Have you ever happened to walk with one of your friends or your lover. Silently, no need to ask, no need to tell, no need to talk at all, instead just feel that connection, that shared understanding ? And the simple astonishing joy for been there, in the same place, at the same time, now, together ?
If you look at things from the outside, you will * not * notice an action, a word, a sound or a noise. The ingredient that make this moment special, is simply unvisible.
I know, is a strong and private emotion. And sounds strange to read about it when talking of teams.
When you look at successful hyper-productive teams, it is not uncommon to notice that the team members make good work and give good contributions to the team and the same members can also create troubles, raise the entropy, be a source of disagreement or disconfort.
What make the team successful and hyper-productive, are also very important unnoticed great contributions that fix problems and exploit opportunities that others don't even see or know about, and how great and good contributions are instinctively combined together by the team to exploit all the talent and the potential, to overcome the negative contributions and to use the limitations and frustrations to greater the creative purpose. This is the unvisible ingredient. As much effective concrete and strong as the one just described before.
The good agile coach and Scrum Master know the values the principles and practices and how they work together, know about coding and engineering practices, about technology, self-organization, social dynamics, complexity science, Lean. And know what is needed and when.
The great agile coach and Scrum Master is also capable to sense the unvisible ingredient, to intuitively support it, empower it and constantly and continuously build on it.
The source of this capability is in the roots of the intuitive intelligence and in the tacit knowledge.
Eventually after years some agile coach and Scrum Master let emerge this capability in his rational-intelligence, so he can communicate it, explain it and share it with others, describe and explain the forces that are at work, explain what is working and what is not and why, describe and explain the overall situation. Still this is not necessary for a team to become successful and hyper-productive, the action come first!
So now what ?
The strengths of a successful hyper-productive team are the courage that permitted the cultural changes to employ transparency, truthfulness, openness, focus, prioritization, craftsmanship, empirical approaches and self-organization. That strengths that permitted these big changes can continue to push to higher level of productivity and more challenging goals.
All the team members have within them that unvisible ingredient to success, so they don't need to search or pursue the success, they only needs to stand with the right crowd, strive to stay with like-minded people and the success naturally will come !
Finally, this post deserves a sound-track :) The refrain of this Italian song means <<haven't you ever heard saying that the beautifulness of things loves to hide herself ?>> that is: non hai mai sentito dire che la bellezza delle cose ama nascondersi ?