The Importance of Beginnings

I recently started a new coaching engagement and for the first time in my career I’m pairing with another Agile Coach.

I met briefly with the other coach a few days before my scheduled start date. He had been working with the organization for several months and was going to be absent my first week on site. We used the time we had to prepare for the week to come. We went over some documents, notes, and some of the areas they were trying to focus on. One of the critical notes was a feeling that there was a missing sense of urgency around the transition they were undertaking.

When I arrived on my first day, we were supposed to have a discussion on the topic of urgency. The scheduled talk on urgency was postponed. Not a good start. Most of the day I was left to my own devices and mostly stayed in observation mode. I didn’t know where the teams were at, what they had done, or how the existing coach was interacting with the teams. I was looking to get a hint at what the teams expected from their coach.

The next day was similar to the first. Meeting postponed and more observation with a little more interaction with the teams.

That evening I went to the monthly XP Toronto get together. After the meeting, I sat down with Michael Sahota and we spent a few minutes playing catch up. Through the course of our discussion we got to discussing my current situation. Michael, as usual, gave me some great advice. He encouraged me to not worry so much about what the other coach had been doing and to just do my own thing. He also referenced Alistair McKinnell (update: Turns out the original source was Jason Cheong-Kee-You. Thanks for the correction!) on the importance of beginnings.

This simple prodding immediately removed my hesitancy about stepping on the toes of the other coach as well as freeing me to bring my own sense of urgency to the teams.

The next day we had our first discussion on urgency and I started taking action on my original observations. Things were finally getting started.

Most Agile teams start their day with a team stand-up meeting. The way this meeting goes is often a good indicator around how the rest of the day will go. If people are showing up late, coffee in hand, not fully awake, stumbling through their responses and not paying attention to what other people are saying, you can bet the rest of the day will be just like that.

I do a lot of improv and as a result I bring a lot of my learnings there to the teams that I work with. I always like to do a quick warm-up with teams before the stand-up starts. That way everyone is engaged, awake, and paying attention to what is happening for the rest of the meeting.

With this group, I chose to start by introducing clap focus to the teams. This is a quick, high energy game that brings eye-contact, focus, and attentiveness to teams. I also added using names during the passing to help me remember the names of the people playing.

I really like this concept for stand-ups because it also introduces the idea that you don’t have to speak in order. By continuing the clap focus into the meeting itself, people have to keep on their toes, remember who has gone and who hasn’t, as well as always listening to each person. After all, they may get the focus passed to them next.

Sometimes, even improv teams forget how important beginnings are. An improv team I coach, recently did a show and instead of coming out united and together, they came out more casually, individually and gradually made their way on to the stage in a seemingly disjointed fashion. As expected, the show ended up feeling disjointed, low energy, and lacking focus.

Beginnings are important. They set the stage for what will come after. After all, you wouldn’t want your beginning to look like this, would you?