Our Growth Over Time in mct

Our Growth Milestones

Introducing our growth milestones aka ‘The Beans’! Over in the Mission Control Team (MCT), we start off as a green bean and work on moving towards becoming a yellow and red bean. Here is a nifty infographic to sum up what each bean entails.

Source: Mavericks Consulting

The Growing Pains

Our programme’s end goal is to achieve high performance continuously. We want to be able to hit the ground running, even if something is new or unfamiliar! 

I must admit, rising through the Bean ranks doesn’t come easy. But treating it as leveling up your skills (just like how you would in a game!) makes work a much more rewarding and fulfilling experience.

Building roadmaps with clear goals and milestones help us manage our growth effectively and efficiently. There’s a lot of ways that goals can be broken down – they may be short-term v.s. long-term goals, new task learnings or even mindset shifts. Building a habit of setting high goals and continuously taking stock of your progress is a fundamental skill to succeed. 

Here are some tools MCT uses to set, track, and plan our next steps:

1. Performance Management Tracker

This tracker is a consolidated place to list our personal goals and plan. Here’s what mine looks like!

Source: Mavericks Consulting

From my experience, this tool has been especially helpful for self-management and encouraging ownership of personal growth. It makes it easy to continuously assess my performance, set new targets (a.k.a. KPIs), and keep track of any received feedback. Being open to direct and constructive feedback gives you greater clarity on what your current gaps are (especially if they are in your blindspot). 

Usually I keep a backlog of things to work on, so I don’t forget them! It can be overwhelming so I try to manage my expectations by identifying 2-3 priorities for the week. 

You might also notice that I have a column to rate my confidence level in a particular task. Confidence can be quite a tricky thing to manage, but it’s useful to think of it as a by-product of having repeatedly achieved success. So to build my confidence, I frequently set aside space for me to reflect on the depth of my understanding. This encourages more self-awareness of my current strengths and areas for improvement.

2. Story Points

At Mavericks, we use story points and relative estimations to measure and track our output. They are useful indicators of our productivity and the value we deliver as a team and as individuals. This article from Atlassian does a great job in explaining how story points work. 

When working on a task, we create planned estimates and actual estimates. 

• Planned estimates come before completion of the task. They are helpful in indicating how much complexity we should expect of the task. 

• Actual estimates are done after completion of the task, to indicate the actual amount of effort the task took. 

It is important to estimate before and after as it helps to highlight if there were any signs that point towards inefficiency. Here are a couple of ways story points are useful in providing productivity feedback:

Estimation Scenario	What It Could Mean
Planned = Actual	A good way of working, e.g. good analysis & understanding of the task before starting on the work Minimal to No Re-work This is ideal for easier team & individual planning.
Planned < Actual	More effort invested because of misunderstandings / errors / etc. Hidden complexities / blockers Underestimation of risk
Planned > Actual	Over-planning Overly conservative

3. Feedback

Feedback is an imperative part of growth planning as well. Having a strong feedback cycle helps encourage continuous improvement and growth.

Referencing the Johari Window, feedback enables us to develop a clearer and more comprehensive picture of our strengths and weaknesses. It helps us understand ourselves from various perspectives, not just our own, to close our gaps and blind spots.

It is important to be proactive in asking for feedback. Our strong feedback culture is something I deeply appreciate about Mavericks. It also reflects how everyone is driven and committed to achieving excellence. It has made my experience working with this team even more fulfilling as I can confidently say that I am achieving growth day on day, if not week on week.  

My Takeaways

These are just some examples of the tools we use to manage our growth in the Mission Control Team. Using them all in tandem has greatly helped me in my own journey progressing from bean to bean. They may be simple instruments, but they have played a critical role in shaping the way I manage my own growth — with greater intention and clearer structure.