Howdy!
Do you know how to pivot out of bad decisions? If you’ve ever felt that rumble in your stomach about an initiative that just won’t work - I may have something that helps.
Survival metrics.
In July, I had the opportunity to share SURVIVAL METRICS in Dalls at the Agile2024 conference.
Key Insight from the Workshop
What stops teams from getting away from bad ideas? You may think it’s having the next idea ready - but that isn’t it. What stops teams from moving to the next idea is that they can’t explain the need for change.
I polled the audience at the workshop of over 50 product managers, and what stopped teams from moving forward happened to be finding a language of change. Yes, working with stakeholders and metrics are important (these were second and third) - however, the lack of clear language guided by strategy, is hampering teams from executing products.
If this sounds familiar, hit the reply button - I’d love to chat.
How can you implement Survival Metrics
Survival metrics are built on the language of change. How can you get your team to STOP, PIVOT, or INVEST?
Good news: I’ve partnered with Miro to help make this easier for you.
People seem to like it - it was the #1 board on Miro for July
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Survival Metrics in the Real World
A client used Survival Metrics to help speed up their ability to ship features.
You read that right - they sped up.
The company (let’s call them BobCo) leveraged Survival Metrics to increase their ability to ship features.
Problem: After a loss of talent, they were mired in what I call decision traps - these are choices that trip teams up because they are unclear if they can or can’t make the choice. You’ll see this in organizations where you’ll need a meeting to solve something, and often times, that meeting isn’t enough. There needs to be another meeting on top of another meeting until they are forced to make a change.
How Survival Metrics Helped: By going through the workshop, the team was able to identify where the decision traps were by
- Calling out strategy and sharing what was important
- Highlighting STOP and PIVOT statements to ensure what decisions actually needed intervention
- Clearly highlighting the metrics they needed to move to be successful.
This team, by doing that, were able to ship products six times, yes - 6X faster.
Survival Metrics is great to break up decision traps and get you back to work.
Next Steps for Your Team
To further explore Survival Metrics:
- Identify potential Survival Metrics for your current projects.
- Practice creating STOP, PIVOT, and INVEST statements.
- Share the framework with your team to enhance agile practices.
Make sure you leverage the Miro Board to help
Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to the rich discussions at Agile2024.
For those interested - I offer office hours.
Thanks for reading The Adam Thomas Product Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
