Heroes Create Transparency

Hero’s are cute and mighty, let’s be the right kind of hero!

We’re only ever scared of one thing: a single person being a hero, saving the day, having the only right answers, and holding the key to solutions.

To counter this, we create conversations to drive transparency that reveals the core of why do our work.

These conversations can sound something like this:

Q1: “Why are we building ‘x’ feature?”
A1: “Because it helps us jump on this business opportunity or get rid of that business risk.”

Q2: “Why do we need to start using ‘this’ tool?”
A2: “We’re looking for ways to alleviate this risk in our process for our customers”.

The questions, you’ll notice, are specific. The answers, give us a general philosophy or higher level goal. Usually, the specific thing (building a feature) is a solution for a higher level goal (like closing a new deal).

What’s the problem, then?

There’s a lack of transparency. This results in problems. Usually, the people doing the work don’t understand the higher-level goals (or don’t even know about them). And the people that need the work done don’t really understand what goes into doing it.

Here are 6 things we can write down to drive transparency.

From design, right down to technical decision making and implementation, we borrow from systems that work to create frameworks for ourselves.

These systems and frameworks usually consist of:

1. Project goals and scenarios
2. defined objectives *as milestones*
3. opportunities for the company
4. risks to the goal from outside the company
5. actions for our team to alleviate risk and seize opportunities
6. results that we want from those actions

These 6 points are an example of a framework we created to standardize and scale processes at a startup 🚀. You’ll find them throughout any “smart” framework to do things.

The order of the steps is important. Doing each one of them, is important. It lets our entire team have conversations to help devote our energies in the same direction.

Takeaways

If you haven’t already, take a look at the way that you (strategy/sales/ marketing/retrospectives), and write down your 5–6 point process.

What’s working in the process right now? What isn’t working? How can you simplify everything?

Decide on your criteria to make the process successful, and update it, every couple of months.

Good luck and have fun.