More importantly, my success depends not on techniques but on

• my stance or attitude (how I hold myself in my mind and the vision and possibilities I hold for the group)
• the purpose of the group
• my first principles (responsibility, collaboration, servant leadership, value, choice, etc.) and
• constraints (time, space, authority, etc.)

Here’s an example: Last May at the RallyOn conference in Boulder, CO, Rally’s VP of Products Todd Olson asked me at the last minute to facilitate a lunch meeting of about 10 VIP customers.

Todd’s goal (purpose) was for the VIPs to become a team-based counsel that would meet regularly, prioritize a requested-features backlog, and speak to Rally with one voice.

Our principles included collaboration, participation, servant-leadership (Todd spoke for two minutes at the beginning and later acted as group recorder; other Rally attendees served and bussed tables), value, and inclusion.

Constraints: We had 60 minutes between conference sessions, were in a 7 meter by 5 meter hotel conference room with 15 people (including some Rally directors), and a plated lunch would be served — it was too late to switch the lunch to a buffet.

What to do? I recommended a World Cafe style rapid round-table conversion around three questions from my Team Orientation Process℠ (for more about orienting teams, see my teamwork book or workshop):

• What’s our task?
• What’s in it for me (to work with you on this task)?
• What agreements do we want with each other?

I asked for the plated lunch to be served immediately at the start and that all the VIP’s be seated at two tables.

I cleared three tables for the World Cafe and equipped each table with large sheets of paper and felt pens for idea capture and doodling. I assigned one of the three questions to each table, wrote the question on the paper on that table, and circled it.

I gave VIPs 20 minutes to eat, meet each other at the table, and get ready to answer these three questions. Todd said a few words about his request for the group. I asked the other Rally folks to stand or sit on a counter along one wall.

When 20 minutes for eating was up I asked the 10 VIPs to self-organize around the three World Cafe tables. Instructions:

1. One person agrees to “host” or “co-host” the conversation at that table for at least two rounds
2. Dialog with others at your table to propose answers to the question assigned to that table
3. Capture the ideas on the paper
4. Change tables every five minutes with some people remaining to host the dialog at that table while the other members separate to different tables.

The idea is that each table’s conversation overlaps and flavors the conversations at the other tables and that everyone is deeply involved in each conversation.

I think we did five rounds of five minutes each. At the end I asked Todd to record on a flip chart as I attempted to facilitate consensus from the group. I was amazed when the VIP’s said that wasn’t needed — they had already done that at each table.

I responded, “Really?Are you really all on the same page with each other?” And they all looked at me and said “Absolutely.” So I said, then what are the next steps? And they said they had a conference call scheduled in two weeks.

Results? Todd was extremely pleased. The VIPs were energized.

Seven months later: I ran into one of the VIPs at an AgileNYC meeting last month and he told me that group continues to operate very effectively.

What might you have done? Or share one of your examples. Leave a comment.

Download a PDF of this presentation.

This workshop was part of a Managed Leadership Gift Adoption program to develop an culture of responsible leadership so agile and lean methods will flourish in the enterprise.

• Start shining the spotlight on the whole, not the pieces
• Solicit help shining the light
• Know the standard you are striving to achieve

Building on that theme, I’ll tell you why the project team is the easiest team to build compared to the management team: The laboratory definition of a team is “a small group of people working together toward a common goal” — laboratory being the operative word here because most of the definitive research conducted on team dynamics occurred in lab experiments.

Researchers would give randomly formed groups various tasks to accomplish together and then observe their dynamics. The famous four-phase model (forming, storming, norming, and performing) by Bruce Tuckman [1] followed from such experiments.

Of all the groups you hope would develop effective team dynamics, the project team is most like the groups in that original research. Think about some key similarities:

1. A collective focal point for the group that requires their collective effort,
2. A clear beginning, and,
3. A clear ending.

These three similarities create what I sometimes call a “container” (or even a “vessel” as in “get the individuals feeling like they are in the same boat together”). This is an excellent recipe for successful engagement and effective dynamics to emerge. In a healthy organizational culture and with some good basic facilitative support or servant leadership, many project teams will develop fairly effective dynamics.

So why are management teams, staff groups, and departments so much more of a challenge to build?

Because they don’t fit the laboratory definition of a team. They seldom have:

1. A collective focal point for the group that requires their collective effort,
2. A clear beginning, and
3. A clear ending.

What’s a team-minded manager to do?

Do you want to know the most basic prescription for developing effective team dynamics in management teams, staff groups, and departments? Here it is: Develop a rhythm of serial (i.e., one after the other) collective focal points for the group that requires everyone’s collective effort to achieve. The focal points should be realistic, challenging and “winnable” for the group.

For example, you could set monthly (i.e., iterative) group results that cut across and require the collaboration of all members of the management team, staff group, or department. Then shine your biggest spotlight on that collective goal and shine your pen-light on the individual accountabilities. Hold monthly planning meetings to set and plan for these collective targets. Use weekly and daily meetings to adjust plans and focus on the collective targets. And “retrospect” (a term from agile software development for process improvement meetings — see the previous blog post) at the end of every iteration about how you could improve for the next iteration.

With a relatively healthy organizational culture and a little facilitative support and/or servant leadership, your management teams, staff groups, and departments will naturally develop effective team dynamics if they are challenged to work together — and high-performance results should accrue. That’s how you build successful, dynamic, collaborative leadership and happy team members.

Reference: 1. Tuckman, Bruce. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin, 63, 384-399.

Christopher Avery helps leaders worldwide to operate their business — and lives — far more productively and successfully. Find additional resources to master leadership and build responsible teams at ChristopherAvery.com and The Leadership Gift.

This video speaks for itself.

To learn more about the Knowledge Team Leadership workshops Christopher Avery offers, please go here.

It’s my birthday and this year I’m giving the gifts…

Shared Responsibility

It’s a tough business environment. You and I know that responsibility isn’t about what happens to you but what you do about it—how you respond…

I’m responding by inventing new ways to help you master your natural source of freedom, choice, and power—your Responsibility Process.

You should not have to stop developing yourself or your team or employees. So let’s call it an act of shared sacrifice and shared responsibility during these tough times…

What Gifts?

If you are on my eTips list, I’ll send you a link for a cool free download everyday for a week…

• new poster PDFs
• audio MP3s on teaching responsibility
• special reports on building your team leadership skills
• mp3 and ebook on Clarity, Focus & Concentration
• and more…
  

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Call me insane, but, well…Everything.

For one week. Take advantage now. This offer ends Tuesday, April 7, 2009 and this post comes down…

How do you get 50% off?

Copy this coupon code (4/7/09 – Sorry – sale over – coupon removed) then enter it at check-out after selecting any of these items:

The Journey to Responsibility DVD-based Workshop for your business:

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How to Teach Responsibility to Anyone (and Master Your Life in the Process)

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What about private services?

Want to immediately change the conversation in your business about leadership and responsibility with a powerful keynote, meeting starter, or workshop?

Or are you ready to dramatically increase your leadership power and ability with leadership mentoring from Christopher for you or your entire leadership team?

How about a multi-part tele-seminar for your leaders (easy fees and no travel) applying personal and shared responsibility? Potential topics:

• How to Build Any Team Any Time
• Powerful Partnering Practices
• The Perfect Problem Breakthrough for Leadership Power
• Building a Culture of Responsible Leadership on a Shoestring
• Managing Responsible Change
  

Let’s talk

1. Download Christopher’s information kit (including fees schedule)
2. Then call  +1 830.995-4853  x102 to discuss. Proposal delivered in 24 hours.

For business confirmed in a week with the usual deposit, we’ll be pleased to discuss attractive discounts.

What Do You Think?

Comments?

No kidding.

Here’s a few related views based on my experience studying team development—so I could teach it to others—since 1990:

1. Team building used to be the domain of consultants and managers. No more. Every professional today must know how to build any team any time or their own performance is at peril. Why? Today’s work world is a world of shared responsibility where your own credibility and paycheck ultimately depends on what you do with others over whom you have no control.
2. It’s not about being competitive or cooperative. It’s about understanding simultaneity. Simultaneity is a fancy word referring to simultaneous forces. In the case of team it means that every relationship experiences simultaneously cooperative and competitive forces and whether someone cooperates with you or competes with you is based on their notion of winning in that situation.
3. It’s also not about liking each other and getting along — although there is a huge place for goodwill, cooperation, and mutual respect. There is something much more important in producing the wonderful high performance team dynamics we so appreciate. And that’s the shared task (or mission, goal, objective, target, etc.). The primary predictor of a group of people coming together as a cohesive team is that their individual future wins are connected to a collective win. Science refers to this as “outcome interdependence.” You and I call it being in the same boat together. When we are in the same boat together we will learn to deal with people who are different, or who we don’t like.
4. A “common enemy” is a cheap and easy way to get people to feel that they are in the same boat together. That’s why competitive games are so popular as team-building events, even if people don’t understand how to transfer the learning because they misunderstood the first principles being applied (because the designers misunderstood the first principles being applied). The dynamic of a common enemy produces all the harmful results mentioned in The Chief Happiness Officer’s post: It makes groups insular. Creating value isn’t important, only beating the other group. And so on.
5. A shared task that draws people together meets this criteria: What must we do that is bigger than any of us, requires all of us, and none of us can claim individual victory until it is done?
6. A built team is the result of five conversations, conversations that I collectively refer to as the Team Orientation Process. My view is that every professional needs to have a basic understanding of this process so they can build any team any time.

Related Posts

Collaborative Leadership Basics, Part 4: Keys to the Boat — Generating Positive Interdependence in Groups

If you share responsibility to get things done with others…

Team Rewards

Collaborative Leadership Basics, Part 8: Keys for Creating Designer Norms in Teams

Related Free Resources

Responsibility eTips (e-newsletter). Twice a month, generally one issue is focused on understanding and developing individual responsibility and the next looks at understanding and developing shared responsibility.

AskChristopherAvery.com (fee live 50-minute tele-class). Once a month I answer your burning questions about Responsibility Redefined and Teamwork Is An Individual Skill on a free live 50-minute tele-clinic.

Related Resources

Teamwork Is An Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility (Berrett-Koehler, $19.95). My book on how to be successful when you are in shared responsibility situations.

Knowledge Team Leadership: The Art and Science of Being Amazingly Effective in any Team (seminar).  My three-day intensive training designed to give you the mindset to confidently build any team any time, whether a partnership of 2 or a team of 100.

Christopher – Thank you, thank you, thank you. I knew you were a great facilitator and coach, but you exceeded my expectations. After we finished everyone basically said the same things: “Way beyond my expectations,” “Just what we needed,”  “Outstanding,” and “I am so glad we did this.”  We accomplished all the goals I had for this meeting and more. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help in getting my reign as president off to a great start. I look forward to working with you as we move forward and hope that we can get you back to work with us again.

It’s a closely held company in the business of supplying heat exchangers (radiators, oil coolers, etc.) to the US automotive industry. They have a long history of steady growth, a move over the last decade toward establishing regional customer support centers staffed with engineering and sales, and a series of manufacturing joint ventures in China having visited—get this—approximately 5000 Chinese companies since 1990 to find potential partners with compatible values.

The company has a solid foundation on which to build. 

The gentleman who has been COO for the last few years is a long-time friend of mine. A few months ago he called to say that he was going to become CEO and President and wanted to shift the culture of the company toward his theory of management which is derived from Jim Collins blockbuster book Good to Great.

One of the first concerns was that the company did not believe in coaches, nor in leadership collaboration. The longtime outgoing CEO was established as a hero and the company revolved around him. This is the type of level three or level four leadership Jim Collins says can fuel growth but not create sustainability because the charismatic genius leader gets things done through his or her brute will and clever cunning, but does not build a culture of responsible leadership or a sustainable values-based system for getting things done.

Having a Theory of Management

So I dug into Good to Great while pestering my friend with questions about whether it is really his theory of management, and if so, how committed he is to it over the long run. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was very committed to it. To quote him: “I can’t maintain my passion around heat exchangers, but I can get passionate about spending the rest of my career building a great company with great people, customers, and suppliers . . . which happens to be in the heat exchanger industry.”

The phrase “theory of management” wasn’t his term. It was mine. Many years ago I realized that most leaders do not know what their own theory of management is. They obviously have one, even if subconscious, because they show up and do stuff everyday they refer to as “leadership” and “management.” And what they do has recognizable patterns, so you could infer that they aren’t operating randomly and must be enacting some internal “theory of management.” So when I coach executives I pester them to own, develop awareness, and confront what their theory of management is and to enact it consciously. When my friend read Good to Great he found his theory of management and knew it.

What’s your theory of management?

How Responsibility Redefined supports Good to Great

Jim Collins and his researchers uncovered what they call “Level Five” leadership. A Level Five leader taps into—to use my words—Responsibility Redefined. Whereas a Level Four leader can move huge numbers of people to accomplish great things, their downfall is their attention on themselves and their lack of building a sustainable culture. Lee Iacocca was used throughout the book as an archetypal Level Four leader. But a Level Five leader draws less attention to self and more attention to the shared responsibility to forge ahead.

Employing the exquisite “Window or Mirror” metaphor, Collins says that when things go well, a Level Four leader looks in the mirror and preens and announces how smart they are. And when things go wrong, a Level Four leader looks out the window and blames other people and circumstances, and never accepts responsibility for their own actions.

However a Level Five leader looks out the window when things go well and attributes their own success to being surrounded by great people and to being in the right place at the right time, i.e., luck. And when things go wrong a Level Five leader looks in the mirror and accepts 100% responsibility for making poor decisions or inappropriate assumptions or actions.

So it turns out that Responsibility Redefined is a core component of going from Good to Great.

Easy Executive Change

by Christopher M. Avery, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

Want to make change a lot easier on yourself and develop a winning and happy organization at the same time? It might be easier than you think. I’ll tell you how.

Last week was Agile2007, the annual conference for those practicing agile software development. It attracts mostly developers and project leaders, but more and more executives are attending with an interest in applying the principles of agile enterprise-wide. One of my missions last week was to attend sessions from Monday through Thursday morning that promised good content on agile leadership, agile organization, or agile enterprise. Then, on Thursday afternoon, I invited attending executives to a 3.5-hour think tank to consider how to apply agile principles to make change easier for executives.

First, a fast consensus was reached among the VPs, CTOs, and directors in the room on the major risk. It shouldn’t surprise you, but if you had not thought about it, it’s time to start:

• An agile front line — i.e., development teams — with a traditional management approach (read “silo” mentality and culture) over them is not sustainable.
• An agile development environment deserves and requires a collaborative executive leadership that treats change as easily as does the front line.

On these points, everyone agreed. What was interesting to us is that the messaging to executives from agile folks during these growth years has been about selling decision makers on the value of agile development in order to increase adoption of the practices. What is different with the consensus reached in our think tank is that for agile development practices truly to be adopted, executive teams must become more agile as well.

Where development organizations practice agility and the executive management operates traditionally, the organization will develop an invisible inversion layer between the two different contexts (the agile front-line context and the traditional management context) such that very little information, truth, or trust crosses between the contexts. Development managers will be pinched in-between and do their best to operate in both worlds, but will be increasingly seen as incompetent by each world for their inability to make things happen in the other.

Why?

One excellent way to view this is to examine how each context (or “world”) understands change. Let’s start with the traditional management world. It views change as an event to be managed. This context actually avoids change in an effort to remain efficient. Then when the altered environment presses in, the traditional management decides that a change is needed. They name it (e.g., “Quality Leadership 2010″), mandate it, program it, assign a change team, role out the change infrastructure, sell the change, and overcome the expected resistance. Thus change is an event to be managed from the before state to the after state. I’ve written about this at length in a Cutter Executive Report called ” Responsible Change,” (Vol. 6, No. 10).

The shorthand we reached in our Thursday session for this mentality is “change as a noun” because of it being a named event on which everyone focuses and pushes. Success is, of course, declared at the end of the event.

So what about change in the agile world? The principles and practices in agile development generate a mentality where change is easy, expected, and continuous — no big deal. The time-boxed iterations, value focus, backlogs, retrospectives, and so on, all work together to make change a verb rather than a noun. Change is achieved as a matter of course. It is not focused on, not resisted, not named, not programmed, and not sold. The discipline pulls change into each iteration, each daily stand-up, each release, and each retrospective. The result is that great value is produced rapidly, and work ceases when the value stops flowing from it. We began referring to this world as “change as a verb” because of its emergent nature.

How?

This group of executives examined agile principles and practice and recommended steps any executive team can take to make change easy and amplify success. First, they suggest setting up a meeting rhythm like that in agile development process. Such a rhythm includes daily stand-ups, iteration planning, retrospectives, and the like. This facilitates cohesion, transparency, information sharing, dealing with reality, and building trust. Then you add in priority backlogs so you can get a shared sense of priority and the ability to measure executive team velocity. Executives can pair, too, on initiatives to drive innovation and learning.This may sound too straightforward and simple to be true, so what’s the catch? The catch is confronting yourself about what it means to be a successful executive and executive team.

I’ll be happy to help you with that!

I’ve had lots of fun writing these monthly advisors and am going to take a break for a while. I’m still interested in receiving your questions. Write me at cavery@cutter.com.

Sincerely,
Christopher M. Avery, Senior Consultant
Agile Product & Project Management Practice
E-mail: cavery@cutter.com

And of course you can write me at ChristopherAvery@ChristopherAvery.com but I bet others would like to see your comments here.

Easy executive change is an issue I’ll be working on. What do you think?

Eight other partners and consultants of Provins Fem attended the dinner. I was treated to a ritualistic celebration of Provins Fem birthdays. Three different colleagues were celebrated with song and gift. The fascinating thing was that they sang in the honoree’s native language. We sang in English, Danish, and Swedish. I should say “they” sang in Danish and Swedish. I hummed along.

I mentioned “effective” versus “efficient” and one of the consultants stopped me for a quick language check — as they had done all week when I used language they did not understand (such as “hold my feet to the fire”… that metaphor did not translate to “accountability” for them…so it’s a good thing they asked about that one too).

I learned that Swedes do not get hung up on the difference between  being effective and being efficient. At first I was puzzled about that. Then I thought about how much better life might be for us Americans if we did not have a word for the concept of efficiency, only effectiveness. After pondering that for awhile I decided Swedes were lucky.

P.S. What’s with the picture? Walking yesterday I saw some bikes locked to some type of conduit five feet above the ground on the side of buildings. This one looked to be very clean. If you look very closely — double-click on the image — you will see that the chain is sparkling clean and shiny with no rust or grime or grit — quite the efficient drive chain. I just wondered if the wheels were stolen or smartly stowed by the owner. Efficient and effective? Or just efficient?