This is from a session at the Serious Play Conference led by Andrew Gassen. Andrew coaches executives and entrepreneurs to achieve their desired outcomes.
Agent know it all
Attributes: you’re really smart and you can solve all of these hard problems that other people have not solved, but you can do it.
Rides previous successes, relies on previous anecdotal experience, no or little customer research, reality distortion field
Impact on the team: greenshifting, skip customer discovery and validation, build software because I said so, use excuses like our direction ran counter to the market, knowledge silos.: (we lost our customers and our costs went down grenshifting to we have reduced costs).
Wrong approach: think harder, try to convince the customer that they are wrong, fire people who disagree
How does that work: lack of customers, competitors overtook us, reputation build by market
What to do:
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focus team on outcomes, reframe knowledge as testable hypotheses (instead of "this is true" use "we think this is the case and here is how we will measure to see if it really is",
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agree on the indicators of success and progress,
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do work, measure progress as quickly as possible, revisit, reflect,
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reframe, and refocus
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Let yourself believe you are right, but frame it as a hypothesis and find a way to frame it and measure it, following Paul Saffo's strong opinions weakly held paradigm. (Example: Clickable prototypes, test different concepts out on the people who will be using your product)
Agent Feature Factory
Attribute: Once we build the next thing our product will be ready
It’s a mindset it’s not about the next feature
Signs that this applies: All these programs do X, we have to also; I met with a prospect and they said they would be interested if we did Y, we really need that featuer.
If your product is not getting traction, it’s easier to say we will add more stuff than to say some of our assumptions might be wrong.
Impact on team: build mindset that more = better ( better = better, not more), : too many projects so work is half-assed, chasing the competition, lost sight of actual outcomes trying to deliver.
What not to do: set milestones from the top (and then move them, causes things not to get in the hands of real users), build what other people are building but a little different, build sales expectations to match the cost.
How to solve: don’t overstuff with features, practice continuous deliver, build an outcomes based roadmap with the team, understand what your value is, adopt lean startup principles (reframe to these are the problems we are going to solve, not these are the feature we are going to provide), use the roadmap and adjust where necessary, do half as much, not half-assed
Table stakes, you have to have these features, it doesn’t matter how good, you never get happy users.
Performers: the better you do these, the better people like you
Delighted, just by having those you make people really happy even if it’s not fully completed (that is what fuels market domination)
Agent Old School
Attribute: If it worked 30 years ago, it will work now
Causes: previous successes, outdated education, being out of the game for a while, lack of real-world/domain experience
Impact on the team: doing things that contradict modern best practices, unjustified confidence, just enough progress to keep going and not question it, being passed by competitors
What not to do:nothing, start uprising/mutiny, talk about transformation
How did that work: everybody dug their heels in, team trust eroded, ppl left, decisions made based on allegiance, not value
How to tackle: get a baseline on how things work today, identify the top 1-3 areas needing tweaking, collaborate and align on shared success indicators, get little wins, one by one
If you are the one who wants to make the change, you have to compromise first need to arrive at that measure together, not dictated by top
How not to tackle: you hired me to fix things, let me fix things, get rid of all this that you did before and do it my way, burn bridges
Example: Dick’s Sporting Goods (human centered principles, competing with Amazon)
Wrong: waterfall development
Agent Value Line
Attributes: Resume driven development: people who focus on those below the line, because those are the things to build their resume, tons of priorities, more time gets spent on projects that help internally than that help the customer.
Examples: what project management tool, instead of what new features or what bug fixes affect the customer.
The things above the line drive value to your users, the ones below are things they don’t care about
The way to refocus the organization: Acknowledge that those things are the most important to work on, but it doesn’t matter unless you do the things things on top too
Wrong: focus on making decision based on technology not customer use, and focus on buzzword bingo
Impact on the team: everyone is super busy and working hard, really neat internal tech demonstrations, actual progress seems really slow, with small incremental improvement like "That thing that took 25 minutes before took 22 minutes, let me show you how I did that. Tech complexity went through the roof, every new hire wiped out substantial parts of the code base. We delivered so many tasks on the backlog but not making progress on the goals.
This runs rampant to all tech companies.
What to do: use user stories: as a teacher I want to do xxxx so that yyy. Or job stories based on the task, and prioritize the backlog ruthlessly “how does this get us to our desired outcome for the user". Establish a culture where whoever finishes first go grab the next thing on the priority list they can do. The person in charge of project management is more important than the Project Management tool.
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Align on why we exist and key outcomes
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Map out the activities the team, not individuals engage in
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Estimate the time each activity takes
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Prioritize areas where that time can be reduced
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Empower people to make the changes
The double agent
Attributes: Here is how we did it, so you need to make your software (workflow, selling process, whatever) work like this too.
Examples: someone from a different industry who comes in, partner agreements where one partner has the preponderance of power, someone who was successful 10+ years ago and is still riding that reputation. For example someone who had success at a textbook publisher ( A textbook doesn’t get released until it’s done, software can be ready to deploy in three weeks.)
Impact: doing things we don’t agree with, devalues our expertise, people working in unintentional stealth mode, turning down user feedback, partnership devolves to nothing productive, competitors pass you, the value proposition that made you special doesn't get delivered.
What not to do: do the minimum required to meet the contract, when partner wanted something it went to the top of the backlog.
What do to:
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Align on outcomes not features
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Be explicit about who owns what in the relationship
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Be the expert in the areas of your expertise
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Regularly check-in on progress toward diet success indicators
You don’t have to roll over just because they are bigger. If you are already in a bad relationship, get everyone to anonymously contribute:
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Drop: what do we need to stop doing what's not working,
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Add: what do we need to add,
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Keep: what should we keep,
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Improve: what should we do to improve (keep things anonymous. (Drop, add, keep, improve)
Agent Hollywood
Attributes: Look at those great awards and metrics, indicators that make you look successful even if you are not. Happens when you have internal competition for resources, and when there is low trust
Impact: people feel incentivized to stretch the truth to the point where it still kind of looks true in order to "win". Wasted time and effort on vanity indicators ( we have 50,000 people on our landing page ), people choose sides, false sense of security.
What not to do: show the other side is wrong, one up, win as many awards as possible
What to do:
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align on the outcomes you are trying to achieve (otherwise you will fall into this trap.
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measure what matters (ultimate indicator of our company’s health)
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Don't measure too many things, you are not better off by measuring everything than measuring nothing
Agent tug of war
Atributes: Teammates disappear on pet projects, us vs them, frequent changes in the team, team spread too thin to do good work,
Atomic unit for progress is a team all moving in the same direction, not the individuals
What to do: do less but all in the same direction eventually to happy customer.
Agent viability
Attributes: stuff gets done and it gets done to spec but projects don't move the company forward.
Fork was a product that was done to spec and on time but ultimately useless.
Peer pressure and hubris, silly expenses, time to market is too long, and no sales
Focus on fundraising not delivering user value (I will build this this week, now my focus changed)
What happens:say yes to anything with dollars possibility associated, constant pivots, shut the business down.
What to do:
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Metrics on what matters
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Understand cost model
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How will you make money
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Focus on your unfair advantages
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Follow the shortage path to revenue
Bottom Line
If your organization does not understand what good look likes you can’t rally people around anything. You need a North Star metric.