Want To Win Big? Focus Small - Mike Cohn

Want To Win Big? Focus Small - Mike Cohn

Something momentous happened on December 20, 2020.
Becky Hammon made history as the first woman to ever coach a men’s team in a National Basketball Association professional game. Coach Hammon took over coaching the San Antonio Spurs when head coach Gregg Popovich was ejected in the first half.
After the game, the press asked Coach Hammon what her thoughts had been when her glass-ceiling-busting moment arrived. She said, “Honestly, in the moment I was just trying to win the game. I say this a lot, but I try not to think about the huge picture and the huge aspect of it, because it can get overwhelming.”
I love this attitude. Yes, Hammon was busting through a glass ceiling. And yes, winning the game is the big goal for her and her players. But she also knew that their best chance of winning was to focus on the short term and execute well, play by play.

It’s easy for teams–sports teams and agile ones–to get distracted by how much is riding on the outcome of their endeavor. However, great teams (and their coaches) know that the path to success is achieved one small, well-executed step at a time.

For example, some teams stall—thinking they need to have a perfect and complete product backlog written before starting a project. The perfect, complete product backlog doesn’t exist. And, if it did, it could only be written once the project is finished!

I advise these teams to reframe the question. These teams are trying to answer the question, “What should we build overall?” They instead need to consider, “What should we build next?”

Similarly, organizations stall in their agile adoption efforts waiting for the perfect project or the perfect team of people to become available.
Or they try to map out every step they’ll take on an agile transition.
I worry these organizations have a Gantt chart covering their agile transition hanging on a wall somewhere.

As with a team trying to write a perfect product backlog, an organization waiting for perfect conditions to go agile is asking the wrong question.

And now for what famed radio host Paul Harvey called “The Rest of the Story.”
When Coach Hammon’s big moment arrived in 2020, the Spurs ultimately lost the game. And that’s OK. You don’t win every game you play or make every shot you take.
But you know what Coach Hammon did in 2022? She led the Las Vegas Aces to their first WNBA Championship. Then did it again the year after that, making the Aces the first WNBA team in 20 years to repeat as champions in back-to-back years.
Be like Coach Hammon. Focus on the next thing that needs to be done while keeping the ultimate goal in mind. When you do, you maximize your chances of taking your own teams from good to great,

Success Doesn’t Happen Overnight

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