Why Agile Results Works for Getting Results

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“Agile Results” is the name of the “personal results system” inside Getting Results the Agile Way.   People that have tried every personal productivity system under the sun tend to ask me, what’s so different about this system or why does it work?  Here are the key things I usually say:

  1. It’s a mindful approach.  It’s not about doing more, and it’s not about doing less.  It’s about doing the right things, at the right time, the right way, with the right energy.
  2. It’s shifting from what you didn’t do, or what you didn’t get done, to figuring out the best things you can do with the time, energy, and opportunity you now have.
  3. It helps you ask better questions.  For example, “What are the 3 best results you want for today?”  “What’s your next best thing to do?”  “If this week was over, what are three things you want under your belt?” … “When are your best power hours?” … “When are your best creative hours?” … “What are three things going well that I can carry forward from this week?” … etc.
  4. It’s story-driven.   You get to be the author of your life and write your story forward, a day at a time, a story at a time.
  5. It’s pinned against time.   It’s a time-based system.  This keeps it simple.  You can focus on three results for today, three results for the week, three results for the month, and three results for the year.  This lets you zoom in and out while keeping things simple.  It also gives you a fresh start each day.  The main pattern in the book is the Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Reflection pattern.  This makes the pattern easy to adopt, easy to remember, and you get to practice each day and each week.
  6. It’s integrated.  It combines mind, body, and emotions, and it’s a system you can use for work and life.
  7. It’s principle-based.  Because it’s a set of guiding principles, you can incrementally adopt the system, and you can use it on top of your existing systems.  It can easily blend with your approach or you can use it to re-shape your existing approaches.  It’s flexible by design, and meant to be tailored to help you unleash your best and improve your personal effectiveness in all areas of your life.

While it might seem new, and some concepts are, it’s really a system that I’ve been evolving over more than 10 years.  I’ve used it to help people at Microsoft get faster, simpler, better results, and it’s how I’ve quickly ramped up folks on my project teams (you can read some of the testimonials and case studies.)  I do recommend reading A Word from the Author -- It’s short, but it gives you some of the back-story on how the system evolved.