Exceed expectations consistently

When working in teams, even a brilliant individual contributor is only as good as the collective. Furthermore, long-term success can only be achieved with consistent output—a brilliant project can be very quickly forgotten by a client who experiences complete and utter failure on the next. Consistency matters.

We often take our clients or visiting Lithuanian colleagues to dinner. The place we choose for special occasions is Mastro’s Steakhouse on Dearborn Street, but not for the reasons you might think. Chicago, the steak capital of the world, is a carnivore’s delight—from the old-school Gene & Georgetti, where you’ll feel like an Italian mobster from the Al Capone era, to the chic Bavette’s with tattooed bartenders serving artisanal ice cubes with your old-fashioned. Mastro’s, on the other hand, sits somewhere in the middle—definitely a fine dining experience, but generally forgettable when it comes to interior design, brand, and the like. Except one thing. Mastro’s serves some of the best meat in the city, consistently. For small or large groups, food comes out in a highly synchronized manner, each steak perfectly cooked to the desired temperature (medium rare, thank you), plate heated and sizzling as it arrives at the table. It’s expensive, but every time you go to Mastro’s the experience is perfectly identical and predictable. Consistency matters.

So how do we make sure we’re all aligned? How do we make sure we all beat to the same drum as we march into a lifelong battle against mediocrity and complacency? To have predictable outcomes, we need two things:

1. A shared value system that empowers the team to make the right decisions
2. A shared and well understood process that helps ship consistently

The objective of this book is to provide you with an advantage on both counts: first, by helping you understand why we have historically been successful in doing things in our Devbridge way; and second, how to leverage our value system to make good decisions on your journey. This book alone will not make you successful, but combined with training, hands-on experience, and your own grit it may make a difference.

James Clear writes in Atomic Habits:

The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.

Here we go!

[1] James Clear, Atomic Habits (New York: Avery Publishing, 2018).