“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” - Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride

In large organizations with hundreds or thousands of teams it’s important to see how work, people, and money combine to contribute to company strategy.

This is hard when people from different areas of an organization use language differently - using different terms for the same thing, or worse, using the same term to mean different things.

Achieving a common language, or at least a common understanding of how other people use language, can reduce misunderstandings, make metrics more meaningful and interchangeable, and enable people to move fluidly in and out of teams without having to learn a new language every time.

It connects people across silos, and maintains context as conversation (or reporting) moves up and down an organizational structure.

In this workshop, we will explore what terms are important to define and how to use different lenses and techniques to work towards a common language.

We will explore:

* language of work - how is work broken down, or connected up, what makes work “ready”, what does “done” actually mean?

* language of people - what do we mean by role, skill, position, etc, how do they change as people change?

* language of teams - what types of teams do you have, what is a team-of-teams, or a team-of-teams-of-teams, are they the same for each team type?

* language of money - can we talk about money in ways that won’t trigger risk reactions, if funding is lumpy how can we achieve good flow?

* approaches for making a common language commonly used - inviting, agreeing, capturing, mapping, and embedding.