The Values, Principles, and Practices of Agile Results
The backbone of Agile Results is the values, the principles, and the practices. To make Agile Results easy to adopt, and easy to customize, I based it on a small set of core principles, patterns, and practice. The beauty of principles is that, because it’s not a bunch of rules, you can simply implement the principle, in a way that works for you, in your specific context.
I had been pointing people to the chapter on Agile Results Values, Principles, and Practices, but I wanted more focus. Now I have a specific page for each, and you can easily get each page from the sidebar on Getting Results.com:
One thing I’ve learned during my Microsoft adventures is that it is a lot easier to share a system if you organize it using values, principles, and practices.
The values help shape what’s important and identify some of the big decisions or considerations. For example, Approach over Results is one of the values. The idea is that you can’t control your results. But, you can control your attitude, actions, and response. And, you can use your results as a gauge and for feedback.
The principles help shape the practices and the mindset. For example, one of the principles is Continuous Learning. The idea behind Continuous Learning is that as you change and as things change around you, use your learning to improve your results.
The practices are the actual methods or techniques that you do. For example, one of the core practices in Agile Results is Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Reflection. The idea behind this practice is that you use your week as a rhythm for results. On Mondays, you identify three wins you want for that week. Each day, you identify three wins you want for that day. On Fridays, you identify three things going well, and three things to improve. Your learnings and insights here then feed into the next week. It’s a path of continuous improvement.
Although it’s not called out explicitly, simplicity was a focus throughout building Agile Results. In fact, my favorite tag line in the halls for explaining Agile Results is that it’s …
“A simple system for meaningful results.”
The idea that it is a system is important. The idea that it is agile or flexible is key. And the idea that rather than just focus on getting things done, you are focused on meaningful results is another crucial key. The emphasis on meaningful results helps you focus, scope, and prioritize … and flow more significant value to yourself and others. This focus on meaning also helps provide motivation and drive from the inside out.
The more you study the system, the more the ideas unfold. There is a lot of elegance baked into the system. It’s a synthesis of many concepts that play well together, and the elegance is how the integration works, simply by adopting Agile Results. When you perform the practices, you automatically take advantage of many of the proven practices we have learned around thinking, feeling, and taking action.
It helps you make the most of what you’ve got, without you having to get mired in the details of how it works.
Best of all, it’s a system that scales up and down … whether you are leading teams or simply focused on your personal results. After all, the sub-title for the book, Getting Results the Agile Way, is:
“A Personal Results System for Work and Life”
That’s ultimately what it is … a system for helping you drive your best results in work and life in a way that helps you flourish based on timeless principles, patterns, and practices for effectiveness.