How To Align Your Team, Continuously Improve Work, And Make Everyone Stronger
Every morning, I ask my team to stand in a circle to have a 5 minute meeting.
Everyone answers 3 questions:
- What did I accomplish yesterday?
- What will I accomplish today?
- What is in my way?
At the end of the sprint (in our case, one week of work), we review how we did.
This is called the Sprint Retrospective.
We look at how much stuff we did and whether we did the right stuff by asking two questions:What went well? (So we might replicate those things in the next sprint)What could we improve?From there, we turn the most notable things into action items, sometimes requiring teams to assemble around them.
It sounds straightforward and easy, but do you know what the hardest part about this is?
Not skipping the meeting.It feels like it’s just this one time or that we don’t really need to have the meeting because not that much stuff happened this week . . .
I’ve never run a Sprint Retrospective that hasn’t generated meaningful action items.
It’s this discipline, early on in your work that is the compounding interest of your project.By staying the course, you will continuously be aligned as a team, you will be focused on the right work, and you will have a team that feels capable in the face of challenges.
2 Minute Action
Since it’s Saturday, chances are you just finished a work week.Take today’s 2 minutes to ask yourself “what went well?” and “what could be improved?”
A Simple, Fast Way To Start Seeing Results
There’s something strange that happens when you measure things.
They improve.Just by knowing the benchmark or the baseline, human brings just naturally want to improve.Do that in your life and work and you will set yourself up for success automatically.It’s all tuning after that.
2 Minute Action
I don’t ask anyone to measure tasks by saying “how long will that take?”Or worse: “how long should that take?”I use points.Tasks should be assigned point values based on uncertainty. (Have you done this before? Do you have the skill set on your team to execute this? Do you need a consultant to get this done?)As tasks get uncertain, they tend to get really uncertain (because we don’t know all the things we don’t know).So you’ll want to use a point system that goes up roughly exponentially, like: 1, 3, 5, 10, 21
It’s up to you to decide how to assign the point values.
Its up to you to measure how many points you score in an allotted period of time (the “sprint”).Don't try to get it perfect.Just do it.
Just start measuring.
If you don’t want to use points, fine.Use T-Shirt sizes to start (Sm, Med, Lg, XL).You will do better every subsequent time.It can be tasks, pushups, lives saved, attendees, happy clients, or whatever you want.
Just start measuring.
The Single Most Useful Productivity Hack You Can Use In Less Than 2 Minutes Everyday
Okay, I hate "hacks."I'll be honest.They're usually taken out of context, oversimplified to suit every scenario, and don't actually move the needle.This one feels different, to me.
It's a little weird, so stick with me for a sec.
Gerunds.So, gerunds are those verbs that end in "-ing."
- Working.
- Planning.
- Compiling.
- Visioning.
- Assessing.
Etc. etc.
I see people use these works in their task list all the time.
"I'm going to be working on the report for our Atlanta warehouse, today."This is no good!
What does "working on" mean?
It has no clear beginning or end.It doesn't explain how much work will get done or when the whole task will be done.It just says "I'm busy."
We want to avoid being busy. We want to be productive.
A better task description would be:"I'm going to input the McKinsey report into our database so I can decide if we need to close the warehouse in Atlanta this week."Focus on what you will actually achieve, today. This is a core principle of the Agile Framework and it will keep you focused on discrete deliverables.And that's what productivity is all about.Small, incremental deliverables.
2 Minute Action
Review your task list for today.Use these 3 Questions to avoid the gerund trap.
- What did you achieve/finish yesterday?
- What will you achieve/finish today?
- Do you have any impediments or dependencies that might stop you from finishing, today?