Step 1: Set Up the Basics for Smooth Team Operations

Organizing the team will involve fleshing out the nature of your task, setting goals, and creating the norms, roles, and tools needed for innovation and execution. Norms are the expectations about processes and acceptable behavior in a team. It is important for team members to agree on how to work well together, how to coordinate across disparate geographies, and how to assure continuous improvement. Roles are specific activities taken on by particular individuals. Within a team, roles enable team members to distribute work and ensure that everyone stays on target. Given the huge demands on teams to get a lot of work done, it is imperative that multiple tools like agendas, priority lists, and work plans be used to help organize that work. Here are some methods for setting up the team to operate smoothly.

Define the task:  When you are given a task to perform, it is often not fully formulated. Your team must take the time to create more clarity about what you are going to do. A great way to begin is to have each team member talk about what they think the task is. Sometimes it is easier to start at the end and consider what your final product might be, and then work your way back to what that outcome might require. Define the task by asking specific questions. Does “improving customer relations” mean all customers or just certain markets or geographies? Does it mean coming up with a new strategy, or a strategy plus an implementation plan? Will the plan need to be tested? You should also take the time to identify the assumptions you have made about the task. Are you assuming that you have to create something new? Are you assuming that others will support your ideas, or could there be resistance?

After you have some ideas as to what your task is and what assumptions you have made, go out and check to make sure that key stakeholders within the organization share your view. This group may include other teams, senior leaders, partners, and those evaluating the team. Make changes as you gather this external information.

Set goals:  Once you have a better sense of your task, it is time to think about your goals for the team. Do you want to work as efficiently as possible given your existing workloads, or is this project a priority that comes above all others? Are you going to focus on execution alone, or do you want to work on your own learning and leadership development? Is this team all about work, or do you want to make it a priority to spend time together and have fun? Explicitly talking about what you want to achieve will help to surface differences and get everyone on the same track.

Keep in mind that these goals are tentative and will shift over time as you become more engaged in the task and bring in the views of outsiders. From an external perspective, you will want to make sure that your goals match those of your key stakeholders.

Establish norms:  Norms are expectations about processes and acceptable behavior in the team. These are the written and unwritten rules that guide team behavior. They may cover, for example, how work will be distributed, how decisions will be made, and how meetings will be conducted. Discuss who will conduct interviews, who will do quantitative analysis, and who will write and present the findings. Determine if decisions are going to be made by consensus, majority rule, or a designated leader. Decide how often the team will meet, how people will communicate between meetings, and how to share information. Decide if everyone has to be at a meeting and whether leadership will rotate or stay with one person. Decide whether teams need to meet in person or electronically. Devise ways to periodically reflect on how the team is operating and how to improve. Following reflection, norms may have to be renegotiated or changed.

Assign roles:  Roles are specific activities taken on by particular members. For example, someone should facilitate meetings, making sure the team follows an agenda, has broad participation, and deals with conflicts. A project manager should create a work plan and keep track of who is going to do what, check that milestones are being met, and push members to follow through on their commitments. There should be a cheerleader who keeps people motivated and moving toward team goals—while also urging them to have fun and support the team. These roles can be fixed, or they can rotate to even the load and give everyone a chance to participate.

Roles may also need to change as the task and team membership changes. They can be assigned according to who has the most expertise or based on who wants to learn or hone a skill. From an external perspective, roles may include boundary spanners, people who work across the team boundaries, such as liaisons who communicate with other groups or organizations, or sensemakers, who monitor the external environment for changes. Your team will also need ambassadors and task coordinators. The roles of core members, operational members, and outer-net members must also be considered. Roles may evolve as relationships with external stakeholders do, and as the team moves from exploration to experimentation and execution, and finally to exportation.

Use tools:  Tools help the team work efficiently and effectively. They may be simple to use, like work plans, or involve sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Take advantage of meeting management tools and online spaces for sharing data confidentially. Use work plans to track who is doing what and by when (see table 6-1). Use statistical packages to find key themes in interview data and to determine statistical significance in survey data. Use the checklists at the end of the chapter to make sure that you are building an effective team. Identify online tools that can track customer interactions, sales and manufacturing data, and revenue attainment. Find AI tools that can help the team monitor participation and send cues about processes and when to do which tasks. Examples include Basecamp, Monday, and Oracle NetSuite for project management and Asana, JIRA, and Trello for collaboration. Consult your IT department for their help in choosing the tools that are appropriate for your team.

Step 2: Create an Environment of Psychological Safety

Team members should work together to create an environment in which people trust each other and feel safe enough to be candid and take risks. Research shows that this safety is key for getting team members to share information that the team may need and for getting full participation from everyone.¹ It is important to build psychological safety not just within the team but also with the most important external stakeholders that the team engages. For example, if the internal team exhibits psychological safety but external relationships are toxic, this will lead to tension within and across boundaries. Here are some ways to create the safety that’s so essential.

Encourage candidness:  Show team members that they can be candid and honest. For example, you might want to set aside time before each decision to ask people to be open about their doubts and concerns. Or during each meeting you might want to assign one person to poll members about what could go wrong if the team did everything it had committed to. Agree to critique what people do, not who they are, and ask quiet members whether they simply have nothing to say or if they feel inhibited about speaking up. These techniques can also be used with team partners to make sure that everyone feels free to participate.

Think outside the box:  Encourage the team to be open to new ideas, no matter how strange they might seem. Innovation requires that people feel safe offering suggestions that may be outside the norm but may spur creative thought. Others in the team should commit to listening to new and different ideas and should try not to dismiss them too quickly. Innovation starts with creative and wild ideas that then get adapted to a particular structure.

Reflect on your behavior:  Build in time during each team meeting to talk about what went well during the meeting, what did not go so well, and what members want to change going forward. Be sure to consider whether people feel safe in communicating doubts, new perspectives, wild ideas, and minority views. Keep a record of what is discussed and start the next meeting with a summary of what changes the team decided upon to improve safety going forward.

Step 3: Establish a Culture of Learning

Building a psychologically safe environment sets the stage for engaging in learning activities. However, team members need to take additional steps to ensure that learning actually happens. Learning is particularly challenging in exponentially changing environments because team members must execute at the same time as they absorb new knowledge.² Here are some ways to establish a learning culture.

Create explicit learning processes:  The path to engaging in learning is similar to the path to building psychological safety—it starts with establishing processes. For example, you might want to set aside time in team meetings to share new knowledge and information related to the work. You might want to start by identifying when you are going to rely on existing knowledge and when you are going outside the team to learn new things.

Set up tools for gathering and exchanging information:  Team members are rarely all in the same room, yet the need for learning never stops. Therefore, it is critical to have an information system that can catch concerns, questions, and lessons learned on the fly. For example, teams can create a channel in a collaborative platform dedicated to learning.

Collect information:  Once tools for gathering information have been set up, team members should be invited to contribute. For example, members might be encouraged to capture process and performance data, but they should also record their questions, concerns, mistakes, and ideas.

Foster continuous reflection:  The objective of collecting information will depend on the context. In highly uncertain and innovation-driven environments, the goal may be to generate better ideas. In more routine environments, the purpose may be to understand what goes right and what goes wrong, and to prevent repeating mistakes. Either way, reflection needs to be disciplined and consistent to create the “muscle memory” for effective learning.

Now we move on to exploring the external processes that teams need.

Step 1: External Sensemaking

It’s essential to go outside of your organization to get ideas and information about your task. Although you may think that you understand your issues, the key to creativity is to see a problem through new eyes, bringing new information and viewpoints to the table. You should consider finding out how other companies solve your problem and how they react to customer needs, market and technology trends, and competitive threats. In addition, you should look within your organization for pockets of expertise and information that might be relevant to your project. The nature of your external sensemaking will depend on the project. A team that is considering opening up a new retail business will need to speak to analysts, traders, customers, marketers, and economists, while one considering ways to shift the company strategy and structure will want to speak to firms that have different configurations or that have recently experienced change. In both examples, team members will need to look both within the firm, to assess who else has considered these issues before and what knowledge they can add, and outside the firm to learn from others. Here are some methods for external sensemaking.

Seek expert advice:  Look for experts who have information about your task/problem domain, and schedule time to talk to them. You should consider speaking with analysts, academics, and consultants. Ask them about their current approach to your project domain, their list of key experts in this area, and which companies exhibit cutting-edge practices. Also ask who has been leading the way until now and who they think will be leading in the future—and whether they’re willing to make introductions to these people so that you can continue your sensemaking. Find out what market, technology, political, and economic trends will impact your work.

Before scheduling these interviews, do a thorough search on the web to see how you can deepen your knowledge about who the key external experts are and what they know. Hone your questions accordingly. When you have finished collecting information, make time to share your findings with the rest of your team and look for patterns and trends. Sensemaking requires new information—but also a way of interpreting and mapping that information.

Get customer perspectives on your project:  The word customer here can be replaced by contractor, partner, supplier, or any other key constituent who is important to your project output. Interview current customers and ask about their satisfaction with the status quo as well as their dissatisfaction. Find “lead users” who are demanding the most innovative solutions and find out why they chose your product and which competitors’ products they considered. If you can, talk to customers who have left your company: Which competitor did they go to and why? Talk to customers that you want to attract, too: What are the problems they are trying to solve? What kinds of solutions would they be willing to buy? Provide some prototype solutions to them and ask if any of these would compel them to come to you. Then get together as a team and decide how these findings should influence your project. If possible, capture customer voices in quotes, audio, or video to make your case stronger.

Map your competitive landscape:  Use a variety of information sources to better understand who your major competitors are now and will be in the future. Who are the key players, and how do they compare to you? What are these companies planning in your project domain? Are there new startups that are about to enter the marketplace? What do they offer that you do not? Are there new business practices or models that might threaten your strategy? Are there companies that you might want to acquire or partner with to stay ahead of the innovation curve, or to gain a foothold in a new market?

Engage in vicarious learning:  Ask your contacts within the organization for the names of people who have worked on similar projects in the past. Find these people and ask them what worked and what didn’t, who helped and who hindered them, and what lessons they would pass on. Search out additional experts in the organization and the larger ecosystem and ask for their opinions about what you are doing and how you are going about it. Solicit feedback and advice. Bring in the perspectives of people from all functions and divisions of the organization, from upper to lower levels and from the front end to the back end. Repeat the analysis with people outside of the organization who have done what you want to do. Using interviews, surveys, and observations, combine the input of others and analyze them to determine trends and opinions. Use this analysis to rework your task and goals.

Take a new read on your corporate structure, politics, and culture:  You need to keep your finger on the pulse of changes in the organization so that your actions are congruent with these new directions. Consider the organization’s strategic design, political dynamics, and organizational culture.

Step 2: Ambassadorship

Ambassadorship is all about gaining sponsorship from a network of leaders so that you have a greater chance of success. As such, your team needs to establish relationships with various leaders from the very start of the project. Explain to them the task and goals you have set, and get feedback on—and try to get buy-in for—what you’re doing. You should strive to align your project with strategic initiatives and to lobby for resources and support from both allies and adversaries. Here are some methods for ambassadorship.

Meet with leaders who have strategic linkage to your project:  Discuss your plans for the team and ask how well the plans fit with current priorities in the company. Also, ask if the leaders have any suggestions or recommendations for changing your plan to better fit with strategic initiatives. Ask for their support for your project and whether they think you should talk to anyone else to get input and buy-in. If they suggest getting in touch with others, see if they can introduce you. If there are areas of disagreement with these leaders, push for those issues that your team members are most passionate about.

Be a cheerleader for your project throughout the organization:  Think creatively about how you can present your ideas and progress throughout the team’s life. Use graphs, videos, pictures, quotes, stories, and numbers to back up your claims and to bring your ideas to life. Let some leaders preview your recommendations to make sure they are on board. Use feedback to improve your presentation. Think about framing your ideas in terms of where there is “pain” if nothing is done and where there is “gain” if your project succeeds.

Keep communicating throughout your project:  You do not simply want to get input from multiple leaders and then disappear until you are finished. Continue to update your sponsor and others on your progress and continue to consider their feedback and ideas. If you are having difficulties, ask for help, whether it is in the form of resources, connections to others, or information about new initiatives.

Step 3: Task Coordination

Just like the saying “no man is an island,” no team is an island. Teams need to search for pockets of information, resources, and expertise that may be relevant to their project. Collaborating with other teams and brainstorming ideas with other groups allows teams to build on existing expertise and workflows, thus creating synergies across the organization. To do so requires significant coordination. This may involve getting commitments from people who can assist your team and setting expectations and schedules for joint work so that everyone knows what inputs are needed and by when. Here are some ways to do task coordination well.

Identify relevant individuals and groups inside and outside of your company:  Seek out people who have something that your team might need—know-how, expertise, ideas, services—and ask for their help in formulating what you might do and how to do it. Determine if it makes sense to work together. Then think about people who will be the recipients of the team’s work. Begin to develop these relationships and ask what you can do to facilitate the transition.

Create synergies across the organization:  Explore options for leveraging existing initiatives and offerings to create efficiencies and economies of scale and scope. For example, if you are looking for new retail opportunities in Europe and another team has already established a plan for the clothing market, determine if there are ways for your team to use the same designers or to sell in the same retail chains. Could you work with others to have multiple offerings for a new set of customers or additional offerings for established customers?

This chapter has identified both the internal and external activities needed to create an effective x-team. If you are planning to set up an x-team or x-ify an existing team, these six steps can provide a useful guide to help you get there. Next, we provide a shortened checklist that summarizes the steps and can serve as a tool for x-teams to track their progress.

Checklists for X-Teams

So far in this chapter we have laid out all of the things that x-team members have to do to be effective. Not all teams will need to do everything, so choose what is most important for you and your task. Below we offer a brief checklist for each of these activities to give x-teams a quick way to check on whether they are engaging in the necessary activities.

Checklists for Creating a Robust Internal Environment

Set up the basics for smooth operation

DEFINE THE TASK

• Identify what members think are the major tasks and deliverables for the team.
• Determine what assumptions underlie these perceptions of the task.
• Check your view of the task and core assumptions with key stakeholders.
• Edit and revise the tasks and deliverables based on external feedback and on what you discover when shifting from exploration to experimentation and execution to exportation.

SET GOALS

• Identify key goals for the team—including goals for the task, people, innovation, and learning.
• Make sure that everyone, both inside and outside the team, is on board with these goals.
• Where there are differences of opinion, discuss and revise the goals as needed.
• Check in with external stakeholders over time to make sure that you are communicating the team’s progress and problems, as well as changes to the goals and deliverables.

ESTABLISH NORMS

• Set norms around work, decision-making, meetings, and values.
• Think about ways to enforce those norms and deal with violations.
• Assess norms periodically to determine how well they are working, which ones to keep, and what to do differently going forward.

ASSIGN ROLES

• Establish roles such as facilitator, project manager, and cheerleader. Also, establish the roles to take on sensemaking, ambassadorship, and task coordination.
• Determine who would best serve in these roles, whether because they are experts, have the required connections, or want to develop new skills.
• Assess roles periodically to determine who is well suited to take them on, whether they should be rotated, and how best to shift when change is needed.

USE TOOLS

• Identify tools that can help with running meetings, monitoring tasks, and assessing how well the team is achieving its goals.
• Try out new tools as well as established ones to make sure your team is benefiting from the latest ones that fit member needs.
• Assess tools periodically to determine how well they are working, which ones to keep, and what to do differently going forward.

Create an environment of psychological safety

ENCOURAGE CANDIDNESS

• Establish processes that encourage people to communicate what they are truly thinking and feeling but are afraid to express.
• Agree to critique ideas, not people.
• Try to create a culture of psychological safety not just within the team but with all stakeholders.

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

• Encourage members to think big and offer up wild ideas.
• Make sure you react in a way that is open and supportive. Even if you disagree with a new idea, give yourself time to digest it and fairly evaluate it.
• Encourage external stakeholders to offer their ideas and perspectives with the knowledge that they will be taken seriously.

REFLECT ON YOUR BEHAVIOR

• Establish reflection time at the end of meetings to assess how well psychological safety has been created within the team and with outside partners.
• Watch your own reactions to determine if you are getting in the way of psychological safety.
• As you collect information in safety check-ins, brainstorm ways that you can improve and set targets for change.

Establish a culture of learning

CREATE EXPLICIT LEARNING PROCESSES

• Provide process guidelines that help team members share new knowledge.
• Identify gaps in knowledge that require learning.
• Build in time to reflect by using check-ins at the beginning of each meeting and check-outs at the end to see what members have on their minds and to set a process in which everyone in the team speaks. These conversations can go hand-in-hand with discussions about psychological safety.
• Schedule an offsite day with the entire team that’s devoted to reflecting on learning and progress.
• Separate the sharing of new information from making judgments about the relevance of the information, to ensure team members do not self-censor their ideas.

SET UP TOOLS FOR GATHERING AND EXCHANGING INFORMATION

• Select a collaborative platform fit for the purpose of learning. Ease of use is key. Or, if you already use a platform, dedicate one channel specifically to capturing learning.
• Establish norms and best practices for how the platform should be used.

COLLECT INFORMATION

• Invite team members to contribute information to the collaborative platform.
• Provide examples of high-quality entries for guidance.

FOSTER CONTINUOUS REFLECTION

• Set up regular meetings to reflect on the work that has been done by members. This helps people decide how to integrate and interpret information and how to plan for action.
• Take time to make sense of both direct and vicarious experiences. What have you learned by yourselves and what have you learned from others?
• Emphasize that time for reflection is not done at the expense of productivity. In an exponentially changing world, learning and execution are mutually reinforcing processes.

Checklists for Success outside the Team

External sensemaking

SEEK EXPERT ADVICE

• Investigate the problem, issue, or opportunity that you are working on. Learn from others who have already done work in these domains, whether they are inside your organization or are an external expert or competitor. Find out what worked and what didn’t.
• Scan the environment for new ideas, practices, or technologies that may be relevant to your goal.
• Consider who might know about coming trends and find out how their perspectives link to the work you are planning.
• Find out from experts how they view the team’s plans, and see if other stakeholders agree.

GET CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVES ON YOUR PROJECT

• Interview current customers to understand what they like and do not like about your offerings. What are they looking for now?
• Interview new customers that you want to attract. What problems are they trying to solve? What solutions can you provide that might meet their needs? What can be learned about potential solutions from lead users? Get feedback on your ideas.
• Think about who might know what trends will be coming and find out how their perspectives link to the work you are planning.
• Capture what you have learned and spread the word to see who can help to both understand the customer and create new solutions.

MAP YOUR COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

• Work to understand the competitive environment that you are facing.
• Create images of your competitive landscape, highlighting key players, threats, and opportunities now and in the future.
• Think about what changes you will need to make to your goals, given the competitive landscape.

ENGAGE IN VICARIOUS LEARNING

• Find experts who have already done what you want to do. Ask them for the keys to their success and what got in the way. Ask them what they would do differently if they were starting now.
• Compile all the data you collect and look for patterns, trends, and novel ideas that can improve your plans.
• Create a revised definition of your task and what you will need to do to accomplish it. Rework your goals with this new information.

TAKE NEW A READ ON THE COMPANY

• Map your current organizational structure. Who has information, decision-making rights, and skills that you might need? What is the best way for you to work with the formal organization, reward system, and control system? Adjust your work plan accordingly.
• Map your current political structure. Who has power, influence, and resources? Who supports your work and who does not? Use these insights as input for the ambassadorial work that you will do to influence the people you have identified.
• Map your current culture. What are the written and unwritten values? What assumptions exist about how to get things done, what success looks like, how to behave, and how to succeed? Does the organizational culture mesh with what the team wants to do? If not, find a way to resolve differences.

Ambassadorship

MEET WITH LEADERS WHO MATTER TO YOUR TEAM

• Meet with senior leadership to discuss your plans and how well they are strategically linked to organizational goals. Find ways to improve the fit or shift those plans.
• Once you have gotten feedback from senior leaders, discuss how your task and goals may need to change.
• Continue to meet and to negotiate goals until you have the support of allies. Ask senior allies to help garner support from adversaries and others with influence.

BE A CHEERLEADER FOR YOUR PROJECT

• Create compelling presentations about what your team is doing, why the task is important, and what progress you are making. Make sure to get this message out across key strategic networks inside and outside the organization.
• Ask senior leaders to become spokespeople for your team across strategic networks.

KEEP COMMUNICATING THROUGHOUT YOUR PROJECT

• Keep upward communication open, providing information on both the positives and the negatives. If you need help, ask, whether it’s for resources or political influence.
• Ask for information from senior leaders so that you are aware of key events, decisions, and changes that may have an impact on your team’s work. Update your plans accordingly.
• Continue to make sure that the team’s interests and accomplishments are visible to leaders throughout the organization.

Task coordination

IDENTIFY RELEVANT INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS

• Task coordination begins with explicit sensemaking about groups that have potential inputs for the team, or that might take over after the team has finished its work. Evaluate this information and decide who to contact and who to negotiate with for planned interdependencies. Convincing, negotiating, and cajoling may be needed to keep task interdependencies active and working.
• Continuously monitor the larger set of relationships with these external groups to make sure that they are running smoothly in terms of relationships, work schedules, and quality. Check in periodically.
• Take stock of external task coordination to decide if new interdependencies have emerged and need to be managed, and whether existing relationships are still necessary.

CREATE SYNERGIES ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION

• In working on your task and goals, look for solutions that build on synergies with other parts of the organization. Creatively work with others to formulate win-win solutions.
• Continue to meet and to negotiate goals until you have the support of other groups and of senior leaders who must sign on to these new synergies.