(The following is for Tony B. (“What it is!”), my buddy at work, who wrote a LinkedIn post that inspired me to write a reply that “exceeded the maximum character limit”. Grr. And thus, I’m reminded why I still have this blog medium: to express myself on my terms, which, ‘twould seem, can include a seven month gap between posts.)
There’s a LOT in: “The goal is to be directionally correct, honoring your values and objectives with each step.”
When coaching product development, we’re hoping our customers (…users) will buy our offerings, and ideally use ’em, and double ideally love ’em, ’cause it’s changed their behaviour to be more in line with futures/visions both the supplier (company) and demander (user) want.
Our #product offerings are how we #impact the world, the stuff of a #backlog, a ‘what’ from which we seek feedback.
When coaching process development, we’re hoping our teams (…and scaled entities) will try out low-risk ideas to have things suck a li’l less over “the next 2 weeks”, and maybe even be awesome, while appreciating this habit to practice: pause & reflect & ask how we can be better.
Our #process improvements are how we #conduct ourselves in the world, the stuff of a #frontlog (my word), a ‘how’ from which we seek feedback.
When coaching personal development, we… uh, I… uh, I don’t really know what I’m doing here, so I pull from YouTube videos, and wise words gathered from the years, and my proclivity to merge mental models, resulting in an extrapolation of the above.
Our #vision clarity is how we #orient ourselves in the world, the stuff of a #forelog (my word, again), a ‘why’ from which we seek feedback.
This “forelog feedback” is what I see in your “The goal is to be directionally correct, honoring your values and objectives with each step.” … yet a version of this that sits better with me is “honoring and questioning”, which may seem excessive, but I’ll submit we don’t ask ourselves often enough if our steps are taking us where we most deeply want to go.
How does one ask? How does one get this feedback?
For backlog stuff, we ask our users: those outside of us.
For frontlog stuff, we ask ourselves: those who ARE us.
For forelog stuff, we… uh, I… uh, I don’t have a super-clean analogy here ’cause my idea breaks down slightly when thinking about the ‘why’ of an individual, versus a corporation or delivery team. I’m at:
For forelog stuff, I ask myself: the me who is MOST ME, via a gut check.
For forelog stuff, we ask our leaders: those who direct and inspire us, via open & honest & vulnerable conversation.
This just ain’t as swift or as true a connection as in the individual case, and maybe it’ll always be harder when ‘n’ is greater than 1… and maybe it’ll take more effort to surface & appreciate what is MOST US in all ‘n’ of us… and maybe that’s why leadership’s hard.
I feel I’m unnecessarily conflating things now, so I’ll pause here. Am open to feedback.