Help me think through how this episode applies to my situation. Start by asking what I am trying to change. Separate the episode's claims from your suggestions, and say when the notes do not support a claim. Use the transcript to find passages, then check the audio before quoting.
Transcript: https://yuvalyeret.com/podcast/episodes/expensive-problems-principles-practices/transcript.md
## Published episode notes
End-to-end flow of value
Continuous Improvement
Autonomy and Empowerment
Organizing Around Value
Sustainable Pace
Alignment around Outcome-oriented Goals
Energized People
Leaders who Serve
Speed and Empiricism
All worthy Agility Principles (at least I think so…)
But why should anyone care?
I mean, it’s much healthier to focus on principles than practices as a goal.
But even these principles are a form of HOW. They don’t answer the WHY.
Ask “So what happens if we DON’T follow this principle?” a couple of times and you will get closer to expensive problems:
* Miscommunication, duplicated efforts, and decreased effectiveness.
* Delays and an inability to adapt to changing conditions.
* Bottlenecks, demotivated employees, and ineffective product development processes.
* High turnover rates and decreased output quality.
* Poor team morale, lack of direction, and reduced organizational success.
Ask “so what” again and you get to some juicy expensive problems business leaders might actually be losing sleep over:
* Wasted resources, increased operational costs, and missed strategic opportunities (a really expensive problem in the age where money isn’t free anymore)
* Falling behind competitors, losing market share, and failing to meet customer expectations.
* Hindered innovation, slowed time to market, and subpar product quality, impacting revenue growth.
* Increased recruitment and training costs, disrupted team cohesion, and negatively affected customer satisfaction.
* Decreased productivity, inability to achieve business objectives, and a decline in overall organizational health and profitability.
Now what?
Option 1: You already know you want to focus on a specific principle. Great. Make sure you include a “Why Now” that connects it to an expensive problem. (and if you can’t find one – maybe rethink the conviction on that principle? )
Option 2: Start with a Why conversation exploring the expensive problems your organization is currently having. THEN try to find the agility principle that would help address that problem.
Here’s an example:
Don’t tell a senior business director, “We’re gonna use KPIs now”. Don’t even tell them “We’re gonna work on improving Alignment, Outcome-orientation, and Empiricism now”Don’t even tell the,m “We’re going to use KPIs to improve alignment so that we deliver better business wins.”(don’t ask me how I know…)
Instead, Facilitate a dialogue around the top expensive problem on their minds. Use Five Whys or Cause and Effect Loops to identify principles that could help. Explore which practices make sense to everyone to try and work on that expensive problem.
To hear more, visit yuvalyeret.substack.com
Expensive Problems >> Principles >> Practices – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/expensive-problems-principles-practices
## Transcript
Automatic transcript of the published podcast audio. Recognition errors are possible. Speakers are unlabeled; do not attribute a passage to Yuval or a guest without checking the audio.
Episode: https://yuvalyeret.com/scaling-ai-podcast/expensive-problems-principles-practices/
Source RSS GUID: substack:post:161734892
Source: published Riverside RSS audio enclosure
Transcription: faster-whisper base.en, English
## Transcript
[00:00:02] End-to-end flow of value, continuous improvement, autonomy and empowerment, organizing around
[00:00:08] value, sustainable pace, alignment, outcome-oriented goals, energized people, leaders who serve speed
[00:00:15] and empiricism, all worthy agility principles, at least I think so, but why should anyone
[00:00:22] care?
[00:00:23] Hello, and welcome to the Skilling with Agility podcast.
[00:00:26] My name is Yuval Garrett, and I'm here to talk about stories, ideas and patterns for moving
[00:00:31] from agility at scale in your organization.
[00:00:36] So today we'll talk about where to look other than those principles that they share.
[00:00:44] They really believe in the value of these principles, but what I've seen is that while it's much
[00:00:50] healthier to focus on principles rather than practices, even these principles are a form
[00:00:56] of how.
[00:00:57] They don't really answer the why are we doing these things.
[00:01:01] What you could do is ask, so what happens if you don't really follow this principle a
[00:01:07] couple of times, and then you will get problems?
[00:01:11] Problems like miscommunication, duplicated efforts and decreased effectiveness, delays
[00:01:17] and an inability to adapt to changing conditions, balance, demotivated employees and ineffective
[00:01:25] product development processes, high turnover rates and decreased output
[00:01:31] quality, poor team morale, lack of direction and reduced organizational success.
[00:01:40] Those problems might resonate more, but even then we're not there yet.
[00:01:47] So ask, so what again, and you might get to some juicy expensive problems, business leaders,
[00:01:55] product technology leaders are really losing sleepover.
[00:02:00] Things like falling behind the competitors, losing market share, failing to meet customer
[00:02:06] expectations, hindered innovation, slow time to market, sub-par product quality that sucks,
[00:02:17] impacting revenue growth, it's becoming more and more expensive to recruit and train people.
[00:02:24] The team is not cohesive anymore.
[00:02:27] People are starting to leave, customers are starting to churn, productivity is going down,
[00:02:36] or margins are dropping, we're unable to achieve our business objectives, and there's a decline
[00:02:44] in our overall health and profitability.
[00:02:49] Those are really expensive problems, and now you have a couple of options for what to do
[00:02:53] with this.
[00:02:56] One is, you already know you want to focus on a specific principle, great.
[00:03:02] Make sure that you ask yourself, why are we interested in focusing on this right now?
[00:03:09] Make sure that you include such a why-now statement that connects it to an expensive problem
[00:03:15] when you decide to focus on it, and when you decide on measures for improvement on that principle,
[00:03:24] you also talk about measures of the outcome or the impact if you manage to move the needle
[00:03:31] on that principle.
[00:03:33] If you can't really find an expensive problem to connect to, maybe rethink your conviction
[00:03:38] on that principle.
[00:03:41] Another option is if you don't know where you want to focus your improvement effort, start
[00:03:47] with a why-conversation, where you can explore the expensive problems your organization
[00:03:51] is currently having, and then try to find principles that would help address that problem.
[00:04:00] For example, don't tell a senior business director, we're going to use KPIs now.
[00:04:05] Don't even tell them we're going to work on improving alignment to outcome orientation
[00:04:09] and empiricism now.
[00:04:11] Don't even tell them we're going to use KPIs to improve alignment so that we can deliver
[00:04:17] better business wins, and don't ask me how I know.
[00:04:22] Instead, what you might try to do is to facilitate a dialogue around the top expensive problem
[00:04:30] on their minds.
[00:04:32] What are they losing sleep over?
[00:04:35] And then you can try to work back to what are the principles that could help.
[00:04:40] What could we bring to the table that would help with that expensive problem?
[00:04:46] You can create the connectivity, the connection of why are we thinking about that principle,
[00:04:52] why are we thinking that focusing on outcome-oriented goals and measured by outcome KPIs,
[00:05:01] why are we thinking this would be useful at this point in time?
[00:05:05] Remember, you want to focus on expensive problems, use those expensive problems to decide
[00:05:13] which principles to focus on, and use that to decide which practices to focus on.
[00:05:23] And if you're struggling with a specific practice right now, walk back to why are you using
[00:05:30] this practice which principle is it serving, and why do you care about that principle?
[00:05:37] Which expensive problem is the reason that this principle is important for you right now?
[00:05:44] All right, folks, that's it for today.
[00:05:47] I'm Yvall Yerit, and I hope you join me again next time for discussions about scaling with
[00:05:54] the GUT.
## Source boundary
These are the published show notes from the podcast feed. They are a starting point for discussion, not a verbatim record of the conversation. The transcript is machine-generated and may contain errors or unlabeled speakers. Check the audio before quoting anyone.