Building a Delivery Culture
A leader's guide
In my previous posts, we've looked at what makes good delivery, different management approaches, and how the language we use affects outcomes. Today I want to pull out the strands and focus on what you can do as a leader to build these principles into your team's culture.
Start With Your Own Behavior
The single biggest influence on your team's delivery culture is how you behave. Your team will pay far more attention to what you do than what you say; how you behave and how you react are key.
Model Good Delivery
Be explicit about your own commitments
Raise issues with your own deliverables early
Show how to renegotiate effectively
Drive Delivery Conversations
Use "want" instead of "need" in your requests
When someone raises an issue early:
Thank them explicitly
Focus immediately on solutions, not blame. Even if you think they've got here by doing something "really stupid", in talking to you they’ve just succeeded at delivery - you want them to come out of their meeting with you feeling better than when they went in
Help them renegotiate effectively - you can probably see more options and have more experience than them, so help them use it as an opportunity to coach them.
When someone delivers successfully, recognise the delivery itself, not just the work done. Highlight specific good practices they used, and have the team share successes.
When someone misses a delivery, focus on learning, not punishment, and help them understand the impact on others not just of missing the work, but of not letting people know early. Coach them on how to handle it better next time - how to ensure successful identification of the issue and renegotiation, rather than just "how to get the work done faster next time", and help them to see the value you could have been if they’d raised earlier.
Create Supporting Structures
While behavior drives culture, good structures help reinforce it.
Regular Check-ins
Make delivery part of team retrospectives and include delivery patterns in team meetings.
Use 1:1s to proactively offer support and check that they've asked for everything they need, rather than status reporting for you to own the delivery.
Clear Processes
Set explicit delivery expectations, and ensure that there is a clear definition of "done" and how you all agree and record it.
Make it easy to raise issues - have straightforward regular ways for people to get hold of you without it feeling like a big step, and build the relationships with anyone new so their first interactions with you aren’t when they have a problem.
Create clear channels and easy means for renegotiation. The delivery-to-test email example from my first post? That simple process worked because it made it easy and normal to discuss delivery challenges before they became critical.
Make it Safe to Deliver Bad News
I’m flogging a dead horse by now, but this one is so important it gets it’s own section. Your team needs to know they won't be punished for raising issues, and they likely need to see and experience this over and over before they really believe it’s true. When someone comes to you with a delivery problem:
Thank them for raising it.
Listen to understand, not to judge.
Help them plan next steps.
Support them and have their back in communicating upwards/outwards.
Measure What Matters
If it helps to focus your team (and show that you actually do care about this rather than just talk about it) you can track metrics that encourage good delivery behavior:
Time from issue identification to escalation.
Percentage of deliveries renegotiated vs missed.
Early warning lead times.
Stakeholder satisfaction with delivery communication.
The Long Game
Remember that changing culture takes time and consistency, and a good delivery culture is actually pretty rare with many of the anti-patterns mentioned in the previous posts prevalent - so your team will likely be scarred and need time to change and adapt.
The key as always is to stay consistent in your approach even when it feels like nothing is changing (yet). Culture shifts happen slowly, then suddenly.
Building a delivery culture isn't easy, but it's worth it. When your team consistently delivers well, it builds trust, reduces stress, and makes everyone's job easier. Most importantly, it lets your team focus on doing great work instead of managing expectations and fighting fires.