Aligning and keeping aligned Duck 1
Aligning Duck 1
Duck 1, Comprehension: All members of the team responsible for designing and implementing the change must all share the same understanding of the change objectives.
Two people can share an objective but have completely different perspectives on how the objective will be achieved, what will be the consequences of achieving the objective, what will be their roles in achieving the objective, and what will be the consequences of failure. There could be other ways two or more people perceive the impact of a change to how they will live their lives and how others will live theirs.
You want to avoid this happening: after having started working to make a change happen, one or more key people responsible for the change start saying, “That’s not what I agreed to make happen.” Boom; chaos; if not looming failure at least looming mediocrity. Unfortunately, this happens all the time…
How do you get all the members of a team to have the exact same understanding of all the objectives their project? The leader starts the meeting by asking every member of the team to describe in their own words:
the project objectives
project objectives that may be assumed but are not specified
what would be the consequences of achieving all the stated and assumed objectives
are all these consequences acceptable
what will change if the project is successfully completed
what would not be okay to happen if the project is successfully completed
how will they feel if and when the project is successfully completed
what they see as their official role in seeing that the project is successful
what are their unofficial but important roles in seeing the project is successful
what would be failure
how would failure feel
After letting everyone answer these questions for themselves in their own words in front of everyone else, the lead then gives her, his or their answers. Then the project leader says, “These are the things I heard that make me worry that we might not be totally aligned in how we see this project progressing.” After this summary the leader asks, “what makes you worry that I did not mention?”
After receiving all this input, the challenge is for the leader to facilitate a discussion where the team agrees to adjustments to the objectives of the project and constraints on what they plan to do so that some or all of the bad things team members worry about are much less likely to happen. Document these understandings! Ultimately, the outcome of these discussions should result in every team member feeling good about their much deeper shared understanding of what the project is about and how it can and cannot get done.
Anyone who is not part of all these discussions should not be on the team; this alignment is that important.
Keeping Duck 1 aligned
Frequently, unforeseen circumstances create misalignments of Duck 1.
Somebody can no longer be on the team and their replacement sees things differently.
The visualization, planning or discussion around what it would take to achieve the objectives prove inaccurate.
The sponsorship of the team changes and wants changes.
A competitor or some other outside influence may render some of all of the project objectives worthless.
There are other unforeseen things that could go wrong that are outside the control of the team, or were just missed initially. Everyone on the team should be alert to mutual changes in attitudes about where the project is heading. When any of these things happen or when there is some change in attitudes about the direction, Duck 1 needs to be realigned. The document that the team created describing their Duck 1 alignment can be the starting point.
The longer Duck 1 is misaligned, the harder it is to get it back aligned. Misalignment creates frustrations, hidden feelings and emotions, which can build and boil over. It result in wasted efforts and resources. It causes projects to go off course.