Most people think those are vague slogans, and it is hard to get their buy-in when presenting those.
Management thinks that's a waste of time, while team members want to understand how it links to what they do daily.
Moreover, most have yet to learn that agility goes way beyond breaking the work into 2-week chunks.
We discussed that challenge with some agilists inside my coaching program.
So let's simplify it and examine a case from life.
Let's say you want to lose weight.
Case 1: If your value is Focus on the goal, Determination, and Consistency, then you might make your goal more specific, like losing 30 pounds/15kg in 3 months.
Also, you might set your norms of doing daily tough exercises and sticking to some diet. Another important thing is that you might make some agreements with yourself, like what would happen if you're starving or your blood pressure goes down, etc.
As a result, you might lose much more weight but have an emaciated organism based on the norms and agreements you set for yourself. So you might reconsider your goal based on these results if you want a healthier body.
Case 2: If your value is a Healthy lifestyle, Fit and robust body, your norms might include specific physical exercises, walking in the open air, enjoying healthy and delightful food, etc.
As a result, you might not lose the weight you aimed for initially, but you might have a toned and strong body and tons of positive energy. So again, you might reconsider your goal and whether losing more weight is still worth it.
See how that works?
If we roll back to our teams…
It would be best if you linked the values to delivery and possible results to create urgency in crafting those.
Let's examine these examples:
How to get buy-in from management?
Example: Do you want your teams to have a blocker but to stay quiet even if you push them with delivery deadlines?
Do you want to go in circles to understand what went wrong when delivery failed?
If the team's value was Transparency, they would have shared what was happening when the problems arose. You would have enough time to help them resolve those issues, reduce the time for circling, and have your delivery on time.
How to get buy-in from the team?
Example: Do you want to work on tasks on your own, then suddenly identify that there were dependencies with other members' work at the end of the sprint?
Do you want to risk ending up with uncompleted work and dissatisfaction from the stakeholders?
If the team's value was Transparency, you would unveil the issues experienced early on, and you would resolve those issues as a team, ending with completed work and happy stakeholders.
So, instead of defining 5 or 6 values, then posting them as slogans, do these 5 things instead:
1. Start with a pain point/goal and describe the flow with consequences.
2. Take a value and link it to performance.
3. Describe the impact of the value, considering the concerns of your audience.
4. Define the norms and agreements of how we want to collaborate to define the clear path towards the results we want to get,
5. Evaluate the results, and pivot the goals, if needed.
Investing in values, norms and agreements now will save you from many mistakes and attempts to fix the results later on.
Moreover, the results might differ from the goals based on which values, norms, and agreements we make, so consider them carefully.
Hope you found it helpful :)
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