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?”
How To Get People To Follow You When They Disagree
I was talking with a client, once, about implementing a new protocol within his team."How will we get people on board with this?"
That question has a 2 part answer.
Part 1
It helps if someone has done this before. This is called evidence-based implementation and it may require hiring a consultant, doing a lot of reading, or perhaps getting a colleague trained in a new skill.But part 2 is even more helpful.
Part 2
You are going to need to get alignment from the team who will be responsible for doing the work.Don't think for 2 seconds that the group of people who will have to live with this decision are going to just trust you without having any skin in day-to-day game.To be clear, I'm not saying you need to get everyone to AGREE. You just need to get everyone ALIGNED.Agreement is nearly impossible to get and the odds get slimmer as the team gets larger. It also doesn't prevent people from changing their minds that the plan was a good idea. Blame will still fly. Resentment will still build.Alignment is a way to get a large group of people behind a new decision even if they don't agree. You can say things like "if I'm wrong about this and we have to back out, I'll buy everyone tickets to the sportsball game," or "I'm willing to be wrong about this idea--but we have to try it first. I need your help testing this out and finding the strengths and weaknesses in this plan."Most people, even if they don't agree with you, can align with a mission like this. This also allows people to see that you're taking a pretty reasonable, results-driven approach instead of a blindly led, authoritarian one.When it gets hard, people who are aligned will continue to do the work (even if they disagree), because they know the intention behind the idea and they know their supervisor has their backs.
2 Minute Action:
If you're trying something new with your team, partner, spouse, organization, etc. . .Take 2 minutes to:
- Reach out as soon as possible with the idea/plan/goal and where it came from.
- Paint the picture of the promised land.
- Say what you will do if it blows up.
Show deliberation.Show empathy.Show a focus on results.
1% Vision and 99% . . . .
It's not hard work.It's not a tribe of mentors.It's not a monthly subscription to Harvard Business Review or a bank account flush with cash.It's not a Ph.D., it's not a good night's sleep, and it's definitely not the new Bowflex you just bought.You've heard that it's 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, but the amount of hours you're putting in isn't as important . . .It's alignment.Are your behaviors aligned with your vision?Is your team aligned with where you're going?You can work hard for 40 years, but if you're pointed in the wrong direction, the distance you've traveled means nothing.So have your vision and commit to the work, but don't forget to align your values and behaviors to the outcome.
2 Minute Action:
Where would you like to be in 5 years?Be specific. Car, house, job, title, salary, partner, teammates.How much do you travel? Where do you go? Who do you see? What do you say?Are you pointed in this direction? What is misaligned?What habits will you have to kick? Which ones will you have to start?Can you do it all at once? Which one is most important?Can you live with yourself for not doing it all at once?It's up to you how you get through this, but your brain has a lot of power over how you frame all of this.Remember that big, hairy, audacious goals are always made up of lots of small, actionable things."A year from now, you'll wish you had started today." - Karen LambCrush it, today.