Physician heal thyself … or … The Top Ten uses of Method Grid (here at Method Grid!)

Physician heal thyself – originally a Biblical reference, talks to the common trait of not benefitting from the products of your own trade.

The old English proverb: Cobbler’s children are the worst shod states similar.

Are we guilty of this here at Method Grid?

We like to think not.

From our earliest days, we recognised that the more we used our own solution (took our own medicine) the better we would understand the feedback we received from our user community. It is probably fair to say in the early days that this was a somewhat forced, contrived behaviour i.e. we were using the solution to handle aspects it was not optimised for. Now, however, we can hand-on-heart say that we would really struggle to run our business – and connect our team – without own own application at the heart of it.

In this Art of Gridding blog series, therefore, the aim is to describe the multiple ways we use the solution – with the hope that it initiates further ideas as to how you can derive even greater value from your own accounts.

The Top Ten uses of Method Grid … here at Method Grid!

By way of summary – the detail will follow in this blog series – we use Method Grid for (at least) the following key use cases:

1. To deliver structured service methods/projects to our clients (Methodology playbooks)
2. As a (connected team) weekly task progress list (Kanban board)
3. To coordinate our fortnightly product development sprints (Kanban board)
4. To capture our ideas (and bug fixes) (Kanban board)
5. Strategic plan prioritisation and allocation (Prioritisation matrix)
6. Staff Induction (Induction playbook)
7. Team Summit agenda planning (Event grid)
8. Sales Playbook (Capability playbook)
9. Repetitive monthly process (e.g. month-end financial close) (Procedural elements)
10. Marketing Initiatives (Kanban board)

Over the coming days, we will look at each in turn (an example per blog).

Let’s start with …

01 To deliver structured service methods/projects to our clients (Methodology playbooks)

Let’s jump straight into the core, prototypical way of applying the solution: to deliver structured service methods/projects.

Essentially, in this core mode, Method Grid helps to deliver projects to quality standards (project/task management) and at the same time facilitates the structured capture of “best practice” tools/templates/resources such that you continuously grow value in your grid library IP.

For us, this core use case applies to the common services we present to our enterprise clients such as “proof of value” exercises and implementation support (enterprise clients).

For both of these core services, we have developed Master grids that capture our detailed approach to these services – as per the image above. Each time one of our consultant-facilitators delivers one of these services, the Master grid is cloned to a specific client-delivery instance. The specific instance then contains all of the resources, guidance and templates we have built up over time – as our “best practice” model – to facilitate the project. Elements and tasks within this grid are allocated to the delivery team members – with assigned dates – such that we have a powerful task tracking tool and a simple, visual overview of progress.

These delivery grids are shared with our clients, for live tracking, such that they can (a) see the rigour we apply to our services and (b) see exactly where we are in the shared journey at any point.

As a side note, we often “show off” these grids to our prospect clients at an early stage to demonstrate our expertise and rigour i.e. to help us win their confidence and, ultimately, to help secure them as valued clients.

Critically, this mode of use facilitates an end-engagement reflection – where we feedback into the Master grids any aspects of continuous improvement unearthed in the delivery of the specific project; for example, a new deliverable/element, improved guidance notes, a new exemplar deliverable etc. In this regard, our services are ever improving and the inherent value of such IP continuously growing with use.

You can see further examples of such grids in our (free to download) example grids library – such as the Project and Programme Management Methodology example.

A great example of such a grid in action can be found here (albeit please note the solution interface has significantly improved/developed since this was captured).

Next up in the series … we will look at 02. As a (connected team) weekly task progress list (Kanban board)

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So there you have it.

A series that will sweep through some of our own core use case scenarios.

We are clearly at the more mature end of solution use (indeed, we were the platform’s first ever users!) but, hopefully, this still gives a flavour of the breadth of benefits that can be derived once the intuitive (connected team) features are fully harnessed. As a minimum, we aim to provide you all with one or two new “food for thought” examples.

As always, we love hearing about all such innovative grids and real-world user stories so please just drop us a line if you would like to feature in a future Art of Gridding blog.

Happy gridding.