Coach Dan's Blog

  📖 "Any fool can know. The point is to understand." - Albert Einstein The siren call to action can be impossible to ignore. In fact, the pressure to "do" can be so great, that we'll look at data- make an assumption and then act without ever looking back. Albert Einstein seemed to be warning us not to confuse knowledge (data) with understanding... something worthy of exploring. I got curious and tried a CHATGPT prompt. (Data vs. information vs. insight vs. understanding.) I was presented with following response- 💻 Data –Raw, unprocessed facts or figures without context. 💻 Information –Data that has been organized, structured, or contextualized to make it meaningful. 💻 Insight –A meaningful interpretation or discovery derived from information, often leading to action. 💻 Understanding –A deep, holistic grasp of patterns, causes, and implications that allows for better decision-making. 💻 Each level builds upon the previous one, moving from raw data to action...

  Struggling with Low Performing Teams? Unit costs going up? Experiencing low employee engagement scores? Seeing an increase in turnover or burnout? It's easy to chase a single metric, especially when we live in a world where the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Ironically our instinct to "laser focus on solving the problem" which is often what causes additional problems, and wastes the investment made on improvement. Savy leaders measure, balance and invest in all three E's of their teams' performance. 💡 Effectiveness - A team's ability to regularly achieve their assigned outcomes (be it business or customer outcomes); often measured by ROI, NPS, Revenue/Profit growth, etc. 💡 Efficiency - A team’s use of their available resources, and their ability to continuously improve their ability create value; often measured by throughput, cycle time, defect rate, or a cost-per metric of some kind. 💡 Engagement - A team's psychological safety, alignment and sense of ...

  To unleash your people's full potential, it's essential to eliminate barriers that hinder collaboration. Form cross-functional teams. Set challenging shared objectives. Equip them with the necessary data and tools. You have now paved the way for their growth and success. Collaboration and empowerment are the cornerstones of a thriving team environment.

High performing teams are transparent with their Three Es. Take every opportunity to tell the full story of a teams effectiveness, efficiency and engagement. Stakeholders who understand the full picture of how a team is performing, can do more to enable and empower their teams. Share your Effectiveness, Efficiency and Engagement every chance you get!

As a leader, creating a culture of effectiveness, efficiency, and engagement is key to building a high-performing team. The secret lies in measuring, sharing, and continuously improving your 3E metrics. Remember, you get what you measure.

Y esterday I was driving to meet a partner coach for coffee (yes I left my house...) and I heard a story on the radio that got me thinking about agile team metrics and how we use them.  To be fair, the story had nothing to do with agile, teamwork, business, customer value or anything like that.  It was about a study that highlighted a particularly unfavorable metric regarding police stops in a certain city.    Here's where my mind went -  "What will happen next is someone high up at the police department will inevitably not like these optics that these metrics show.  They are going to hate it so much they will convene a committee that will put new procedures in place for their rank and file officers.  The procedures will be a quota or something to that nature that will ensure the next time the metrics are reviewed, the ratios will look MUCH more favorable.  So favorable in fact, that people will eventually stop looking at that metric, a...

I bet you a week's worth of coffee - in my case, a fairly substantial bet - if you were to ask ten random leaders, "Why Agile?," the vast majority of them would say, "Speed." Ask a follow-up question, "What do you mean when you say speed?," and you will undoubtedly get the response, "Things get out into market faster!" Now pause for a moment and think about how people naturally respond when told to do things faster. Corners get cut, shortcuts get taken (often at the cost of quality), steps get skipped, and we start to rationalize that what we made was good enough. In the very best case, focusing on going "faster" is going to increase your risk - and no one really wants that! And by the way, Agile was never about being faster. It's about being better. Now, I'm not at all arguing that speed (being faster) is not an  outcome  of embracing Agile mindset, principles, and frameworks. By their nature alone, incremental and continuo...