Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Six Levers podcast, where we talk about
simple tools for healthy teams. I'm your host, Josh Aranda. Let's go.
Josh: ...Your trip and we just make that our formal check-in, our informal
check-in.
Shaun: Well, yeah, I mean, I've never done anything like this before, so it was
definitely the longest I've ever moved, like I walked, ran, anything like that. So,
Josh and I were talking to this a little bit later, Josh had described these like
levels of fun. One of 'em, I guess level three is - Joe, have you heard Josh talk
about this?
Joe: No, I've not.
Shaun: Maybe I think it might have been Jason that was on with it, but
[00:00:45] like, yeah, the level three is like, you're actually not having any fun
while it's happening, but you realize it's fun later and I was like, when you said
this and I was like, that doesn't sound like - that sounds like only people like
you would enjoy something like that and like normal people wouldn't think of
that as any category of fun.
But it happened. Like I was like, I found like the next day, cuz I was, as I was
finishing like the final three or four miles up, getting outta the Grand Canyon, it
was just so hard that - it was like the fun was the furthest thing on my, from my
mind but then like, as soon as dinner that night and even - certainly the next
day, I was like, That was pretty awesome. Like, that was cool. Like, I'm glad I
got to do it.
And I already started imagining like doing it again. [00:01:30] So...
Joe: Awesome.
Shaun: It was pretty cool to experience that for the first time.
Josh: So Level One Fun is like, everybody agrees that it's fun. Like you can
generally see on everybody's face that people are having fun. Board games for
the most part are fun.
And then like Level Two is like, it's kind of mixed where it's fun during it -
some people want to have it and it's kind of hard.
And then Level Three Fun, it's like nobody's having fun during it and it's only
fun in retrospect and it's just always enjoyable thinking about that. Like, Oh,
this is Level Two Fun. Like, this is Level Three Fun. We'll appreciate this
tomorrow or in a month or in a year.
Shaun: I just, it's a real thing, I guess.
Josh: Yeah. [00:02:15] REI has like a good post about it on their website that I
revisit occasionally, but it was cool like talking to Shaun this morning, it's like,
is that the hardest thing that you've ever done physically? He's like, Absolutely.
And I was like, That is so cool. Like this past weekend you literally just did the
hardest thing you've ever done physically and it just like blows my mind. It's
like just happened. So.
Joe: That's awesome.
Shaun: Definitely. Yeah. I dunno what the, yeah, there's some learning in here
about, I know we're gonna talk about momentum today, about, like the line
between just getting out there and doing it and being as prepared as you need to
be and I think I moved a little too far into like just, Get out there and do it. Like,
I definitely felt like I should have been [00:03:00] 10-15% better shape to do
this. So I don't know what the lesson there is, whether I was good to just do it
and it be harder than it maybe had to be or to have waited a little bit longer.
Yeah.
Josh: That is pretty cool. Like I think it's an interesting segue to use to like,
break into the topic of momentum . Cuz I think what is the Grand Canyon, like
4,000 feet drop from the top of the rim?
Shaun: No, almost five, like 4,800.
Josh: So you go 4,800 feet straight downhill for three and a half miles, you putz
around and then you go 4,800 feet back up over four miles or whatever and like,
if you think about the formula or whatever of [00:03:45] moment, it's mass
times velocity, right? So going downhill, you're going a little bit faster, right?
It's hard on your joints, but you have pace. But then going uphill, it's grueling,
right?
What'd you say? Like your last mile and a half was, how long, Shaun?
Shaun: ,And the last mile and a half was probably an hour and 15 minutes or
so. I mean, it was, it took a while.
Josh: Yeah.
And that was, you know, after like, that was mile 18 and 19. So it was, it took a
long time.--
Joe: Were you stopping as well or was the slope...
Shaun: Yeah, at that point we were stopping like every third of a mile. Yeah,
because we were so, it's almost like you're just, you're just climbing stairs to get
out, [00:04:30] basically.
Joe: Yep.
Josh: They said, they, Shaun always tells me they met this guy who was like,
very fit and like kind of bouncing up and down, like looks like he was kind of
like hopping on rocks and he is like, You guys only have a third of a mile left.
That's like less or a little bit more than a lap on a track. It's like, Are you kidding
me, dude? Like go bounce around on your own!
Shaun: Yeah. My friend didn't say anything. I think he just looked like, just
looked up at him. I looked over at him and I could tell I was reading his mind of
like, he really had some not nice thoughts going at that point about this guy.
Joe: Oh, man.
Josh: All right. Well, as we're talking about momentum, I'd love to just start off
with [00:05:15] how would you describe momentum, right? We just talked
about Shaun climbing in and out of the Grand Canyon, but how do we relate
this to overall organizational health and the way that an organization, a team,
moves throughout their work on a quarterly basis, on an annual basis for
however long they're in existence?
Joe, I'd actually love for you to kind of kick this off and do some framing for us.
Just like how do you see this play out and how would you put momentum in
your words as it relates to organizational health?
Joe: Yeah, Josh, I've, I'm like taking notes here and thinking about that velo -
that formula that you just described, and thinking about what it takes to improve
your velocity.
Thinking about Shaun and his partner versus the other person on the [00:06:00]
trail who was, had a little bit quicker pace at that point and, like, if we think
about, and connect it back to the momentum formula, what does it take to create
more velocity, more pace? And it's in so many ways, what we're gonna learn
about here today is how momentum is this practice, right?
It's this thing that if you, if you really build it into your culture, some of the
things related to momentum, that your pace, your velocity is going to improve.
And so even in these moments where you might naturally feel like it's the type
of thing where there's gonna be a lot of friction, you're gonna feel like you need
to move slower through it.
You know, maybe it's a big strategic planning process. If you have this culture
of [00:06:45] momentum and you've practiced it, you're gonna feel a bit of a
faster pace, even going uphill. But you know, when we think about the
momentum lever, we really think about this as like, sort of the spirit of the
operating system, right?
It's almost like, you know, we talk about like, being in a certain state of being as
a human at times, and really trying to embrace, you know, these different
values. You know, as, as a human, as an organization, we think about it as
almost an organizational state of being where you have this real posture toward
progress.
And thinking about how as an organization can we [00:07:30] accelerate work?
How can we move things forward and continuously make progress and
encourage our teams to make progress? And so, you know, there's, we'll get into
the different building blocks of how you do that, but I think at the highest level,
it starts with a mindset shift, right?
Shaun: You know, when we thought, when we were developing the framework,
this was the, in many ways it felt like the thing that always existed from the
beginning because you mentioned the spirit of it, like the spirit of it.
Even though we didn't have the right words to form, we're always there. Like
when we talked about what was the essence and what were we trying to achieve
and what would it feel like, and some of those key things you mentioned, you
mentioned this, like this, [00:08:15] leaning towards progress, but another key
part of that was like this idea of learning and we talked a little bit about learning
and curiosity when we talked about, about the leadership lever, but really, so
much of what's rooted in momentum is this idea of continuously improving and
doing that through key learnings and insights and saying, How do we more
make that normative and kind of encode that into the way organizations work?
And that's why ultimately I think it elevated all the way to, it's like this is its
own lever. It is a huge piece of the way, you know, we hope teams operate and,
and why we've developed so many different tools and frameworks around, or
building blocks, I should say, around, around this idea.--
Joe: I love the idea of thinking about [00:09:00] the momentum as a formula,
but I don't always like, have the real applications of it but that little example just
now, like made me think about one for the first time, which was sort of that like
the mass vs. velocity thing and actually thinking about how to apply that. I
actually feel like I've got, you know, the velocity piece.
Shaun: Thinking in particular about li -ke the idea of the hiking example?
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like maybe the mass is like the work in some ways and
the velocity is the work and the team, and some of the things that like for that
momentum are like just the weight of the situation and the velocity having to do
with like, you know, the [00:09:45] muscles that you've built to move your
move, like to move you forward - the pace part - and so you could have two
different teams, similar situation, but who's gonna generate more momentum ?
It's gonna be the team with who can move more quickly.
Shaun: Mm-hmm.
Joe: Phase through.
Josh: All right. So Joe, as you were talking to, you mentioned one of the
momentum mantras, and I'd love for you to dive a little bit deeper on the rest of
'em, and I'm sure I'll have other questions pop up, but I'd love to hear just the
explanation of each one and why they're a part of the overall lever, and how you
see it play out in some of the, organizations that we work with.
Joe: Yep. Yeah, so, so one of 'em is progress as fuel and I think that this one is
maybe sort of the [00:10:30] most generic, but really represents like why we
kept leaning into this momentum lever and it was because we were really, you
know, studying what was working internally, but also with our clients and
started to notice, you know, that when either internally on projects or externally
teams were able to just create progress in a routine, regular way, we sort of saw
it have this amazing impact on, you know, not only was it moving them
forward, but they were engaged by it, right?
And - or if it was an internal project, we were feeling engaged by it. So we
were feeling, we were seeing the benefits of progress, both in terms of whatever
the objective of what we're working towards, we're moving it [00:11:15]
forward. We're feeling, but we're also feeling good about that, right?
And so this real study going on around the impact of progress and so then the
next question was, What is pro - like what contributes to creating a culture
where progress happens regularly, right? And so what we started to notice was
that there were sort of these like mindsets or what we now call mantras that help
to enable progress, right?
So we saw progress as fuel. That's number one.
You heard us talk about progress over perfection. So taking this posture of, you
know, incremental progress, iterative development, even over like excellence.
So sometimes excellence is what competes with progress [00:12:00] or this
striving for perfection and, you know, that can just be so paralyzing for us,
right? We oftentimes bring in that language of analysis paralysis that teams
experience when facing a big decision, facing a big planning process. So,
progress over perfection.
Probably the most controversial one is action, even over analysis, and we love
speaking to this one because, you know, at the end of the day, like we're big
believers in analysis and being driven by data and being informed by, you
know, any bit of evidence that we can bring to it and the importance of
understanding it, learning about it, and [00:12:45] yet if we don't do anything
about it, right, we don't see progress.
We just, it's sort of all of that learning and that insight is just like sitting with us
waiting to be leveraged to engineer progress and so we push teams to think
about what action are you gonna take? Even - And so think about it, even over
analysis. So reframe your question during any analysis-centered dialogue of
what are we gonna do as opposed to what did we learn?
If we start with what are we gonna do, we can assume that's gonna come from a
place of, well, what did we learn and therefore what are we gonna do? But the
shift, that subtle shift in just the prompt, can be super powerful and help to
engineer more [00:13:30] progress and there's a couple others we learned by
doing, which is all about, you know, that there's actually so much learning that
happens just in the doing.
And then the last one around normalizing feedback, and this one might seem
like it sort of sticks out maybe if you compare it to the other ones, but this
connects to this idea that this really, this lever really is all about building
momentum, engineering progress, and so what we found is that one of those key
contributors is when teams feel comfortable giving feedback, right?
And just seeing feedback as this enabler of growth, learning and progress for a
team. So how can you normalize it within your team so that you can [00:14:15]
continuously just generate more and more progress, , through that, through that
tactic.
Josh: Shaun, what would you add?
Shaun: Well, yeah, I'm tempted here. I feel like we could have an episode on
like any one of these and so I'm trying to like, how deep do I go on any of these
without opening it all up? So no particular reason, but maybe I'll just pick the
normalizing feedback and add a little bit there.
It's at Joe's point, we've seen that when this, when, well, one norm feedback is,
is not normal, right? And so it, most teams, it's infrequent. It's hard. It takes
courage to muster up, because it's, you know, not happening often enough and
so you're concerned on how it's going to [00:15:00] be received if you're the one
giving it.
If you're on the receiving end, you are, and you sense it's about to come, fear
might start to well up in you because it, again, it hasn't been normalized but
when teams do start to figure this out, and the reason it's part of the momentum
lever is that it can have such a huge impact. Like one little bit of feedback on
like, Hey, you know, and being - of course, balancing support and challenge is
part of this too, right?
And feeling like you're being very, you're giving precise praise at the right
moment, but you're also giving some adjusting feedback and when that's all
there and team members are embracing that, then you can give quick feedback
and it can change the course of something, right, and you can really start to
make momentum in a meaningful way.
I know that I think of all times in my career when someone's been, [00:15:45]
you know, cared about me enough to want to help me grow and given me
feedback in a way that I could hear it and how much it's helped me. Like I can't
think of probably anything else that's helped me more in my growth as a leader
than someone coming alongside me and I could tell they cared for me and
because they cared for me, they were saying like, Hey, you need to work on this
thing, you know, and here's some ways to do that.
And similarly, when I've been able to do that with other people and they could
tell that I cared for them, I've seen the impact it can make. So it can have such a
huge momentum - I agree with Joe, that it sort of feels like maybe not the most
natural place you would think of. You might think about this and, you know,
team-related work or leadership and it certainly is, but we put it here because of
the impact it can have and starting to change things from a, from a [00:16:30]
momentum perspective.
Josh: That's great. Yeah, one thing while you were chatting, Shaun is, so my,
my brother, for a good portion of his military career was an F-15 pilot, which is
just cool in general, but I talk to him a lot about their process and before every,
like training mission, they do an hour-long briefing. They fly maybe for an
hour, and then they debrief for like three-to-five hours. Like it can be literally
that much debrief versus the actual action, right? But everything baked into it is
around giving feedback.
So they look at all these different activities, they look at all these different
tactics. Okay, was it a [00:17:15] perception issue? Yada, yada, yada, Or an
execution issue? But it's always coupled with feedback to the pilots and it is
very, very normal. Now you're in, you know - he talks about this a lot - you're
in a group with a lot of pilots who have higher egos and are very risk averse or
not risk averse and so it's like a really interesting melting pot of high ego, but
also very, very hard and constructive feedback.
But it is normalized and it's just like cool to like hear his reflection on a lot of
those things, but it's a great example of they get better as a group. As you know,
four ships flying together, they get better every single time they go and execute
the same mission.
Shaun: That's awesome.
Joe: Great.
Josh: One thing, , I'd [00:18:00] love to tug on a little bit just because I know
you two very, very well - progress over perfection, right? Where I think you
two have a - and actually the action, even over analysis - you two have a really
cool working relationship that I love getting to observe where I think, Shaun,
you're like, Okay, let's try this out. Let's go, let's do this action. And Joe, you
have this keen eye on wanting everything that we do at 6 Levers and Mission
Matters group to be excellent, and so it's this cool, like, just perfect combination
of the right amount of analysis and perfection and then moving forward.
And I'd love for you two to just work that out on the fly and just kind of like
reflect on that because I think it's a, really, it's [00:18:45] kind of a superpower
of this team, to see that both present and you two.
Shaun: Joe, I think I'd let you start, and I think just - because I'd love to hear,
kind of related to Josh's question - like maybe your reflection on how this lever
has been helpful for you individually as a way to like start to answer this
question.
Joe: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think originally, I think Shaun and I maybe felt
like it was, it was like a tension that we didn't recognize as being a superpower,
right?
So there was this tension around, you know, sort of me slowing us down more
on the side of perfection or excellence or, you know, this isn't ready for, you
know, and oftentimes [00:19:30] we're talking about content and you know,
what we're sort of bringing to clients and Shaun really centering this progress
piece and like, sort of, it's in a great shape.
It's gonna bring value and so this tension sort of exists and I think it was, it
wasn't until over time that we recognized how helpful that tension was, in
ensuring both that we're bringing a high level of quality to our work and at the
same time really embracing this mantra of like, progress over perfection doesn't
need to be perfect.
Can we - can it be incredibly valuable to clients, to ourselves internally, and if
so, let's really embrace that. This was super, I mean, this [00:20:15] was hard
for me. I think I came from a culture prior to MMG where we, you know,
excellence was just such a part of our DNA and it sort of, it did feel paralyzing
at times, right?
Like if it wasn't top-notch first class, like it wasn't good enough sort of
mentality and so for that you just, hey, you spend more, you have a posture of
spending more time on things, button up details that maybe really don't, don't
matter all that much. and so I think, you know, through that tension between
Shaun and I, and through just seeing the value of it with clients, the impact it
had [00:21:00] on me of feeling that progress and feeling motivated by it, it
became this real liberating thing where it was like you can both bring a high bar
and excellence to the work and feel completely comfortable with it not being
perfect, but moving forward, right?
And just, and then I think the reality is once you do that a few times and you see
that feeling and you see that value that it does end up creating. It's, yeah, it's
liberating and it sort of becomes like a new way of working. So yeah, it's been a
big learning for me.
Shaun: I think the cool thing for me, and I'll start by like [00:21:45] what I've
observed with Joe, and then I'll, then I'll share some of my own stuff, but, you
know, the cool thing for me is, you know, seeing early on when we started
working with each other that Joe was holding that high bar of excellence and
candidly, and we - Joe knows this - like I, that would, we'd work through it all,
but it would be frustrating for me at times to like, feel like we can't be moving
faster.
When we did start to then move on some things at a more of a, probably a pace
that felt uncomfortable for Joe, I could see that, the next time we do it, like we
did it, he was increasingly more comfortable because of what he just shared,
like that he was seeing that it was having an impact even though it wasn't maybe
the way he was used to, [00:22:30] and then on the flip, so that was cool. It's
kinda like, I guess the point there is that like when, when this happens and you
get a little bit out of your comfort zone and you see the progress, it can build the
hope, among the team to know that you're going to learn through the process of
doing.
So, kind of back to that mantra. you know, and I think there's a couple things
that make this work though. I think that would've only been true if we were in
fact committed to the learning by doing, right? It's not like doing, doing, doing.
We're like, we're actually learning through doing, right?
So that's the only thing that I think makes it work when people are in different
places, like they're natural disposition to, you know, when they're ready to
release or launch something into the world however big or small of an idea or
concept it might be. If it doesn't have [00:23:15] the learning piece in it, then it
really isn't going to be fruitful, right? It's only okay to say we're going to move
with some pace if we're building in these learning loops and can, and
committing to iterative improvement and development, right?
That's why it ends up working and that's how teams, ultimately, can build their
confidence and faith at like, it is possible to grow that way. The other thing I
would just say about my own myself is, too, like this disbalance of kind of like
the interpersonal differences among team members, is it's really helpful for me
to like slow down sometimes, right?
So we're talking about momentum, but, there are some things where it's - we do
need to say, well, hold on, this does require a bit more thoughtfulness and extra
layer of review and conversation before we [00:24:00] move forward. So having
the discernment amongst the team to know when to do that.
In the case of our team, you know, Joe was always bringing that voice and I
think candidly, like we just learned together, like when do we, you know, when
do we need to then go do that? And I could almost, I feel like now I can sort of
anticipate when Joe would do that. Like, I don't even, sometimes he'll still
surprise me, but most of the time I'm like, I think he would ask me these things.
So I'm gonna actually just prepare for those things and, and try and get ahead of
them as we, as we prepare for this, this new thing we wanna do.
Josh: That's great. One thing we talk about with momentum is like, it, it, it's
also this feeling, so, right, I wasn't directly working with Joe and Shaun, but on
the outside I could see this happening. [00:24:45] I could see momentum
building and it's almost like we talk a lot about like sports teams and just
watching a game where maybe you see a team that's down - an English premier
soccer team that's down two - oh, then all of a sudden they get a goal and then
they tie it up and then they get that third goal and they actually end up winning
and they were behind.
And I think that's kind of what we're talking about here, is that it's both
observable in terms of progress and moving things along at a more rapid rate at
a high quality. But also there's this feeling that you're like, okay, there's this
hope that's being instilled that we can accomplish what we set out to do, which I
think is a super, super fascinating thing.
All right. So we've been chatting a bit about momentum in general, the
[00:25:30] momentum mantras, but there's additional building blocks. Could
one of you dive a little bit deeper? What are some of those other building
blocks? And then we can just expand from there.
Joe: Yeah, Josh. So there's two main additional building blocks to the
momentum lever. The first is we title like, Culture of Feedback. So it's what can
you do inside of your organization to create a culture where feedback is
normalized. So it really builds upon that initial mantra and helps teams to create
more of a practice of sharing feedback, getting better at receiving feedback,
installing different protocols and practices to make feedback more routine and
regular.
And this [00:26:15] really goes back to this idea of what's going to fuel
progress, right? We know that, you know, one thing that's gonna help build
momentum more broadly is you create progress in your organization, right? Just
like that soccer analogy that you shared earlier. I got to see this tangent on
Friday of this past week. Arsenal was down three one. It's the 88th minute you
think this game's over - scored in the 88th, scored in the 90th - and if there
would've been more time in the game, we would've won that game, right?
Because the momentum, because we scored the goal. We made the progress,
right? And the next thing you know, we score again. And you could just feel
this incredible energy.
So the question is, how do you engineer that progress? How do you get that to
happen? Well, one of the ways you do it is [00:27:00] you listen to the feedback
from maybe your coach or somebody from your team and that feedback is what
triggers that goal to get scored right?
Cuz you go about something a little bit differently. So culture of feedback is all
around how do we, you know, engineer progress through our feedback, right?
And through learning from others on our team and then the third one is very
related, but we separated intentionally and it's about, specifically about
continuous improvement and sort of takes this team posture toward improving
and this is, you know, all about what you probably think of when you think of
continuous improvement.
But our - it's sort of what are the protocols and practices that you can wrap
[00:27:45] around the entire system so that it's continuously improving? It's
evolving in a real intentional way, right? We talk about not letting strategic
activities be subject to chance, right? Let's encode them into our work.
And so the continuous improvement building block is just all about how can we
maybe latch on to some rhythms that already exist, and make sure that these
different elements of the system are continuing to get better and better over
time.
Shaun: Yeah. Joe, may I jump in here with, react to both of those additional
two building blocks?
And I, you know, I shared a little bit about culture of feedback and normalizing
feedback, earlier, but, one other point I think to make for teams that are, or
individuals that may be listening [00:28:30] and feeling like your team, on your
team, your organization, this is currently not normal - which I would imagine is
both most organizations by the way, so I don't feel bad if that's you.
I certainly - probably was the most organizations that I've worked in prior to
being here at MMG and us working on this with intent. But by the way, like we
have a lot of room to grow as all organizations do, and even norm continuing to
make it even more normal in our culture but part of doing that includes this like
multi-directional aspect of it.
So I think one thing I just want, as I was listening to you, Joe, talk about this we
wanna make clear is that this, so as we think about this, as like the manager to
the people that report to them as like, the way feedback moves and that, that is
one way. But when we're [00:29:15] talking about this like, culture of feedback,
because we, the word "culture" is there. Just say it's moving in all directions,
right? It's moving peer-to-peer. It's moving from someone up to their manager
in all ways and that's really what starts to unleash this unstoppable momentum
when that's happening in a very normalized way.
And then on the other building block, continuous improvement.
You know, one of the things that we've, you probably hear teams talk about
organizations, talk about continuous improvement a lot. I think I was in several
environments where the idea and concept of it was embraced and held up as
important.
But I don't know that as a person working in those [00:30:00] organizations, that
I was always super clear what it actually tangibly looked like, right? So I was,
okay, we're about continuous improvement. Cool. Like, what are we doing to
actually make that happen? And that's where I sort of felt like conceptually to
practically it sort of fell off and does fall off in a lot of organizations.
So, and this is, I think, a good segue into how we think about continuous
improvement in other aspects of the framework and really what we tried to do is
to, say, encode it into the way that we work, whether it's bringing it into a key
rhythm, right? So that, again, it isn't left to chance, but we've got time to work
on continuous improvement.
Each time we get together and do a quarterly sync as a team [00:30:45] or as it
relates to agreements about something that we want to improve on as a team and
we're committing to it and we're committing again to when we review those
agreements, that we set together as a team. So, yeah, maybe we can keep talking
about this one a little bit and how it fits into the other levers.
Joe: Well, Shaun, I was just gonna share the - I like the way that you've sort of
described that common posture that teams have with continuous improvement,
where it's like, conceptually we get it and from a values perspective, we agree
with it, right?
It's like we should be doing that. But then in terms of how it ends up playing
out, it seems like it's most of the time just applied at like an [00:31:30] annual
level to big structural things as opposed, and so it, like, it requires, it almost
feels like it's this thing that requires a lot of maybe data collection, you know, a
lot of reporting before you can then go through a process where you, you know,
whatever the protocol is where you do something, it aims to generate some
continuous improvement and so in that way it doesn't really feel like there's a
culture of it. It feels like maybe once a year we do something related to it at a
really high level or for the most important things and we sort of think about this
as almost the exact opposite of that, right? It's how can we create practices of
continuous improvement at a [00:32:15] micro level all the time, right?
So whether it's, and, and, and sort of takes the pressure off of what the
requirements are to facilitate a continuous improvement protocol, right? The
requirements are that, like, whoever was involved in that thing, Should just be
present to have a conversation about it in ideally a structured way. We talk
about the, you know, the simplicity of a retrospective, where you just ask simple
questions like, what went well, what didn't go well, and how can we - how are
we going to improve? What action are we gonna take to improve? You know,
we do this internally, but we also, you know, teach our clients how to bring this
ritual into their, their org as well and it can be a 15-to-30 minute [00:33:00]
exercise that engineers progress, right? By placing this lens of continuous
improvement on here.
So I just love that you, I hadn't thought about what that can look like in where
it's like kind of just a big picture, structurally we say we're about continuous
improvement, and how that doesn't really get at it, right? It is about this thing
that should be happening more regularly and it doesn't require all of this pre-
work to make it happen.
Shaun: Well, and the other, the other thing I would add here, Joe, is that I think
a lot of our experiences, certainly my experience in organizations is that when
we did then try and translate that to being more practical. So if we're all about
continuous improvement, what do we therefore [00:33:45] need to do, would
look like very complex process flow charts or logic models.
Which I get, I always get the sense when I'm like, people are engaged in those
activities, they kind of just know as they're doing it, is anything really gonna
change with this, right? Is it, am I really gonna be able to bring people on board
to this thing, which is great work, like real thoughtful work, like going in and
thoughtful, like understanding and listening to put those things together.
But my sense is always, people kind of know whether it's a consultant or the
team's doing it, that, like the likelihood of it being embraced and practiced is
probably pretty low, right? And so much of this is about like, I love like what
you just said with the retrospective, like how do we, as leaders and [00:34:30]
teams, think about, if we embrace this ideal, this mindset, this value of
continuous improvement, what are the simple things that we can do, such as two
retrospectives questions, right?
And such as an agreement that looks like a sentence and some other things like
this, that we know that we can do effectively and if we are embracing these
certain rhythms, how do we just make sure that we run through some
continuous improvement protocols in those rhythms and to take away the
complexity of this.
Now I say that to say this isn't easy, like making it simple is probably even is
much more difficult, right? Taking the complex and distilling it down to
something simple is the difficult work to do. But I think from experience we've
seen, that's where [00:35:15] teams are gonna really start to gain momentum .
Josh: Yeah. I think this makes me want to come back, not necessarily to like
hop topics, but rather to point out, like, this is where the progress is. Fuel really
sticks out to me. Like, you boil it down on a personal level, right? Like, let's say
I want to get healthier and maybe the thing that I can commit to right now is
drinking a liter, or, you know, a liter of water a day and I do that for three
weeks, four weeks, and that's it. And that's progress. And then maybe it's, I, you
know, get an additional hour of sleep and I think to your point, Shaun, we do
make improvements, sometimes project or initiative-based as opposed to, Why
don't we just try and give feedback for five minutes at the end of a presentation?
or something.
[00:36:00] It's these like, little things that help say, Okay, we're making
progress as a team. We are, you know, "action even over analysis". We don't
need to make this a huge initiative. So again, I think some of those things just
really stand out in terms of how do we make this more tangible for anybody, in
any part of a team, in any organization to continue moving forward and generate
momentum within their organization.
Shaun: Josh, I love that little example you shared there cuz it's like, what if we
just did this at the end of a meeting or presentation? And I think when I hear
that, it's like, I would say if a team, if somebody we were working with were to
say that and they were energized by it, we would, I would just look at and say,
Try it like, seems like a great idea. Give it a shot. Like see if it works.
[00:36:45] And maybe it will, maybe it won't. But you'll know if it did. Like
and if it doesn't work, like you can change pretty quickly, right?
But if it does work, then you did a little thing that the team liked and felt value
in and it's helping you to gain some momentum.
Joe: Yeah, Shaun -
Shaun: But it looks, my point there is that it can look different for every
organization, right? Like whatever the thing is that's gonna help them embrace
some continuous improvement, it's so much of this is about like, design and
configuration for your team. Like, with this ideal, we're trying to aim for this
thing, we're gonna try and do this little practice when we do this, and let's see if
it gets us to the intended objective.
Joe: Yeah, Shaun, I think one of the most common outputs of the work that we
do with clients in [00:37:30] this continuous improvement lane is all of a
sudden we see them really embracing the idea of experiments and experimental
agreements where they commit to something for a quarter, a month, and it's
bite-sized, it's not huge.
There's a belief in a hypothesis that it's gonna help them improve, but it's short-
term, right? And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But it's almost like this new
posture of bite-sized - if it doesn't - it can be an experiment. You know, we can
decide afterwards that we don't want to continue to do this thing but I love
seeing teams begin to just really create this culture of we experiment with
solutions to help us [00:38:15] improve, and to get there, we just needed a little,
CI protocol to help us think about what might make most sense for us.
Josh: We were talking, or Shaun, you alluded to it a little bit, but the
intersectionality of momentum with other levers. Are there other key
relationships between momentum and the other five levers that stand out to you
all where're, just like, oh, we see this all the time, and it's just a great thing to be
able to identify and really harness kind of the intersectionality of those two.
Shaun: I think the two that I'll just, I'll say again, but maybe to be more explicit
is, certainly [00:39:00] rhythms and we think about like the way that we design
and encourage teams to design, their core rhythms would include, making space
for continuous improvement, right? And you may even make time for
something related to feedback. I mean, that's, again, to the point of like
configuring and designing in the way that makes sense.
And to Joe's point around experimenting, what we'd encourage teams to do is
like, just think about the overall operating system as it relates to a desire to grow
in a certain area. So as opposed to just saying, We need to embrace continuous
improvement, when we think about the way we operate as a team, How can we
design and configure it so that it isn't left to chance?
One of those key ways is thinking about your [00:39:45] rhythms and claiming
space there again. So it isn't left a chance, just not by happenstance. I think we
all know that if we do, that time is so precious, it's gonna get snuffed out and
you're not gonna have it. The another, I think probably the second most obvious
way is through the building block of agreements in the cohesion lever, and
we've talked about this a little bit, but agreements are a big part of team
cohesion and they just relate to like really resolving tension, driving clarity to
the way teams work together and they can be about anything, right?
So certainly as it relates to something that you're trying to improve, that any
member of a team feels needs improvement, they can elevate this idea, kind of
raise their hand and say, Maybe we need an agreement about this. If we're
gonna improve here, maybe we need [00:40:30] an agreement about it and it can
even be as you're trying to grow your strength, and muscle around feedback,
right?
You could say like, What's an initial agreement we might have around getting
better at feedback? and, you know, Are there some protocols we can run to that
and practice it as a team? You know, how might we just embrace that more and
grow and strengthen that particular way?
Joe: Yeah, I think along, along with those - So I think those hit some of the sort
of structural ways you can bring more momentum and really harness this entire
lever through other levers, but I also think about with momentum, sort of the
checks and balances for it. So you know, [00:41:15] if you are, if when you hear
progress over perfection, you start to worry that, Well what if we're driving
fast? What if this just makes us drive fast toward the wrong outcome? Then you
might need to look at your focus or you might need to look at, are we aligned in
our organizational identity? Have we defined our compass?
So there's a couple of levers that I go to to think about as almost like a check
and balance for a momentum lever that really accelerate if you think about
momentum as really accelerating progress and moving teams forward. If you
ever feel like, I'm a little worried about where this might be taking us, go back
to focus [00:42:00] and the focus related to that work that you're doing, it could
be you're doing big picture, like, you know, strategic work.
You might need to look at your, you know, your three-year vision or definitely
your annual goals and see like, How is this connecting and aligning with that
work. Or you might need to even pull up your compass, right, your org identity
and say like, you know, Are we considering this as we're sort of moving
forward at a quicker clip than maybe some of us are feeling comfortable?
And I think that that has been, for me at times, what has actually been really
helpful is we have a strong sense of our focus and our compass and so in
moments where we're moving fast, to be able to [00:42:45] pause for a moment
and say, How does this align? Does this feel like, you know, good energy
against those two? and if it does, you wind up feeling a lot more comfortable
about that pace that you're driving at.
Shaun: Hmm. Joe, the one thing I was gonna add there to the identity piece
specifically is, thinking about your tenets, and so tenets being the overarching
principles and beliefs you, we have about how work should work are kind of
like, in many ways we think about it as like the beginning of the operating
system and how you design everything else.
So, I think coming back to that as well, to say one like, Are these things that
we're doing to embrace [00:43:30] momentum? Are they in line with our tenets?
And I think, Joe, to your point, like there's a potential for like, a check-and-
balance there. If anything were to get off-skewed, if you've got people like me
maybe that are on your team that are pushing for progress and just going, going,
going, someone could call out as a way, and this is the beauty of these tools, as
opposed to it being like, Well, I'm just not comfortable with that, right?
Well, it's not, it's not about what I want or what Joe wants or what Josh wants,
but it's about what have we said together as it matters to us and the way we
work. And so you can call out that tenet and say, I wonder if this thing we're
doing or this way that this pattern we've fallen into, or this thing you're
suggesting, is this an alignment with this particular tenet? And then we can have
some conversation about it. So another way that you can see the intersection
points with [00:44:15] other levers here.
Josh: Yeah, that's great. I feel like I should share this quote that I heard a buddy
of mine, I was chatting with him and he's a leadership coach, but he's also like a
backcountry exploration guide, and he shared this quote with me and he says,
Unsure of our direction, we often double our pace, right? So he's out there
guiding in the backcountry places that you can get lost. You actually require a
compass, and you can get lost. Like there's all these horror stories out in the
backcountry of people getting lost and being out for multiple days. But it's
really true in terms of if we're unsure, we want to get there sooner, and so we
start to move faster, and that is kind of the shadow side of the dark side of
momentum in that if we are not clear on [00:45:00] identity, if we are not clear
on our focus, if we are not, leaning into feedback and we start to go faster, We'll
get further and further off course, and it's just kind of like a great warning - it's
not necessarily - I guess it is a warning sign to say, Okay, let's make sure we are
moving in the right direction so that our pace just doesn't get us a little bit off
course or a lot off-course. But, anyways, I found that super, super helpful and
just a great mental model.
Shaun: Hmm. That's fascinating. That reminds me, Josh. I don't, I haven't hiked
nearly as much as Josh, but I was, one time I was in Mueller Park in Colorado
with my brother and we got lost and sure enough we started, we told ourselves
Let's start running. We were hiking and we [00:45:45] picked it up and we were
like, We gotta get out of here. Like, we're gonna be here forever if we don't, if
we don't pick up the pace. And so we, with no idea how to get out of there, we
decided the best thing to do was to start running.
Josh: Isn't that amazing? That's great.
Joe: You got out at some point. How long did it take?
Shaun: We got out eventually, I think we ran for like an hour and then ran outta
breath and started hiking again and eventually heard a car and we're like, We're
near a road somewhere. So there's a lot of wisdom in that.
Josh: I have a few stories like that, but that will be for another time. Well, cool.
We are pretty much at time, but I'd love to, [00:46:30] again, this is the, to what
Shaun said, the essence of the framework. We wanna make sure we're making
progress over perfection, and so the last bit of time we wanna make sure we're
giving guidance advice.
And so I'd love to hear from you, Shaun and Joe, if someone was thinking about
embracing the momentum mantras and let's say they're not doing well at any of
'em or, or embracing them, is there one that you would start with and how
would you go about starting with it?
Joe: Hmm.
Shaun: I, yeah, I don't - I think the, my mind, I'll just admit that my mind has
been on like, normalizing feedback quite a bit lately when saying this. I don't
know that I'm offering bits for sure the best place [00:47:15] to start or the
easiest place to start, but I think I'm just becoming so increasingly convinced
that when teams can do this, it has such power in that in some ways it is at least
somewhat easy to understand conceptually, right?
Not to say it's easy to do, I don't think it is at all. It takes a lot of - it takes
practice to continue to get better but maybe that's exactly why it is the right
place to start because it does take practice, you know? It's not something you
can just say, We're gonna start doing this and boom, we've gotta transform
culture where it is normalized. It does take practice.
And so I think like step one would just be like having conversation with your
team around like, How do we think we're doing with this? Like, do we agree
with the idea that it could help us to make some progress and speed up some
momentum on [00:48:00] some things that maybe feel stuck?
And if you find alignment there, then maybe say, Okay, well what's one thing
we could do to begin to practice this as a team? And just, you know, flush out
what that might look like, what that might, that one thing might look like we're,
and then kind of have a mini-agreement around feedback and then get into it
and make adjustments along the way.
Joe: I think maybe two thoughts. I think one, the easiest place to probably start
would be to just have an alignment conversation around progress as fuel and
just sort of reflecting on that, which is really the backbone of the entire
momentum lever. And so having a conversation around how do we feel about
progress for our own [00:48:45] team, how do we, you know, how do we see
this fueling ourselves?
What are the use cases where it happens and just sort of checking in with it and
appreciating it. but then I think the first one I always go to is "progress over
perfection", and I might, you know, have a team complete a quick sort of self-
reflection where, you know, scale of 1-10, Where would you say we fall in
terms of embracing this specific mantra? and have a mini dialogue about it. You
know, whip around, have everyone share out, and then try to come up with a
few ways in which you can better embrace it.
What oftentimes happens there is you notice [00:49:30] some tension that
maybe hasn't been talked about, that exists amongst the team, right? This
happened somewhat organically for Shaun and I, years ago. But you know,
through that tension identification, the team can have a healthy conversation
about maybe what is holding them back from truly embracing that mantra and
identify a few ways to improve living that out.
Josh: That's great. One thing I was thinking about is that sometimes I have
these, I like, we all have work products that we're responsible for, right?
Whether it's, a plan or a blog post or you know, a training session, we have
these things that we're [00:50:15] responsible for and sometimes we wanna
make those things perfect. So I do this sometimes where it's like, Okay, I have a
plan for our business development and sometimes I have it in my head, but I
don't put it down on paper because I'm like, afraid it's not like perfect or
something, or you know, I don't want people to see it.
Like we tell all our stories or these stories in our head all the time. So that's one
thing I've been trying to do since the beginning of the year where I'm like, Get it
down on paper, then normalize feedback as well. How can I send it to
somebody that is kind of safe for me, that I'm like, Hey, can you give me
feedback on this before I share it with other people?
So I'm trying to like, kill two birds with one stone sometimes, where I'm like,
okay, I need to make progress in my own life when getting things on paper, but
I can also serve two purposes of me accepting feedback and asking [00:51:00]
for feedback regarding a work product and that work product will give us the
foundation for asking for or normalizing feedback at a harder time later on.
But that's been effective for me over the last few months. But still a lot of work
to go.
Shaun: Yeah. You know, one quick story that, or just example I think that I'm
realizing is common, Josh, you're teeing up for, you're making me think of as
you share that is how often have we, have any of us been around, like the
working on the presentation deck that just has to be perfect.
And I know that, you know, I had a few like, side-consulting clients before I
joined MMG and I'm thinking of one in particular where we must have done
like 47 revisions on like [00:51:45] a 10-slide deck and it's like, What - no one
called during that certain, many of us thought it, but it was like - What are we
hoping to achieve with this deck? Like, and will these, you know, will the - did
the 32nd, 34th, 41st-round of revision, did it achieve what we - well we don't
know. Cuz we didn't even answer that question at first, right? If it had just been
to like, Get a reaction, tee up some conversation or to, you know, get the
investor to give us some feedback, well, probably the fourth version would've
done that, right?
Versus, you know, and so - and I hear, I still hear team stories from peers that
are working in big organizations who are like, What'd you do this week? Oh,
well I worked on this one deck that was going to the X committee, right? It's
like, [00:52:30] so again, like what's the objective we're trying to achieve? And
how do we embrace more of a momentum mindset to get to that objective
without having to go through these never-ending loops of creating something.
Just occurred to me that there's a connection between that like, common
scenario and what we're trying to help teams embrace with this idea of
momentum.
Josh: Did that group, did they - was it pre-Google Drive and everything? Did
you have like, V1 through V47 of a word doc?
Shaun: No, it was Google Drive. Yeah, it, you know, and of course by the end
of, by the way, end of the story was like, I don't, I'm not convinced that all those
rounds of revision did any good and, you [00:53:15] know, and you often end
up at probably in a worse place the more you do that work than probably than
you were in the very beginning, so. Yeah. But thankfully we did have Google
Drive.
Josh: All right. Well thanks for listening today. We covered the momentum
lever. tune in next time we'll be diving in. Have a good one.
Shaun: See [00:54:00] ya.
Joe: See ya.
