Let us share with you a story of Hoang Tuấn Anh and the ERICK team.
(You can read more of Teal Unicorn’s client stories here)
Hoang Tuấn Anh owns and runs a business supplying equipment for beauty spas. He came to me [Cherry] in October 2020 to join the coaching course for agile managers every Sunday, then Tuấn Anh brought his team on a training course to become agile managers. Agile manager, agile business. When I coached Tuấn Anh, I “assigned exercises” to him: With the smaller scale of ERICK, I challenged him to transform from the present state to an agile business within three months.
And Tuấn Anh not only did not disappoint me but he is my pride and joy. I am really happy because of what Tuấn Anh and ERICK team have done, the joy of a gardener.
This is what Tuan Anh and ERICK did.
One of his biggest issues was motivating the staff. Cherry coached him to open the books to everyone so that they could see how much he was taking from the business. They were shocked to see how little it was, they thought he was just tightfisted. So they truly understood that the business was in trouble. By making them part of the financial situation they were motivated to rally around to protect their jobs and help each other. Everything else flowed from there. Sales in the last 2 months of 2020 (as they started applying Open management) reached 150% and 200% over the same period in 2019. Staff pay doubled.
What is the reason for you to seek an agile management mindset?
After trying to apply a lot of other management methods that are costly, time consuming and resource-hungry, but the results are very limited, I have come to an agile management approach and I have found it real and effective.
What changes have you tried since you learned about agile management from Cherry?
Some activities I am doing:
– All members of the organization have learned about agile management and implemented together
– I have changed my leadership mindset from “leadership thinking” to “leadership thinking accompanying teammates”, changed from “administrative thinking” to “agile management thinking”, from “centralized thinking” to “empowerment and encouragement”. Our working method is changed from “professional mode” to “main professional mode with versatile and agile work”.
– We organize Lean Coffee sessions that we call TalkShow so that everyone can share their problems and plan to solve together
– We hold stand-up meetings every day
– We build by trial and error, try quickly and welcome new ideas
– We reduce work time so team members have time to improve performance
– We listen and find consensus from members.
– As a manager, I provide transparent information at every step, so that the members can understand the situation and promote collective intelligence.
What worked and what didn’t?
Things that really work:
– When I switched from one form of leadership to another, I felt better collective cohesion
– When moving from “administrative type management, specialization” to “agile management and versatile”, I see the members improve their skills better and collectively adapt to new problems.
– When moving from centralized management to empowerment, I see that the members are more proactive and creative, reducing bureaucracy and internal conflicts.
– Lean Coffee and the stand-up meeting help us keep informed. People are ready to better support each other, and the organization becomes more agile.
– Tools like Kanban help us get to the job a lot better than before.
– Listening and finding consensus helps us to understand each other and have a strong internal connection.
Things that haven’t really worked yet:
– “Try new things” are always our tough challenges, sometimes our members are still blocked by old habits and old ways.
– “Measuring results by indicators” is something we have not done thoroughly, there are many things we have not given specific indicators to evaluate.
What improvements have you made successfully? What was the result?
Sales in the last 2 months of 2020 (since I started applying agile management) reached 150% and 200% over the same period in 2019.
Staff pay doubled.
How has your organization’s behavior and culture changed since you adopted this new mindset?
+ Positive feelings and solidarity among members
+ Members focus on work and efficiency improves markedly
+ Members have a clear sense of the “corporate culture”, the difference and the positive of the current business compared to other businesses
+ The members believe in the future development of the enterprise based on a truly effective and humane management method.
Can you compare Teal Unicorn’s ideas with other improvements you’ve tried in the past?
+ The ideas of Teal Unicorn is the BEST humanitarian management method I have ever approached. Teal Unicorn helps to perfect individual skills, each member of the organization can live truly “whole”. They are improving themselves continuously.
+ The ideas of Teal Unicorn help us to unleash collective intelligence, many improvement ideas. Members become united, ready to support each other.
+ Teal Unicorn helps us truly become an agile group, increasing the team’s adaptability to the constant fluctuations of the market.
ERICK update 2024
At the end of 2023, we decided to move the technical team’s focus from fixing small machines such as tattoo pens, to fix bigger beauty machines. The fact was that we needed to go to customers’ place instead of staying at the office and waiting for small machines to be sent to us through a shipping agent.
That meant some engineers had to learn some new skills like communicating in person with clients and learn to fix new machines.
We used to repair small machines as a lead to attract customers and sell more small machines, but the market is much more difficult and competitive now.
And we spent 80% of our efforts on small machines but only gained 20% of revenue.
That created some challenges that some of the staff couldn’t get over. So they quit. Now we are a smaller team. We went from 9 members to 4 members (including me and my wife). All the four members can sell machines. We are even much more agile than before.
For technical issues, some simple tasks we all can handle. Beyond that, we outsource with freelancers (excellent ones, experts).
So we have save a lot of money. The income of the remaining members are 1.5 times higher than the same time last year with the same revenue.
I truly feel that we are a genuine agile team now.