Changing the World

Photo by Hauptillusionator

Phired Up is an education firm that is passionate about changing the world by helping organizations grow and retain more active members; their expertise in relationships, recruitment, retention, and research allows them to partner with leading organizations that are committed to engaging more people around their purpose.  I know of Phired Up because of my involvement with Theta Tau Fraternity.  There's a paragraph in a recent blog post by Phired Up that I found very interesting:

All of us, as individuals and as our organizations have a purpose.  A reason for being.  Too often, many of us have great ideas, passions, and purposes that we choose to pursue and further, but sadly, oftentimes, over a course of a few days, weeks, months, years, we lose that idea, passion or purpose.  We get sidetrack by all of the other “stuff” that goes on from day to day in our worlds.  We lose our focus due to tasks that we think matter and must be completed instead of completing the bold actions that will continue to breathe life into our true passions.  THE world, gets in our way.

Every team needs a compelling goal--a purpose--and I've seen how the environment that the team operates in can wear down the team's energy to meet that goal.  The burden of working with or within certain systems distracts team members from the work they should be focused on delivering.  But that's precisely why I like scrum because it makes issues visible; it ask teams to hold retrospective meetings at the end of every iteration [so every few weeks], and I expect environmental/system issues to be raised for someone on the team to escalate for resolution.  If your team's ideas and passion seem to be waning, I suggest bringing it up in a retrospective to find out the cause.