測をしてみた。https://www.arealme.com/when-will-i-die/ja/ というサイトを使用。多分生年月日・性別などで予測してるんだろう。運動・食事・睡眠についても聞かれたが、どれだけ精度が高いのかは不明。
そして、出た私の寿命予測はあと４５年！

最近やっているライフハックを続けて、更に健康を高めるような生活すれば、楽に１４０歳くらいまでは生きれるかなぁと思っていた。なので、突如、予定より５０年くらい私の人生の残り時間が短くなる宣告を受けた。（なので、今週から食事も改善することに着手。Eat To Live という本がおもしろい）

Life Shift や Life Span でも言われているように、今後確実に寿命は、全人口を通じてさらに伸びるだろう。問題なのは「健康寿命」がみんな一様に伸びるのかということ。私の世代だと、どうやら女の人で平均１３年、男で平均９年、最後の人生を「不健康」に生きる確率が高い。

私は、９年間も不健康に生きる気が、無い。なので、死ぬ直前まで、やりたいことができる頭と体をキープしたい。意識と脳の関係性についてどこまで明らかになるのかを見届けたい。

寿命予測は、他の人に対してやってみても色々考えさせられた。私の両親の寿命予測をすると、あと１３−１７年くらいだ。週で言うと７００−９００週。２週に一回のズームやったとして会うのはあと３５０回くらい。後悔しないように色々思い出づくりができたらと思う。

親以外の人間関係についても考え直すきっかけになった。新しい人間関係を作るのは若い時は重要だった。が、私にとってはこれからは、コアな関係（２週に一回はどう？といえる感じの仲）と、ゆるい関係（メールすれば返事がくる？）の区別が大事だなと。各人と何がしたいか、何ができるか考えよう。