Latest / UNLEASHED By LoyaltyOps / How Your Team Becomes a Force Multiplier
Transcript
- Mickey Anderson: There's quiet pattern in the return to office debate that nobody's really naming. Now the workers resisting return to office know what they're resisting, going into the office to do the exact same thing they were doing from home, logging in, doing tasks, sitting in on updates, and working in parallel to the people around them. The leaders pushing RTO are also picking up on something missing in their teams, but the fix that they're choosing is the wrong one. What's actually missing is a structure that turns those capable individuals working in parallel into a true team. And a building is not going to do that for you. Remote, hybrid, and on-site teams all face the same challenge. Without intentional structure, none of them collaborate. They work in parallel and call it teamwork. In the next 10 minutes, I'm going to show you the meeting that turns parallel work into force multiplication, why it works the same in any model, and how to redesign one meeting in your calendar this week. Let's dig in. Most of us have been in this scenario where you've got a group of capable people working alongside each other. You're all good, you're all smart, you're all hardworking, you all have KPIs, but none of it really comes together. And you're not really seeing the results you want to. Whether you're the person on the team, the leader of a function within an organization, or the leader of an organization, you've probably seen this pattern. And most of the time we call it a people problem or a technology problem. Or we throw some other label on it. But the truth is you just haven't tapped into the potential and the opportunity that you have in front of you. Now, I like to call this a game of telephone because here's what usually happens within an organization. We've got leadership team at the top. They are setting priorities, setting your KPI targets, and then they break and the leaders of each function go down and tell their team the plan. Here's our targets, here's our priority, here's what you're gonna do. Go. Team takes that and start to execute and they hit bumps and the work gets real and they're missing a ton of the bigger context, how their work connects to the other work that's happening, who's doing what, how it all fits together, and what we're actually working for. Without that context, they're gonna self-protect and just keep doing the task that they know how to do the way they know how to do it and hope that someone else has the big picture and can put it all together. Now, what happens here is we've got context and priority at the top. And then a version of that split down, distributed into each function, and then a version of that down into each individual. And we're missing the gaps between each of those and how they fill in together. And each person's goals, priorities, and tasks are filtered through their own reality. This game of telephone happens regardless of how you work, whether you are fully remote, hybrid, or on site. I see it in every different organization, regardless of how they're structured. You've got great people doing their thing, but the only real meetings that you're having are updates, are here's where we stand on our KPIs and the problems we're facing, and accountability meetings. We're not actually collaborating and getting that force multiplication of putting those heads together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. We've got information losing fidelity at every handoff. And the teams are operating all without any context. Now, this is all about how priorities and context move from the top down within an organization and the bottom up, as well as cross-functionally across the organization. The team ends up sticking their head in the sand because they only know what they know and they're hopeful that someone else has figured it out. But honestly, not my circus, not my monkeys. I know what I'm paid to do. This is my role here. I'm going to do it. And so we have this lack of ownership and accountability that many leaders feel and can name. They can't quite figure out how to address the problem. Maybe they hire new people, maybe they work hard on accountability meetings, but none of it seems to really produce that ownership and accountability and drive that we want to get out of our people. And so we think, hey, we'll throw them all in the same building and force them to work together. But that's not solving the problem. Workers are resisting this because they know what they're walking into. It's the same situation as it was before, just in four walls. Now there's another effect that this has. Where every problem, every decision that's out of context for the team ends up escalating to the leader, who they assume has more context, who only has a silo of that and may have to escalate again and again. And we end up with this leadership decision making bottleneck syndrome that creates resistance, that creates friction, that slows down work and reduces capacity of our leaders to do what they should be doing and frustrates everyone from every perspective within the organization. Now, a force multiplier is a team that produces more than the sum of its parts. And I'm not talking metaphorically, I'm talking literally. It's when you've got the output of five people collaborating and working together is going to be larger than the five people, than what they would typically produce alone because they are working together. Here's what it looks like in practice. We've got a head of marketing, a head of sales, a head of customer service, and a head of engineering in a room together, reviewing the customer journey. And within 15 minutes, they're able to identify the messaging that marketing is using isn't landing with the buyer profiles that sales are targeting and talking to. And the roadmap of features that engineering has doesn't address those pain points identify. And what they're able to do is get around a table, collaborate, share context on who's doing what and how we see it together, what the goal is, what the problem is, and then identify a solution with shared context and understanding. They can identify risks others don't see, bottlenecks, challenges, assumptions that they might be making, and be able to push a project forward into execution with better outcomes faster than had they each just done it their own in their own departments. There's a psychological pattern underneath all of this. When people are in a situation where there's uncertainty and there's high accountability in the mix, without context to navigate it, we self-protect, we narrow scope. We focus on what we can control and we put our head in the sand ultimately. We avoid the parts of work that look like risk that we have to coordinate with other people where we haven't been brought into the conversation because there's danger there. There's uncertainty there. Better the devil I know than the one I don't. This ends up showing up. As a team that doesn't take initiative, a lack of accountability and ownership, and silos within an organization where problems and solutions aren't shared across functional lines. This also leads to a real cultural issue, as well as hiring challenges and retention problems. It all cascades, but most of the time we only see the symptoms and we can't dig deeper to really understand what we've created here. And we think that pushing everyone into a building is going to make the difference. Now, most organizations have accountability meetings and they have Collaboration meetings. Both kinds have a place. They're both very important, but the problem is the typical ratio we see. The accountability meeting is really a status update. Here's where I stand on my KPIs, on track or off track. Here's what we're working on. Here's some of the problems I'm facing and how we're addressing it. Here's what I'm working on next. That's important. That can also be an email. What we need is to leverage our time better and leverage bringing our people together in a way that actually moves the business forward instead of just giving updates that could have been an email. Now, collaboration meetings are for shared problem solving. And most companies only have these quarterly and they're usually hyper focused on what are our goals and targets for the next quarter. That's not allowing much room for real problem solving and collaboration or really driving the business forward. Now that ratio of accountability meetings to collaboration meetings is backward. What we should be seeing is way more collaboration and the accountability comes in, but it's required less frequently because everyone understands who owns what and what's happening where. Once you flip it, you end up seeing the collaboration meeting producing way more output and value for time. And the accountability meetings are required less often and can be usually done asynchronously, unless there's a problem to flag or a realignment required. Here's what a collaboration meeting actually looks like. I'm going to walk you through the components. We've got an agenda built around the problem or the question that the room has to solve for, rather than a list of updates or tasks or priorities. We have the right people in the room, the people who actually can contribute, who are touched by the problem, who can provide perspective and context that the person leading or being truly directly impacted by the problem might not have. They can share what's already been tried from different places, what they're seeing and feeling from their end, and provide ge great insight and guardrails. Next is context being shared in advance. This is important. We need at least one day advanced notice of the problem we're solving for, who's attending, what we're covering, any additional information or context that would help the people attending contribute better. So it could be what we've done in the past, what we're seeing in the numbers. You can get Everyone to share in advance to the facilitator their context and KPI so that they can put it together and send that out in advance. Great use of time so everyone can review it and show up prepared, knowing what's coming to the table. The collaboration meeting itself has a structure and it's important. We start off by framing the question or problem we're solving for. Doesn't take much time, but the purpose is to ensure everyone is clear on exactly what we're solving for in this meeting. Next is sharing context across functions. Allowing everyone to contribute what they're seeing, their interpretation, what they have tried before to give the room everything they need. And this could be a slight summary of what was shared in advance or an opinion or additional information. Then we move into surfacing assumptions, risks, and resources. Here we're talking about what we're assuming about the problem, the impacts about the different departments and functions, the risks we're seeing across the problem and functions within the company. And then the resources we have to play with. What does budget look like? Who do we have to really support us in executing this problem? Then we have building the plan together. This is where we put our heads down and come up with a plan. Who owns what, how we're going to execute, what timelines look like, really plotting out the phases and the ways we're going to address this. And this part may actually take a second meeting. That's okay. Because it will be focused. You will have already done the dirty work of getting the assumptions, the risks, the context shared. So you can truly go in with a plan, understanding resources, understanding assets, understanding risks, and each department can go and speak to their teams to pull in additional information so we can drive that plan. Totally okay to split it up, not always necessary. And then we've got naming commitments. This is where what happens next, who owns what, when it will be done by, where it will be stored, all gets documented and Everyone leaves knowing exactly what their role is and how we're gonna move forward. Now, the deliverable is a decision and a plan on what we're gonna do next, how we're gonna address this problem, how we're gonna continue to collaborate and support each other, when we're gonna meet to ensure we're all on the same page. And if problems come up, how we're gonna communicate them. Now, there's a few principles that help make this meeting really work. There's five that I like to live by on a collaboration meeting I'm gonna share with you. Number one is bringing context, not just direction. You can tell people what to do, but if you don't share the deeper context of what we tried before, what failed, what worked, what we're dealing with, what we're seeing, we're not going to be able to really make a great decision. And a lot of times we end up coming in with opinions that sound like context, but aren't. So it's about reality checking each individual and what they're bringing to the table. Next, number two, define the problem before jumping into solutions. If we're not clear on the problem we're solving for. And all aligned on it, the solutions we come up with are not necessarily going to solve that problem. And so that's incredibly important. It's a waste of everyone's time to jump into solutions, which is our favorite thing to do. Every leader said, come to me with a problem and three solutions. But are we really clear that that's the true problem? Sometimes we need to slow down to speed up. Number three is the right people in the room. You want your key individuals who will contribute to be in the room. And this means not necessarily everyone's going to be in the room. But you do want to bring in some outside perspective and not ignore those quiet functions who you assume aren't touched. We want to give them the opportunity to collaborate and be a part of this if they can truly provide context, information, ideas, solutions that will help. Number four is make decisions visible. This means documenting who exactly owns what, when it will be done by. That way we have a way to track accountability and what will happen if. we miss. So if things go wrong or we start to note that timelines are a little bit tight, how are we going to communicate that things are off and what are we going to do to support each other? I love taking a moment to say, okay, great. Sue owns completing this by that date. Sue, if things start to go off the rails, we want you to notify us by this date so that we can make proper adjustments or collaborate if necessary. Last minute changes are not what we're looking for here. If things go wrong, what are you gonna do to fix it? How are we gonna address this? That allows everyone to really consider what assumptions they're making and what they're committing to. Because sometimes, more often than not, things go wrong. We wanna make sure we've talked through those contingencies so that we're clear on what happens if the targets start to look wobbly, if we start to get behind, if a new priority comes up. How are we gonna address this and make sure that we're all on the same page? Now we don't all have a crystal ball. We can't know Everything that could possibly happen. But we can reasonably bring a group around the room and say, okay, what are some things we think could go wrong here that we should think about, work through? Number five is end with the named commitments. So each person goes around saying, Okay, here's what I'm doing. I will do X, Y, Z by X date. It's a really simple meeting and you get better the more times you do it. But it's so important that context is shared before. You allow time for true collaboration. We don't let it drag on for too long. You need to have a facilitator really holding the room and keeping people on track, and then making sure that you're leaving with clarity of who owns what, what our plan is moving forward, and what we're gonna do if things go wrong. This right here is how you take a group of individuals working in parallel, slowly but surely, turn them into a force multiplying team. It's not always easy and it's not a quick fix, but it will drive incredible results for your organization. And give you a competitive advantage that not many are tapping into. The next decade is going to keep speeding up. AI is going to keep accelerating the work we deliver every single quarter. The human edge for the next decade is coordination, collaboration, and continuous improvement. How we're working together, how we're truly putting our heads together to solve together, and how we're going to keep getting better every single day. The companies that build force multiplying teams are the companies that will compound what AI delivers. Their teams will have the context needed to match the speed AI is giving them without re-escalating every problem to leadership. Companies that skip that will fall behind. Their teams are going to keep working in parallel in different directions faster and faster, and the gaps between them will widen. Speed without coordination becomes chaos fast. Back to the return to office debate. Look. The teams that make the most of this next decade aren't necessarily going to be in the same building. We all know the power of remote work and being able to tap into talent across the world in different time zones and locations. It's incredible. And you bring in diverse perspectives, but for not collaborating and bringing those people in to truly work together, we are not leveraging that power at all. And we're missing out on massive opportunities to create incredible work environments, to create Incredible results and to build incredible loyalty with our teams because they are a part of something bigger and connected to the people they're working with and the mission they're driving towards. Like I said in the last episode, the competitive advantage of this next decade is that recipe. It's how we put all the components together, your tools, your technology, and your people all together working towards building that business that lasts. Here's what I want you to do this week. Pick one meeting on your calendar and you're gonna redesign it to unlock collaboration within your team. We've got five steps. Number one, name the problem you want the room to solve. Number two, invite the people who can contribute, including cross-functional leaders or individuals who can bring in outside perspective to the conversation. Three, send context in advance. You can collect information and insights from everyone and then send out a briefing the day before so everyone has a chance to read it. Go through it and come to the meeting prepared and ready to share. Four, structure the meeting to ensure you've got clarity on the problem first, shared context, risks, assumptions, contingencies addressed, and then move into planning and decision ownership and commitment. Number five, everyone walks out of the room with a named commitment. I will do XYZ, specific and personal. Run this every two weeks and you will be blown away, regardless of whether you're in office, hybrid, or remote. You will be tapping into the problem-solving power of your team in a way you have not yet. And you will be absolutely shocked at the solutions and the speed that your team can move at through this meeting. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Unleashed. I so am grateful for you being here and listening. Be sure to hit that follow button and subscribe so you don't miss another episode and share it with a leader you know who may benefit from getting more out of their team. We'll see you next week.