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At a recent Agile Leadership Conference I encountered the work of Ken Rubin, an Agile coach and business expert. I can pretty much say if you’re a Project Manager or Scrum Master, read his stuff.
However, out of the many things he talked about – many things – was about how people can get improvement wrong. See, sometimes trying to improve is the wrong thing.
Which of course, sounds weird for a guy who talks about improvement, but hang in there.
See he brought up an example that if you’ve got a plan but 90% if blocked, hung up, waiting for information, then you don’t want to improve. No amount of better processes or practices will make a big difference because your problem is not how you’re doing it, it’s how you’ve got things messing you up.
Think of it this way, if there’s all sorts of things screwing up your plans, why try to be better at how you do things? Instead, start tackling the things screwing you up – the blockers.
Maybe you are doing things right. Maybe all your processes and plans really are good. It’s just you have to find what’s blocking you from being your best.
So next time you’re trying to get your book, or home, or life, or job in order, take inventory of what’s hanging you up. It might be you’re fine, just a little unaware.
Steven Savage