Does your team ship features, but struggle with building trust? If so, you don’t have a delivery problem. You have a culture problem.
Your culture determines if your team thrives or if you’ll be backfilling more positions soon. Trust, shared values, and coordination drive 81% of performance on software teams, according to team members. Stakeholders attribute good team culture as a 61% driver for team output.1
Servant-led teams build a transparent culture. They create alignment. They define success clearly. That’s how they drive faster, better results for members and stakeholders.
The only way to create a servant-led team is to function solely on what best serves the client and each other. When team members go “rogue” with hidden work, last-minute initiatives, and work spent on non-priorities, trust soon disappears.
This impacts not just your clients, but everyone… leading to lost revenue, wasted resources, and missed opportunities.
Here’s how we learned to dodge this bullet with the right culture.
What “Service-First” Work Looks Like
Start With the Who → Have a clear picture of who your targeted audience is, what they want, and how your product gives them more of that. For every new feature, body of work, and upgrade, ask yourself, “Does this give my client what they want?” If it doesn’t, scrap it.
One Priority, Zero Drama → There are many ways to serve clients. But the quickest way to best serve is to keep one top priority at a time. This keeps the team aligned, working towards the same exact goal. Zero drama. Zero confusion.
Finish Lines Matter → Give your team a clear understanding of what it means for a body of work to be done. This prevents confusion, wasted time, and builds trust in the process.
Next Steps, Big Wins → Without a next focus in the queue, the team succumbs to managing multiple priorities, with everyone working in different directions. The end result? Nothing gets finished, at least not in a timely manner.
The Right Culture Accelerates What Matters Most
Deliverability → When a team knows exactly what to do, how to do it, and by when, deliverability is a sure thing. Keep your team locked in on what matters. Vision quickly turns into velocity because the team’s focus is value-led.
Predictability → Consistent deliverability led by a single-focused team creates a predictable system. Stakeholders no longer have to question if everyone is moving in the right direction. A steady rhythm has become established.
Stakeholder Confidence → Since stakeholders set the vision for team direction, confidence grows as quickly as predictability grows. All of these pieces are directly connected.
Return on Investment → A nominal investment is attached to every single team member. When each member locks into the service-first culture, we’ve noticed less time is spent on activities that don’t boost revenue. So more revenue-generating projects are completed sooner. Next, short-term and long-term ROI spike up too.
Processes to Keep Your Product Team on Track
Daily Standup → Hold daily 15-minute meetings to keep all work visible and honest. This meeting should include what’s close to being done, bottlenecks, clarifying questions, and set priorities for the day.
Weekly Demo & Metrics → At the end of each week, have a 15-30 minute demo to celebrate all the finished work for that week. This boosts team morale. Also, provide the team with weekly performance data. Metrics we’ve found useful include: number of tasks moved to “done,” the average number of days to complete each task, and how long any given task was stationary. This communicates transparency and team efficiency to the team and stakeholders.
Bi-Weekly Retro → Have a bi-weekly retro to uncover what did or didn’t work operationally to complete a project. This will streamline operations for the future. It also accelerates the team’s speed across the finish line. Small changes over time yield big results. Retro also gives team members a chance to build trust with each other as they create solutions together.
Monthly Stakeholder Spotlight → Host monthly staff meetings where stakeholders directly communicate business performance, what they’ve learned, and what goals have shifted for the future. This meeting bridges the gap between stakeholder goals and team member focus.
Quarterly Power Play → Pick the top north star for your organization. Evaluate competing priorities. Set clear goals and the path for hitting said goals.
Quick Go-To Measures for Success
Kanban Boards with WIP Limits → Kanban boards are a visual representation of workflow. There is no hidden work. All team members and stakeholders will be able to see who is working on what task at any given point. There shouldn’t be any work in flight that isn’t on the Kanboard board. Work in Progress (WIP) limits restrict the number of tasks allowed in any particular workflow stage. Apply these to prevent bottlenecks.
Burn Rate vs. Project Budget → Each body of work should have an expected budget attached to it. The worst thing you can do is ship out work with no written, expected outcome. When you know the expected impact of work, you can measure if the burn rate (team compensation per day X days to complete work) makes sense for your org's goals.
Daily Pacing Reports → After the work is shipped, daily pacing reports measure actual budget against projected budget. This gives insight into the effectiveness of a new product or feature’s deliverability. It also helps stakeholders gauge the impact of their own decision-making.
The 90-Day Fast Track to Results
Day 1-30: Enable Flexibility → For a quarter, focus solely on a single adjustment that will move the needle for your business (and customers). Keep it clear, simple, and concise. It must be something that is trackable with an impact that can be measured. Once complete, announce the impact to the team.
Day 30-60: Unleash Builders → Put the right players in place to own certain outcomes. This includes project managers, designers, and engineers. Have about 5 to 7 customer conversations surrounding a clickable prototype. (You can show people better than you can tell them.)
Day 61-90: Deliver Results & Remove Limits → Expand by tracking error rates, deepening funnels, and monitoring all data. Keep what works and fine-tune what isn’t. Next, expand this method to other teams and projects.
Get Started This Week
A service-first culture is one where stakeholders and team members operate with a strong sense of urgency. The sooner work is finished, the sooner you give your clients what they need.
This is servant leadership in action. It’s not soft. It's disciplined service that earns trust, accelerates learning, and delivers results—on time, without drama.
If you want help standing this up quickly, book a call today. Our Embedded teams integrate with your org to enable flexibility, unleash builders, deliver results, and remove limits. Ready to grow? The first step is getting started.
References:
1. Weimar E, Nugroho A, Visser J, et al. The Influence of Teamwork Quality on Software Team Performance. In: arXiv [Preprint]. 2017. https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06146