Focusing Collaboration on What Matters
Shared Goals don’t drive teamwork. The only 2 questions your team needs to ask itself are, “Why does our collaboration matter? “ and “Which work requires it?”
We are talking about the Practices related to the Clarity Imperative. If you don’t know what I mean by the Clarity Imperative, if you haven’t read or listened to any previous blogs or podcasts, you may want to do that before listening to this one. Or, to get some background, you can purchase the book, Lessons from Mars, from your favorite bookseller. In any case right now we are going to discuss the second and third of the three Clarity-related Practices: Inspire Purpose and Crystallize Intent.
A Team Purpose Story
There was a team running the global pet business at Mars. They came up with a powerful statement of their purpose that I want to use as an example of what Inspire Purpose is designed to do. Our Framework didn’t exist when they came up with their purpose. Their statement was one of the things that inspired us as we created the Framework because when we examined it and how they used it, it was clear what a difference a collaborative purpose could make.
Here’s their statement:
“Together we are courageous architects of the future of petcare”.
That might sound like just so many business buzzwords: courageous architects, the future of petcare, etc. In fact, it was a precise articulation of what they were about and the value their collaboration would create. Let me take it apart for you so you can better see how it served them and the power an inspiring purpose can have.
The elements of powerful purpose
This team of global leaders headed up a massive business that represented 40 or 45% of the overall Mars business. They were and still are responsible for a lot, running massive regions like Asia Pacific or heading up global functions of thousands of people. Being spread around the world, and with so much to do, they could only get together physically four times a year. What value could there be in their relatively limited collaboration?
A compelling challenge and a meaningful role
For a start, they didn’t see the day-to-day running of the business and the factories as their collective responsibility; they would focus exclusively on the future of petcare. And not just Mars Petcare. This group of senior leaders would create the future of the entire petcare segment and marketplace. They set this as their collaborative challenge.
They took on a big and inspiring challenge, and that’s not all. They committed to “courageously architect,” the future. First, the word architect: they intended to do more work towards the future. They aimed to design it. And they weren’t going to be average designers or architects. They committed to be courageous, to be bold, to take risks in order to create an innovative new future for the entire petcare marketplace.
Finally, the first word of the statement is “together.” This simple word bound them to do this as a group, as a team. It would be their working together that would make it all possible.
An aspirational and practical team purpose
This statement is not only inspirational and aspirational, it’s also practical. For example, if a topic didn’t deal with the future of the entire petcare segment, if it wouldn’t make a difference to what the segment might look like 5 or 10 years ahead, that topic wouldn’t make it onto their agenda.
They also used their statement in the room during meetings. When they got into discussions and debates, if they were not thinking and acting courageously about architecting the future, they would course-correct. For example, if they were debating what went wrong when a pet food retort machine exploded in Australia, that wasn’t architecting the future; that was micro-managing. When this sort of thing happened – and it did - one of the team pointed to their inspiring purpose statement to bring them back to their shared commitment to courageously architect the future. These are examples of what I mean when I say their purpose statement was not only aspirational, it was practical.
By the way, we have tools in Appendix A of the book designed to help teams develop strong purpose statements. When you get a chance, take a look at them.
Crystallize intent: the What
As strong as the example I provided is, a purpose statement by itself is not enough. You still need to know what the work is. I alluded a moment ago to “what goes on the agenda;” teams use the next Practice, Crystallize Intent, to determine the specific work that will deliver on the promise of their purpose.
They use a tool called the Radar Screen, and it’s the only tool I am going to go over in these Blog posts. It’s simple – three concentric circles. We invite teams to use the Radar Screen to differentiate among all the work they have. At the center of the Radar (which some call the “Bullseye” because the graphic looks like a target) we ask you to put the work that you must collaborate on as a total team. Typically not more than two or three pieces of work that end up in the center circle. What’s more, the bigger the group, the fewer items get placed there.
purposeful work
For a team like the pet care management team we’ve been talking about, their shared work would include things like developing strategy, business planning to implement the strategy, and senior-level talent planning. Everything else will be dealt with by others, elsewhere in the organization.
So, at the center of the Radar is the work that requires all of us to actively participate, and that brings our purpose to life. The next ring out is for work that will be done by sub-groups, committees, task forces - choose your term – small groups doing important work that doesn’t involve everyone on the team. The outer ring is where you would place projects or initiatives that can be done by capable individuals on the team.
Even though they didn’t have the Radar Screen, this is how the pet care management team thought about their work. They differentiated among levels of collaboration – work they owned as a total team, work to be done by subsets of the team and work that individuals on the team would do.
Radar Screen
Work NOT to do
There is one other category to consider, one that lies outside the three rings of the Radar Screen: Not now/not us. When teams do the Radar Screen exercise they use sticky notes, with each sticky note having one task or project on it. They discuss and debate where each task/project belongs on the Radar Screen, what’s the right level of collaboration – if any – that will deliver the most value. Sometimes, a team will find itself with a piece of work that, when scrutinized, is either not needed now or not theirs to do. These go off to the side in the “Not now/not us” category.
Collaborative Clarity
We talked in a previous episode about Clarify Context which provides clarity around the organizational reason a team exists. Today we’ve talked about Inspire Purpose, determining the team’s own why; why is it important for them to act as a team, how will this create value and help them fulfill their commitment to business? Then, we covered Crystallize Intent which is about the “what,” the specific work that requires collaboration.
Now we have set the table, we have the level of clarity we need for this team to be as intentional as possible, to create collaboration that is really on purpose.
I’ll talk about the next Practice, Cultivate Collaboration, which is associated with the Intentionality Imperative, in my next blog post.
