I’ve just read Susanne‘s excellent Twitter thread on Agile Teams. She lists (many) behaviours she has observed that indicate the working of a high-performance team.
https://twitter.com/susannehusebo/status/1057010882989998083
You could do much worse than to note each and every one of those behaviours and find ways to enable your teams to consider them, and give them the autonomy to embrace them and demonstrate them daily. Why not make them into a poster for your workspace?
High performance is frequently impeded by many aspects of organisational design, from the work environment to rigid processes, outdated technologies, silos and rigid command-and-control structures.
Going through the list, I see a well-deserved emphasis in collaboration, contribution, diversity, quality, autonomy and, paramount, the user. In the spirit of contributing my 2 pence, I think there is space to add a couple more behaviours which would ensure that teams consider the business context of their work:
- They know the business strategy and commercial goals and aspirations in detail, review daily/weekly/monthly commercial performance and consider how the team contribute to them.
- They question each other on topics like customer and revenue growth, profitability, competition, business strategy and goals.
- They discuss the business sponsors of their products every day, and business performance is viewed as everyone’s responsibility.
- Commercial, Marketing, Operations and Legal colleagues are included in discussions of estimations and backlog refining.
- They care that stakeholders understand how the work they’re doing contributes to business goals.
Susanne’s list is brilliant. High-performing multidisciplinary teams are a key component of a resilient, successful business. Which of the many behaviours here do you think would be hardest to nurture where you work?
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