👟 Slow and steady
Hey there 👋🏼
I heard something the other day that really resonated with me.
It’s a baseball analogy but I think it’s so powerful you really don’t need to know the difference between an inning or a base steal to understand where I’m going with this.
Let me try to cover multiple sports (an excellent exercise even though my Apple Watch won’t recognise as such…)
⚾️ Baseball: Why does it matter if you can throw a baseball 100 mph if you can’t pull a strike?
⚽️ Football: Why does it matter if you can kick a football 200 km/h if it always lands on the stands?
🎾 Tennis: Why does it matter if you can pull a 200 km/h serve if it always ends in a double fault?
I think you’re getting the grip 😜
Now, let’s try to convert this into our work mode.
💻 Developer: Why does it matter if you ship 100 features into production per sprint if they’re all buggy and without following a single best practice?
🗣 Leader: Why does it matter if your team delivers projects if they’re constantly burning out, hating every second of what they’re doing and you end up with people constantly leaving?
🎸 Guitar Hero: Why does it matter if you can move your fingers like a cheetah and know every single scale if you don’t deliver a single clean note?
The key idea here is to slow down, go back to basics and revisit how you can deliver with quality and with good practices.
For every one of the sports, analogies slow down to half speed, or three-quarters speed, and make sure you can deliver your objectives at that slow speed.
Increase your speed by 10% and work your ass off until you can deliver but at a faster speed.
Keep going until you reach your initial speed - but with actual results.
You might never get to that speed again (or you might even surpass it) but what is essential is that you constantly and consistently deliver results.
Moving this to our tech world, the concept is the same.
Obviously, you will have crunch times and during those times a lot can happen (push to master cough cough ), but here we’re not focusing on these hopefully exceptional times.
The idea is for you to reflect on the state of your team, of your leadership style and make adjustments in the way you work or even negotiate with your stakeholders to make sure that the expectations are set correctly.
It will be a tough negotiation but here is where I need to highlight the Project Management’s Triple Constraint below:
Like so many things that I mention in this newsletter, we go back to culture. The Triple Constraint ends up defining the culture of your project, your team and your company.
And don’t fool yourself. This lasts more than a late night, an extra weekend or a crazy sprint. This becomes the foundation of where and how you work.
You decide!
That's it from me. I hope you have a fantastic weekend and that this issue helps you slow down and work your craft until you become the best!
Crawl. Walk. Run.
⏱ TL;DR
Speed is not everything 🐢
Negotiate with stakeholders to improve your process
Revisit the Project Management’s Triple Constraint
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Have an incredible month! 💪🏼
Parada 👊🏼 A Leader's Mindset