Hey Reader,

Before you fix teams, fix the system they operate in.

Most organizations focus their improvement efforts at the team, program, or product level while maintaining the same organizational operating system—how they make decisions, fund work, and measure success. These teams might be using the latest and greatest processes (Agile, Product Model, Lean Startup, take your pick) but they still need to manage countless dependencies. The funding and GTM processes are still following classic phase-gate approaches.

The feature factory might be operating more efficiently, but products often fall flat when they finally reach the market.

You'll often see Team Leads, Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches working hard at optimizing team or program-level processes, without making a real impact on revenue, growth, or customer satisfaction.

The excellent book "Upstream" shares the story of two fishermen who see children floating down the river, and for a while, they rescue them as they float by, until one of the fishermen decides to go up the river to see who's "throwing kids into the stream."

These practitioners are like those fishermen. They are often not allowed to go upstream. And in some ways it's comfortable to keep fishing kids out of the water - your work is never done... (Unless someone realizes the effort is futile...)

I should know

I spent some time fishing kids out of the water early on in my agile journey.

But at some point, I got fed up with this reality.

This is when I started to leverage techniques such as Kanban to bring flow, agility, and product orientation upstream.

Over the years, going upstream has led me towards portfolio-level interventions, refining OKRs, and developing companies as products. The further upstream you go, the more impactful small interventions become.

“Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.” ~ Archimedes

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