Team velocity alone is unsustainable. That’s where flow comes in…
Last week I shared a perspective on the dangers of speed without direction. It sparked some fascinating responses on Linkedin. One comment from Founder and Designer Jaimes Nel pushed me to think further about how we create the optimal conditions for team performance.
"If you're racing between things, you're probably creating friction and debt at unsustainable levels. When you build flow first, you can then sustain greater velocity over time."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the co-founders of the Positive Psychology movement, describes flow as "a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it" (1990).
So how can we create an atmosphere where achieving team flow leads to the speed and direction required?
A couple of points in Csikszentmihalyi's work seem particularly relevant to that leadership challenge.
We can't experience flow if distractions disrupt the experience. The impact of distraction is often described at the individual level (e.g. social media as a distraction from doing deep work). I also think about how distraction can be extrapolated to the team environment. My team coaching clients often describe feeling distracted (sometimes even perplexed) by the unexpected introduction of new urgent priorities.
Let's face it, the practicalities of fast-growth environments mean that changes in priority are inevitable. Maintaining flow under these conditions requires us to lead by ensuring that:
The context for the shift has been set and understood
The connection between the new focus and the team's purpose is understood, and
We are transparent about the impact of the change on the team's flow and adjust expectations accordingly.
Achieving flow requires a careful balance between skill level and perceived challenge. Stretch is needed, but too much stretch is counterproductive. I see a lot of focus on designing and assessing stretch at the individual level. Leaders intentionally create opportunities for individuals to learn and grow. It's harder to evaluate stretch at the team level. And even harder to act on it with the pressures placed on the team.
Evaluating team stretch comes down to:
Recognition - Recognizing the skills present relative to the skills required is vital to achieving flow. A skills matrix can be a helpful tool for visually identifying development requirements at the team level and assessing just how far beyond their existing skills you're pushing your team - especially if you co-create it with the team.
Estimation + Expectation - Increasing the accuracy of estimated challenges in a task or project and setting the expectation upfront will help signal to the team what is ahead of them. A project's rearview or retro element can provide opportunities to improve your estimation by including four questions.
What level of challenge did we anticipate in this project?
What level of challenge did we experience in this project?
What were the sources of difference between a. & b.?
What will we do differently next time?
Communication - Regular, transparent communication about the collective level of stretch will enable you to recalibrate and refine your ask of the team. Including a simple, regular question in your team meeting, such as "On a scale of 1-10, how stretched do you feel?" can give you a sense of how things are trending over time.
Flow plays an integral part in building sustainable velocity in teams. It is challenging to create or maintain. If you set the right intention and focus at the team level, you give your people the best chance.