Throughout my career I’ve worn many hats and had many titles. I’m generally known as a Product person, and that’s the label I’d use for myself. But I’ve also at various points in my career been a Design Lead, a Delivery Lead, a Change Lead, a Transformation Lead, a project manager and a programme manager.
The one thing that has remained true, no matter the title I wore, is that organisations and teams sometimes get hung up delivering something and forget about delivering the right thing.
So, how do we know what is ‘the right thing’ and how do we focus on delivering it?
Unpacking ‘The Right Thing’: It’s All About Value
For me, ‘the right thing’ boils down to one core concept: value. It’s not about ticking boxes on a project plan, launching a new feature, or even hitting a deadline. It’s about creating a tangible, positive impact for your users, your customers, and ultimately, your organisation.
As a Product person, this is my North Star. But it’s a principle that applies universally, whether you’re designing a new service, implementing a complex IT system, or leading a cultural change programme. If what you’re delivering doesn’t create value, then no matter how perfectly executed, it wasn’t ‘the right thing’.
The challenge, of course, is that value can be subjective, elusive, and sometimes, surprisingly difficult to define.
How Do We Know What ‘The Right Thing’ Is?
Identifying ‘the right thing’ isn’t a one-off exercise; it’s a continuous journey of discovery, empathy, and validation. Here are some of the key practices I’ve found indispensable:
- Start with the ‘Why’: The Power of Purpose Before you even think about the ‘what’ or the ‘how’, you must understand the ‘why’. Why are we doing this? What problem are we trying to solve? What strategic objective does this align with? This might sound obvious, but it’s astonishing how often teams dive into solutions without a crystal-clear understanding of the underlying purpose. A well-articulated ‘why’ provides context, motivates teams, and acts as a filter for ideas. If an idea doesn’t serve the ‘why’, it’s probably not ‘the right thing’.
- Embrace User and Customer Centricity This is where my Product hat really comes into play. You cannot deliver value if you don’t deeply understand the people you’re serving. This means:
- Listening: Actively seeking out feedback, conducting interviews, and observing user behaviour.
- Empathising: Stepping into their shoes to understand their pain points, needs, and aspirations.
- Co-creating: Involving users in the design process, testing ideas early and often. Remember, your users often don’t know what they want until they see it, but they can certainly tell you what problems they have. Your job is to translate those problems into valuable solutions.
- Let Data Be Your Guide, Not Your Master Data provides invaluable insights into what’s working, what isn’t, and where opportunities lie. Metrics, analytics, and research can help validate assumptions, measure impact, and inform decisions. However, data alone isn’t enough. It needs interpretation, context, and a healthy dose of human intuition. Don’t let data paralyse you; use it to guide your experiments and refine your understanding of value. It’s a powerful tool to confirm if what you thought was the right thing, truly is the right thing.
- Engage and Align Stakeholders In any complex organisation, ‘the right thing’ for one department might not immediately seem like ‘the right thing’ for another. Effective delivery requires bringing diverse perspectives together, fostering open dialogue, and building consensus. This means proactive communication, managing expectations, and sometimes, facilitating difficult conversations to ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction towards a shared definition of value. Without this alignment, even the best intentions can lead to fragmented efforts and diluted impact.
How Do We Focus on Delivering ‘The Right Thing’?
Once you have a clearer picture of ‘the right thing’, the next challenge is to maintain that focus throughout the delivery process. This is where many projects falter, getting bogged down in scope creep, technical debt, or simply losing sight of the original purpose.
- Cultivate a Clear Vision and Strategy A well-defined vision acts as a compass, ensuring that every decision, every feature, every task contributes to the ultimate goal. This vision needs to be communicated relentlessly, not just at the start, but throughout the entire lifecycle of the initiative. When teams understand the bigger picture, they are empowered to make better, more aligned decisions.
- Prioritise Ruthlessly and Say ‘No’ (Often) This is perhaps one of the hardest lessons to learn. In a world of infinite possibilities and competing demands, the ability to prioritise is paramount. It means making tough choices, deferring less critical items, and sometimes, completely abandoning ideas that no longer align with the core value proposition. A clear product backlog, regularly reviewed and refined against your strategic objectives and user needs, becomes your most powerful tool here. Remember, doing fewer things exceptionally well, and ensuring those things are ‘the right things’, will always yield greater impact than doing many things mediocrely.
- Iterate, Learn, and Adapt The journey to delivering ‘the right thing’ is rarely a straight line. It’s an iterative process of hypothesis, experiment, feedback, and refinement. Embrace agile principles, even if you’re not strictly ‘doing Agile’. This means:
- Breaking down work: Deliver in small, manageable increments that allow for early feedback.
- Testing assumptions: Don’t wait until the end to find out if something works.
- Being open to change: The world, user needs, and business priorities evolve. Your delivery approach must be flexible enough to adapt. This continuous learning loop ensures that you’re constantly course-correcting towards maximum value, rather than blindly following a pre-defined path that might lead you astray.
- Foster a Culture of Accountability and Empowerment Ultimately, excellent delivery is a team sport. It requires individuals and teams to feel empowered to make decisions, take ownership, and challenge the status quo when necessary. Leaders play a crucial role in creating an environment where:
- Psychological safety allows for open discussion of challenges and failures as learning opportunities.
- Clear roles and responsibilities prevent duplication and ensure accountability.
- Celebration of successes (and learning from failures) reinforces the desired behaviours. When teams understand the ‘why’, are equipped with the ‘how’, and are empowered to act, they are far more likely to consistently deliver ‘the right thing’.
So, let’s challenge ourselves to look beyond the ‘when’ and instead, relentlessly pursue the ‘why’, ensuring every delivery truly adds the value our users and organisations deserve.
