Archive May 2014
Create a story to build belief
Is your team having trouble getting support from key stakeholders? Are you trying to push a larger change within your organization and facing resistance? If so, it’s time to start thinking about your story.
When conflict is slowing the team down
One of the most common team types we see is one we call “Fierce but Fragmented.” This is a team made up of passionate people who all care about doing great work but who have a hard time collaborating together. Often, the source of the problem is weak or broken duos—people don’t fully understand or […]
Write a headline from the future
When you and your team are planning a bold move and trying to tap into your deepest aspiration, it helps to imagine the story as told in the pages of a magazine, newspaper, or popular blog. What would be the headline of the story? What accomplishments would the story celebrate? What would make people on […]
Provocative question: Gut check your team’s goals
Success looks like different things to different teams. It depends on context, history, purpose, and the team’s identity — which means that it’s crucial to gut check your ambitions. As a team, tackle this question: Did we commit to this outcome because we really want it, or because someone told us it’s what we should want? […]
7 questions to guide decision-making
As a team, you never want to enter the decision-making process blind. Without enough due diligence, a clear sense of goals, and shared decision-making criteria to serve as a guidance system, the team could lose time and belief stumbling between options without direction. Use a question and answer method to establish guidelines for how your team makes decisions. […]
Turning the team’s good intentions into action
Our colleague Adam Schorr, a Principal at SYPartners, returns this week as a guest blogger. As a manager, one of your most important roles is to set direction for your team — to paint a picture of the future, build belief, and get everyone inspired and ready to go. But what happens when you’ve done […]
A question to help identify stale habits
If you find that your team is stalling, spinning, or keeps bumping up against the same old obstacles, maybe it’s time to take a long hard look at the team’s day-to-day behaviors and assumptions. Kick off discussion with this provocative question at your next team meeting: What habits or behaviors have become such an ingrained part of our team culture […]