Help your team find clarity

The new year is a time for clarity. If you are part of a team, invest a couple of hours to ensure there is agreement on the basics: 1) what the team is doing and why; 2) who is accountable for doing the work; and 3) how the work is done. Uncertainty on the basics leads to issues with focus, efficiency and motivation within the team.

J. Richard Hackman is a Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University and a leading expert on teams. His research shows that, most of the time, team members don’t even agree on what the team is supposed to be doing. Does yours?

Why not find out? Gather the team and answer the no-nonsense questions below. If you stay on task, the exercise will take about two hours. Break it into two pieces, if you like. The goal is to stimulate the team to find clarity. If too many discrepancies arise, you will need to ask your team’s director for help.

Caution: Ask someone outside the team to facilitate, to ensure the results are honest, concise and focused. If the results feel false or too wordy, the team will discard them! If self-facilitating, watch out for bias and/or the “steamroller” effect!

Warm-up

Start this with a short energizing exercise such as Clap Focus.

Questions

Why do we exist?

• What is our mandate? In advance, ask your team’s director to define in one sentence the reason the team exists. Example: Maximize the long-term profitability of Product X in Canada. Keep the answer hidden until the team has done the exercise and then compare answers. Come up with a final statement and then test it by asking: “Would the president agree that this is why we merit our operating budget?” Mandate is essential common ground for a team.

Who are we?

Set the stage for the accountabilities discussion. Ask…

• Who are the members of this team? Core members “own” the work and make major decisions. Contributors or SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) come and go as needed. Distinguish the two groups.

• What are the functional roles? Ask each person to summarize his/her role. Example: “I am the writer. I collaborate with the team about direction, and then capture it in words.” Keep it broad: save the specifics for later. End this exercise by asking: “Are we comfortable with the role each person defined? Do we need to clarify how roles fit together?”

What are we doing?

Define scope of work. Ask…

• What are key outputs/deliverables? List the items that require collaboration from all/most team members. Example: Canadian Marketing Plan and Budget. The list is NOT about validating each person’s work so don’t clutter the list with small outputs created by individual team members.

• What is inside/outside scope of work? Draw a line down the centre of a page and write “what we do” and “what we don’t do” on either side. Include the most tempting distractions. Example: We do… adapt the global creative campaign for Canada. We don’t…attempt to change the global creative campaign. The purpose is to create a common reference for where time is well spent, and NOT well spent.

Why are we doing it?

Create line-of-sight from the team’s work to the organization’s progress. Ask…

• How does our work support the broader goals and strategies of our organization? Expand on the mandate. Example (for the mandate above): 1) Generate sustainable revenue; 2) Develop brands that are distinct in the market place; 3) Support corporate image and values.

• Where do the team’s key deliverables fit within the larger organization? If the team members understand the broader context, their work is more focused and efficient. Example: Canadian Marketing Plan for Product X is an extension of the Global Strategy for Product X.

How do we do it?

Clarify the most efficient way to do the work. Ask…

• What principles will guide us? Brainstorm for a list of principles. Beside each one, list the specific behaviours that support each principle. This is a forum to discuss the factors that bond a team, or disrupt it. Example: Norm = Respect for others. Behaviours = 1) Arrive at meetings on time, prepared to do the work specified by the agenda. 2) Listen; don’t interrupt. 3) Respond to e-mail requests within 24 hours. Note: Avoid “aspirational” items – don’t list “innovation” if the team is not empowered to execute new ideas. Vote as a team to narrow down principles to the top five. Rewrite the top five principles/behaviours on a new page and then have everyone sign it as evidence of their commitment to upholding the principles.

• What processes will guide us? Agree on and commit to the team processes to help with collaboration and efficiency. I recommend the following (at minimum):
  • Meeting formats and agendas
  • Project briefs and schedules
  • Mid-point reviews (to recalibrate on longer projects) and project debriefs

• What will our meetings look like? Decide how often the team needs to meet, and in what format(s). Examples: Weekly 30-minute “issues” meeting (remove barriers to progress) and monthly 90-minute development meeting (generate strategies and ideas for new opportunities).

• What work is done when? Distinguish work done “at the table” (collaboratively, at a meeting), vs. “at my desk” (independently). The purpose is to avoid investing precious team time in topics that don’t belong at the table. Example: The writer will clarify: “We set direction for content at the table and then I write it back at my desk. I circulate a draft for comments and only bring it back to the table if we need to resolve conflicting feedback.” Avoid the temptation to slide into details of team process (e.g., who signs off on what). Reserve those details for a separate meeting in which you capture and refine process, if the team agrees this clarity is valuable.

• What are specific accountabilities? Clarify who does what on the key outputs/deliverables you listed earlier. Assign this exercise as homework to each team member after you advise on format and language…

• Format. For each item, each person describes their contribution, as concisely as possible, per the language below. In the end, information from all team members will come together in a single chart, with the deliverables down the side, and the team roles across the top.
• Language: State contribution as a verb e.g., own, develop, input or confirm. A person ”owns” an item if it is their responsibility to drive contribution from other team members and pull together the final result. (Every item should have an owner.) Other members might “develop” i.e., collaborate on ideas and strategies AND/OR  “input” i.e., provide specific expertise, information, content, etc. AND/OR “confirm” i.e., review information material provided to them to ensure it is accurate.
• Example: For “Canadian Marketing Plan,” the Production Manager specifies his contribution as “Input – production budgets.”

In my experience, a team that does this exercise will find at least five ways to improve focus, efficiency and/or collaboration.