The heart of the AgileToCMethod

Hello, hello, … HELLO!

Today, I want to point out something that may be obvious to you about the ATM’s Thrive Model, but it wasn’t to me until months after I created it.

It's maybe the most important thing, and down below I will tell you why.

But first, let me celebrate! It’s been a very cool month for my wife and?I because our eldest daughter graduated from Wellington’s Victoria University. ??

Back to business!

The short version of this newsletter is:

- - - - > The AgileToCMethod is a cultural thing.

And, it’s also a money thing.

Because the two don’t need to conflict.

Let me show you.

Here's the full diagram, again:

Now let me strip off the big bubbles and just show you the intersections:

And now, let’s get a little bit poetic, and hand-draw a big red outline around the shape.

And now we have a heart … ??. Awww.

The words inside the ??describe the sort of place I want to work, so let me run through them 1 by 1.

Let’s think about money - i.e. Snowballing Cash

Have you ever worked in a place that’s had a bad year and gone from “making money” to “not making money”?

If so, you’ll get this. It’s traumatic.

The flip from profitable to not-profitable changes people and it changes the culture.

It is - generally - much nicer to work in a place that’s making money.

When we’re making money:

• the business can afford to pay me and the people I work with …
• … so we can pay our rent and our mortgages, and our Netflix subscriptions, and so on,
• without worrying

… so we can get on with doing our good work.

We’ve got:

• a pleasant work environments,
• with nice equipment, and,
• nice coffee

… so we can get on with doing our good work.

And, perhaps most importantly:

• we’ve got nice, competent colleagues.
• because we can afford to pay them

… and we look forward to getting on with our good work.

Money is important, in the way that oxygen is important to us humans - we die without it.

Let’s think about productivity and progress - i.e. the Productive Buzz

In thriving?organisations, we are?productive, both as individuals and as a group.

Being genuinely productive makes us feel proud. It’s good for the soul.

We feel fulfilled whenever we feel like we are making progress.

Think about it: at the end of the day, while you are cleaning up after a nice dinner with your loved ones, and someone asks you, “How was your day”, don’t you feel good when you’re able to tell them that you got good stuff done at work?

Sure, there are problems and obstacles, but they’re part of the job, and we relish tackling those tricky problems.

Solving problems and tackling obstacles - i.e. improving and innovating - is one of the higher forms of productivity.

Over the years I’ve come to think of this mix of …

• Productivity
• Pride, and,
• Progress

… as nutrients - as important to us humans as clean water, sunshine, and vitamin D.

We could, if we feeling whimsical, call them?Vitamin-P.

Without them, we get the workplace equivalent of brittle bones and scurvy.

Let’s think about “calming up”

Finally, …?calm?…

Ahhhhhh … ??????.

Have you ever worked somewhere that’s felt cool, calm, and collected, but then … suddenly … the managers have started behaving weirdly?

Perhaps they’re unusually grumpy.

Or having a lot of rushed meetings behind closed doors?

Something is happening … but you don’t know what. You suspect it’s something bad. But … who knows?

Their squirrelly?behaviour?sends ripples of nervousness throughout the workplace.

The calm is gone.

Here’s the thing:

Calm is like the canary in the coal mine - when it dies, it’s a warning that the whole workplace is poisoned but you may not have noticed yet.

Calm is the most subtle of the three outcomes in a thriving workplace and the easiest to dismiss, but it’s just as important as the other 2.

Maybe more important.

I’m gonna wrap up here, with a request: please don’t get hung up on definitions.

You kinda know when an organisation is thriving, or not.

Just the same as my Mum knows whether the vegetables she’s growing in her garden are thriving, or not.

Take care my friend!

And, in the meantime, please add a wee comment - a ?? or some words, I'm not fussy. They’re the oxygen that fuels my writing.

Thanks Clarke :)