What AWESOME takes

Yesterday, we watched what AWESOME looks like. And it is amazing. You have to watch it if you haven’t (click here)!

Do you want to unleash AWESOME like this guy, not on a bike, but for your own thing?

Are you ready to do what it takes?

Now, let’s take a look at what it takes to unleash AWESOME like this:

Let’s ask again: Are you ready to do what it takes?

You see, it takes effort. It takes pain. It takes more effort than you would ever think at start, and more pain than you could ever bear at start. But what is amazing is that the doing seems to be his own reward. When the going gets tough, the doing of it gets you tough. The doing got Danny tough. The doing will get you tough. Remember, though, the long way is faster, in the long run.

So if you want a “passionate team”, or if you want to “achieve amazing things”, what do you put in place for this to happen?

How much do you train your people, so they can achieve what they attempt?
How much do you support them in hard moments? All wounds are not in the flesh.
What do you put in place for people to not only deliver faster, but also learn faster?

Agile methods and extreme sports movie making have a lot more in common than what you could think. And they can both help you unleash AWESOME:

Get your big idea, something that stretches your and your team minds and make you feel a bit uneasy
Give it a bad ass name

[Okay, this one is optional, but why not have fun with the whole thing after all?]
Break down the final end product into smaller outputs
Work on the smaller outputs bit by bit, sequence after sequence
Focus on the task at hand, and only on that task
Repeat until it gets perfect, reliable if need be
Remember your people are people, and they like to have fun
Use frequent retrospectives for keeping accountability and pace high, but also learning and celebrating