It can be tough to keep teams motivated.
One thing we know works is making sure everyone understands and appreciates the impact of the teams work, that their working on something that's not just interesting but really valuable for the company as a whole.
We're noticing now that we're remote, some of the newer rotations into the team are struggling to see the value of their work and we're trying to be a bit proactive here; talking about the team's previous work and impact.
But we're thinking longer-term how can we help create and foster a shared vision for the teams work going forwards?
Currently, we're thinking;
- Making the team's guiding strategy more open and accessible
- Having the team's short and long term goals more visible
- Getting the whole team more involved in helping review the current mission statement
We know there's always room to improve so, I'm interested in what else we can do to help the team really understand their value? How we can help encourage a shared vision? or what else we can do to make sure everyone's on the same page!
If you've got any ideas or just want to share your thoughts please share below!
Latest comments (4)
Hey Marc, as a PM I would always use a couple of minutes during the weekly demos to show the top priorities and talk about the progress we made/obstacles we were facing "these are the outcomes we want, and this is what we've done to get closer to it. Thoughts?"
It wouldn't always lead to a discussion but it would help keep the bigger picture in mind.
Some others things were not related to the roadmap and goals, but were highly effective:
If you want more tips related to goals I'm writing a whole guide on the topic at tability.io/continuous-planning/ (first 2 chapters now, but it'll be done next week). Happy to chat about it if you're interested.
Covering goals regularly during team catch-ups is a pretty great idea, sometimes the team feel like they're off operating in isolation so tying it back in could maybe lead to them reinforcing it with each other too!
I'll definitely take a look at these goal tips too, normally we set some short term and some long term goals, trying to make it a bit more formal and regular getting the team involved in helping set them
I think this is a really great start.
What we do at DEV is also have three separate walkthroughs with new hires. One covering the org's whole offering (what do we actually do), one that's a technical walkthrough that covers way more than just what the person will be doing, and one which is mission, values and principles, alongside history.
Hope that helps!
Breaking it up like this sounds like a good idea - some folks find it all a bit overwhelming in their first few days; might be good for us to get a few people to cover these topics over their first week or so instead,
Thanks for sharing!