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?”
Your Ping Pong Table Is Not Your Culture
Let's make something crystal clear.Company culture is NOT how many Nerf guns are in your office.It’s not about having a ping-pong table.It's not the kitchen, the snacks, the sweet standing desks, or the Keurig, either.Company culture is how you treat each other when the work gets hard, when the environment changes or when the house of cards crumbles.Company culture is putting in the emotional labor required to respect others and to keep grinding together.That said, you’re allowed to feel frustrated, angry, upset, sad, envious, all of it. You’re allowed to feel however you feel because that’s how feelings work. The next thing that happens though, is the important part. The next thing that happens after your feel something is how you react.The important part is how you choose to react to your work family when you’re operating on little sleep, a bagel, and 3 layovers.The important part is being the bad guy and calling out your teammates for not following safety protocols you all agreed on together.The important part is pulling a teammate aside to figure out why they aren’t acting like themselves.The important part is realizing you’re not acting like yourself and changing your behavior.The important part is working through the most critical problems first, even if you’d rather be working on something else.In fact, this is more than company culture. This is an Operating Religion.An Operating Religion is the world-view, values, and actions we choose to hold in order to best serve our clients, customers, teammates and the other humans on this pale, blue planet.This is the belief system we use to show up as our best selves and build something much bigger than ourselves.When we are a united front, that's when we do our best work.When we're committed to each other, that's when we get things done.When we're honest with each other, that's when we have the best output.
2 Minute Action
If you work on a team or if you fly solo, you've got culture.Culture is your religion. It's the value system you're obsessed with.Not sure what your values actually are? Run a quick Google search for Values Assessments. There are plenty that are used in high-functioning organizations.Start with this one.If you can already name your top 3-5, put them down in a list.Next to them, write one thing that you will do today that's in line with your values.Example:- Kindness - (Write a thank you letter and hand it to the mechanic who saved you $40 at your last visit)- Friendship - (Set up a skype call with a friend overseas to catch up)- Usefulness - (Donate something that you don't use or need anymore)