A3
Since I’ve been going on about juniors and onboarding recently, here’s one method that does good things for onboarding as well as team building at just about every level. It’s called the A3 methodology, originates from Toyota, and has been documented in detail in book form. I’ll leave looking up the details to my valued reader, and focus on putting the A3 method in context related to my earlier remarks.
Put very simply, the A3 method is about trusting people with finding solutions to actual problems from day one. It’s about giving them a sense of belonging and contribution as soon as possible. This can only work if the environment the new colleague finds is ready to support them in applying A3.
No one member of any team should be working as a one-person silo. Neither the new joiner, nor the seasoned senior. Freely providing and accepting support should be everybody’s natural behaviours. This ties right into what I wrote last week about a team’s knowledge sharing activities: onboarding is just another form of knowledge sharing. The A3 method provides a lightweight, structured, empowering way of kicking that off.
Tags: work