Aspiration, explained
Let’s assume less and learn more. Let’s get on the same page—and stay there—by asking more clarifying questions.
If your copy is not handy, here’s Chapter 4 from Do Better Work, which is all about this topic.
Examples / Observations
Observation created over 4 years agoGeorge reached out to me earlier this week to set up some time to pair on a migration similar to one I had previously done. While pairing, he recorded our Zoom call because he knew that the information I was sharing with him might be valuable later on. After we finished pairing, George continued to ask great questions to seek clarity about things that were not well documented and mentioned that he wanted to write down his notes and put them in a lesson to share with others on the Empower squad to use when they run into another tricky migration.
Observation created over 4 years ago"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" - Mike Tyson
The skills squad had a plan, we did user testing where we learned what maybe wasn't working or didn't make sense (not as violent as getting punched but you get the idea I hope), and we are adjusting the plan. The challenge is that because we are actively building on the old plan this new plan doesn't really have many artifacts like fleshed out wireframes. We are having conversations with various stakeholders and as a squad and sometimes not everyone from the squad is present during the conversation. This easily leads to confusion and uneasiness that if left to linger can lead to some much larger problems.
Well, this is how about how Carolyn didn't let things linger and brought up in a message to the squad on how she was feeling and how she needed a more clear plan/picture. We, as a squad, immediately started to have a conversation and get clarity and are now in a much better place in terms of alignment. If she hadn't spoken up now, who knows how long we would have went with having misalignment and what troubles our squad could have had down the road.
Thanks Carolyn!
Observation created over 4 years agoFeaturing:Brandon J.We critique, we don't complainWe ask clarifying questionsWe get agreementsCollaborationBrandon joined Practice at a challenging time: we were in the middle of the quarter, just starting on an initiative that hadn't been one of our planned goals and wasn't fully fleshed out. In the midst of that, we didn't take the time to help him understand Practice/our team and squad workflows like we should have.
He handled it all with grace though, not giving us a hard time and constantly looking for ways to make us better. He's brought some ideas to Practice that have helped us work more collaboratively and in my opinion, have helped us all stay better aligned in terms of where we are in the project and what the next steps are.
It's hard to make us better when we don't make it easy for you to get your feet under you, but Brandon did just that. Thanks Brandon!
Observation created almost 5 years agoAs we on Assess prepare for the launch of Certifications, we had a bit of an "oh, shit" moment today where it seemed like maybe we weren't all in alignment about what a Certification is. I felt a little scared, since that's not where you want to be 5 months into a project the month it's supposed to launch. So Justin called a meeting with Ashley, our designer, and me as Discovery Engineer. A lesser leader might have played the blame game ("who needs to work overtime to fix this?") or gone full command-and-control ("Here's my plan—make it happen"), but if you've worked with him, you know that's not Justin. Instead, and I've seen him do this before, he approached the situation from a place of curiosity, asking questions like "How did we get here?" Maybe it's because he has a million kids and has seen it all, but Justin's calmness immediately put me at ease, and his confident curiosity—like of course we're going to figure this out—was infectious, keeping us focused on problem-solving. It turned out we were mostly in alignment anyway, and had just made some small divergent, decisions over the course of the project that we're finally having to square, and now have a plan to. If you struggle with crucial conversations like I sometimes do, take a page from the Book of Kime and stay confidently curious.
Observation created almost 5 years agoLast week Tucker owned creating the Epics and Stories for the new Lesson Overview page. He not only busted out 6 Epics and 47 Stories in a matter of days but did it with care and foresight for developers coming on to the project in the future. There are screen shots with the sections highlighted for the specific task and nice breakdowns of what is expected in each one. Nice work!
Conversations about We ask clarifying questions
This section is for Lessonly folks only. Sign your team up to find your Gruuv!