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Creating a Shared Vision

Marc Nevin on March 26, 2020

It can be tough to keep teams motivated. One thing we know works is making sure everyone understands and appreciates the impact of the teams work...
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stenpittet profile image
Sten

Hey Marc, as a PM I would always use a couple of minutes during the weekly demos to show the top priorities and talk about the progress we made/obstacles we were facing "these are the outcomes we want, and this is what we've done to get closer to it. Thoughts?"

It wouldn't always lead to a discussion but it would help keep the bigger picture in mind.

Some others things were not related to the roadmap and goals, but were highly effective:

  • Show videos of customers trying the product (it makes it real, and it helps create empathy).
  • Have devs attending customer interviews.
  • Relay positive quotes from users, especially when it's prompted by a recent release.
  • Get devs to try other products (gotta read the T&C first but doable) and explain back to the team what was good/bad. It helps people take an external perspective on their team.

If you want more tips related to goals I'm writing a whole guide on the topic at tability.io/continuous-planning/ (first 2 chapters now, but it'll be done next week). Happy to chat about it if you're interested.

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Marc Nevin

Covering goals regularly during team catch-ups is a pretty great idea, sometimes the team feel like they're off operating in isolation so tying it back in could maybe lead to them reinforcing it with each other too!

I'll definitely take a look at these goal tips too, normally we set some short term and some long term goals, trying to make it a bit more formal and regular getting the team involved in helping set them

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Ben Halpern

I think this is a really great start.

What we do at DEV is also have three separate walkthroughs with new hires. One covering the org's whole offering (what do we actually do), one that's a technical walkthrough that covers way more than just what the person will be doing, and one which is mission, values and principles, alongside history.

Hope that helps!

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Marc Nevin

Breaking it up like this sounds like a good idea - some folks find it all a bit overwhelming in their first few days; might be good for us to get a few people to cover these topics over their first week or so instead,

Thanks for sharing!