Coach Dan's Blog

When I’m coaching leaders, I often see them fall into the "Compatibility Trap"—the dangerous assumption that a team’s success is built on how well everyone likes each other or how similar their backgrounds are.  Managers often rely on their "gut" to assemble teams, which is usually just a polite word for affinity bias. They look for "culture fit" but end up creating an echo chamber of people who think, work, and communicate exactly like they do. This doesn't just stifle innovation; it creates a structural weakness where the 3 Es begin to erode. You might have an Engaged group of friends, but you lose Effectiveness and Efficiency because no one is there to challenge the status quo or point out the blind spots in the room. The trouble starts when leaders assume that a high-performing individual in one context will automatically thrive in another without considering the systemic "swirl" of the new team. They ignore (or even be unaware of) the...

tldr; If your retrospectives have turned into a "complain-fest" with no action, you're missing the chance to teach your squads a valuable lesson. Use the 4 Rs (Reflect, Root Cause, Rethink, Retool) to turn data into insights and experiments that actually move the needle for your Squad and Crew. Healthy teams improve and balance their 3 Es: being Effective, Efficient, and Engaged. Agility isn't about getting the team to produce faster; it’s about creating empowered teams that produce results efficiently and indefinitely . I’ve shared before that high-performing teams must balance their 3 Es . They strive to be Effective (delivering the right value), Efficient (delivering with minimal waste), and Engaged (feeling safe and purposeful). But let’s be real—the "daily swirl" of doing can easily knock these pillars out of alignment. When you feel that friction, it’s not a failure; it’s an invitation to get curious. If your squads aren’t finishing retrospectives ...

There are a number of measures we coaches use to identify opportunities for squads and teams to improve and last week I had an opportunity to talk through some of these with a Crew Leader I work with. I know that most of my posts focus on mindset, or ways of thinking and behaving. Today I want to talk about one of the metrics that we coaches use to help see that there may be some structural challenges that are impacting the way our teams work. As we have learned, the true measure of a high-performing team isn't how fast they move, nor how much stuff they produce.  Instead these teams are measured by the outcomes (results) they achieve and how efficiently they achieve them.  In order to produce intended outcomes in a sustainable way, teams need to be stable and predictable.  Teams that are regularly interrupted with emergency tasks and unplanned work are statistically less likely to achieve intended outcomes1.  As leaders, it's easy to get caught in the daily swirl of...