The panic strike!

Cleaning/washing delivered groceries has become our routine now. The fun part of shopping is gone & the thought of cleaning makes it a dreaded experience.

Now we all know what an emergency feels like. Even in these trying times, when we see things in the right context, we can continue to stay calm and focus on our goals.

We all have different leadership styles.

• Inspire or bully
• Create the way or wait
• Work with team to unblock or appear only for postmortems

One of the leadership styles I have observed is the panic strike mode. To make team understand the sense of urgency, some leaders use this method of "crying wolf". We know it only works until associates realize. Then the leader has to resort to new levels of escalation & eventually team get's completely disengaged instead of scaling up as intended by the leader.

• Some user stories will be high risk but accepted into sprint to see how much we can make progress.
• Some user stories will be more complicated than how it initially seemed.
• After our solution goes live, we will face challenges of the ever evolving world.

To help team to perform with the best of their abilities & to help them understand the sense of urgency:

• Help team understand how their contributions helps team/department goals & eventually that of the organization.

Give team the big picture

• Ensure team works from user perspective (Customers - internal or external).

Trust that team is doing their best

• Look for options to unblock their challenges while encouraging out of the box thinking.

Not every block is technical

• If it is a challenge with employee(s)' morale address it appropriately.

Improving productivity is a long term activity

• Only few things can be fine tuned immediately.

Foresee & plan for skill refresh

The impulsive reactions to every challenge drains the team. Sustaining the context & showing support to help instead of finding a scape goat improves the team moral. Let's respect the emergency button.

What's your start of day strategy?

Mine is to plan for end of day shopping groceries if delivery slots are not available.