Enabling High Performance: Compelling Direction

I recently posted some reflection on growing high performing teams through the enabling conditions set out in the work of Richard Hackman. This post unpacks a little more of the detail around what is meant by a Compelling Direction, hopefully helping us to reflect a little more on the implications when working in our own agile settings.

A team with a compelling direction will ultimately find purpose in their work. In order to achieve that they will need to work in an environment which communicates a clear vision but where they are not dictated to in terms of how to get there. That's to say that the vision is ends specified but not means specified. In order to understand these concepts better we can look at two quadrant models.

A high ends specified and low means specified vision enables self-organisation and goal directed teamwork. The team will work together to examine the options available to them and make appropriate plans for moving forwards. The quadrant diagram below (source: Hackman) illustrates how such teamwork emerges in these conditions as opposed to possible disengagement when the means of the vision is specified but with little or no detail around the required end state. In these conditions teams will be following instructions with no real idea of the longer term vision or sense of purpose behind the work.

In other words a team can be considered to have a compelling direction when it has a real sense of commitment and meaning to its work and is operating in an environment where the work is ends specified but not means specified.

In terms of vision the team would ideally be working with a roadmap of questions or things that it needs to learn. There are no detailed requirements dropped into teams or giant roadmaps or backlogs of pre-determined outputs to deliver. The team is trusted to find it's own path and it embraces principles of transparency and feedback to inspect and adapt along that path as it moves forwards.

In order to understand the role of purpose further we can consider the degree to which a team is both committed to and finds meaning in its work. When a team is committed to work that it finds meaningful it can be considered to be in the purposeful zone, as illustrated in the second quadrant diagram below (source: Potentialife). For a closer examination of what it takes for a team to enter the the purposeful zone see the post Up a bit, right a bit.

In an agile context this will be a real team working towards outcomes over outputs. They'll likely have an owner of the vision in a role such as Product Owner, but they will work collaboratively with the team to communicate and explore the vision and map out appropriate options and plans.