Staying the Course

Once a team starts moving as a team, the journey of cadence is about maintaining momentum to see the benefits of this new way of working and this renewed alignment over time.

The process of one-on-ones shifts team culture more than almost anything else, and it’s vital that team leads maintain this practice.

Similarly, the rigour of daily stand-ups needs to be upheld as the norm.

The key lies in reflecting on what each person said they would do the previous day, whether they actually did it, and what they plan to do today — and, of course, in reporting back on it the following day.

To quote Winnie the Pooh: “Yesterday, when today was tomorrow, it was too much day for me.”

We’re all going to have those days. There will be times when one-on-ones fall by the wayside, when daily stand-ups break down, when status meetings slip, or when the rigour of running good meetings fades.

There will be relational tension between colleagues and disagreements on how to solve problems, and so on.

What becomes vitally important is how we respond. The answer is to get back on the horse — to return to the rhythms, resume the cadence, get back into the structure, and keep going.

Avoiding the temptation of:

• short-term gains
• shortcuts
• swapping tooling or processes
• giving up on meetings when they’re hard

…will produce a long-term harvest for teams — one that results in greater productivity, trust, cohesion, and the ability to surpass even stretch goals.

The deep dive into Highly Predictable Teams will help with this, as will our work in tooling.