FIND YOUR NORTH – Agile to increase your Happy Meter
First and foremost, the “A-Word” can be a daunting and sometimes over utilized derogatory term. Thus, what does being Agile really mean, and how can it benefit YOU?
Agile often refers to a software delivery method, but having an ‘Agile mindset’, is a way of LIFE. As such, ideally you want to work to live and not live to work. And by work, that applies to any element of effort in your life where you are trying to increase your Happy Meter.
FINDING YOUR NORTH is working your way backwards from your desired purpose and goals. It’s executing your game plan with the least number of steps possible while maximizing the desired outcome.
The Why: Before investing time or money, take a moment to think about why the path is important to you. What is the ‘value-add’ of not only your product, service, or activity? Identify the underlying reason why you want to achieve said goal, is the most important attribute to having an Agile mindset. Often times, the shortest path to your North Star is aligning your why to things you are good at and therefore passionate about to achieve success.
Healthy Examples of Finding the Why:
I want to establish a new independently owned business, so that I can travel more and increase financial freedom.
I want to work less, so that I can achieve happiness and spend more quality time with my family.
I am frustrated by all of the bureaucracy in the corporate world, and I want to help my company and my team achieve success more effectively and efficiently.
Antipatterns – The ‘So What’ factor
Finding your Why NOT (So What)
I want to be certified.
I need a six-figure income.
I want to start a new business venture.
What’s missing in these scenarios is the ‘so that’. Agility refers to this as anti-patterns. The team or contributors have neglected in this case to understand the purpose or goal, and instead are simply identifying the what and not the why. Agilists refer to this as the ‘So What’ factor.
To exemplify these antipattern scenarios in more depth, a colleague once stated,
“I want to achieve certification on subject matter ‘X’.
I asked, “Why?”
Her response, “So that I can be certified”.
Me: “Ah - Ok, great. WHY do you want to be certified?”
Her: “So I can be recognized as a specialist in that area.”
Me: “And by being specialized in that area, how does it add value you to you and the company you work within?”
She was not able to easily qualify how investing over $2,000 and 20 hours of training rewarded her or her company with additional value. Her intentions may indeed have related to a valuable goal, but if a person cannot associate an activity with the valued outcome, it becomes questionable.
HERE’S WHY. Let’s say you are a student, and you want to pass a test or receive accreditation recognizable or perceived as valuable. First off, there’s likely a reason or usually and end game you are working to achieve. If not, why invest the time? If it’s a required course, then let’s identify how best to minimize your effort and maximize the learning experience. Often there’s study guides, or dare I say it, even tips to answers for certification tests if you just ask Mr. Google.
Similar logic can be applied to a person with a new business idea working to establish a new start-up company. If that new venture is not something that brings you passion or joy, nor is connected to your purpose and goals, why invest the time and money.
‘Having an agile mindset means you are challenging the standard steps usually taken. It’s breaking free from the traditional mold and mindset’.
By being more specific on why you want to achieve an outcome, it will enable you to evolve a more specific and explicit course of action more finitely. Find the shortest path possible to achieving success.
The concept here is to fail fast and succeed faster. The best way to achieve success is by incrementally experimenting and learning what’s working and what is not. Your new business venture might seem like a brilliant idea to you, but your mindset should be willing to expose your ideas and business model to your sales community quickly and incrementally. Allowing you to increase your payback in a shortened time frame.
Using Agile principles can allow you to achieve purposeful outcomes in the shortest time frame possible with the maximum value outcome. Agility tactics can ensure the learning experience provides the highest quality of learning in an accelerated time frame.
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