{"id":4796,"date":"2020-10-08T17:04:15","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T17:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dgen.net\/0\/?p=4796"},"modified":"2023-04-05T08:23:07","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T08:23:07","slug":"leadership-learnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/2020\/10\/08\/leadership-learnings\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership Learnings \u2014 team alignment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Given the number of times that people\/startups ask me for insights about team-building (and the fact I&#8217;m building upon them with <a href=\"http:\/\/icebreakerone.org\/\">Icebreaker One<\/a>&nbsp;under lockdown conditions) I thought I&#8217;d try and build up some writing on the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For context, I&#8217;ve created and co-created dozens of businesses.\u00a0I covered some areas of ODI processes in my Nesta report\u00a0 (<a href=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/2018\/10\/28\/can-government-stop-losing-its-mind-2\/\">Can Government stop losing its mind?<\/a>) The ODI experience itself built on a long history of trial and error (mostly the latter) \u2014 ODI was where I felt we had the greatest <strong>scope\u00a0<\/strong>(an <em>open <\/em>institute), <strong>time<\/strong>\u00a0(5-years guaranteed funding) and the right size of <strong>budget<\/strong> (\u00a32m\/y) to help people fully explore different ideas, embracing the vast array of new tools, data, and shifts in cultural norms at play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The right combination of scope, time, and budget was fundamental to the ODI&#8217;s success.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6306\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt-830x553.jpg 830w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt-230x153.jpg 230w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt-350x233.jpg 350w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt-480x320.jpg 480w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/JeremyHeywood-GavinStarks-NigelShadbolt.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><em>Sir Jeremy Heywood, Gavin Starks, Sir Nigel Shadbolt at <a href=\"https:\/\/civilservice.blog.gov.uk\/2016\/04\/27\/open-data-the-revolution-is-here\/\">the ODI in 2016<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To maximise team alignment, I recommend investing a huge amount in communications \u2014 both <strong>internal<\/strong> and <strong>external<\/strong>. At the ODI we invested more (in total) in communications than in R&amp;D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ODI example, illustrated in the chart above, included:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Daily standups (mandatory for everyone, even if remote), max 15 minutes, everyone says one thing: this scaled to over 70 people. We made a &#8216;robot&#8217; with a screen at head-height so that people dialling in were at the right height as well as passing around a laptop so people could see each other.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Weekly 1:1&#8217;s with the startup team, evolving to direct line reports at scale. Shared Gdoc notes with each individual, confidential to just the two of you (30-60 min)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Weekly delivery\/programme\/function meetings (30-60 min).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Fortnightly whole-team meeting (2 hours, no pre-set agenda). Let people bring or unpack the things we&#8217;re missing, then go for lunch as a team.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Six-weekly board meetings: not monthly (too rapid), not quarterly (to slow).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Quarterly offsites: everyone for 2 days. Day 1 reflect, work out what you want to stop doing. Day 2, plan for the next 12 weeks only. Codify plan.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Biannual review: refactor budgets and targets based on facts<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Annual budget: set targets for the next 12 months.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Yes, you can do a standup with <strong>over 70 people in under 15 minutes<\/strong> (note the robot&#8217;s screen on the left in front of the curved meeting room)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/dgen\/20462893049\/in\/photolist-Apc64b-zuscz3-zusc3m-ApbJsm-xbeFbR-rrZq8F-kbbp8A\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/5622\/20462893049_c0484d7685_b.jpg\" alt=\"ODI standup\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Plan for 12 weeks &#8211; is that all?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Very few people can make a 12-month plan and stick to it in most areas. Setting an <strong>annual target<\/strong> and thinking in 12-week sprints is much easier. It doesn&#8217;t mean &#8216;start-stop&#8217; juddering every 12-weeks, but one critical outcome is you can create the opportunity to formally <strong>stop<\/strong> (or pause) doing something that isn&#8217;t getting traction. Halting conditions are as important to delivery as driving to hit targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Without exception, prior to any company offsite, many people would complain that they &#8220;didn&#8217;t have the time&#8221; to take 2 days out, and\u2014uniformly\u2014afterwards reflect that &#8220;that was so valuable&#8221; to help reflect, prioritise and reconnect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As part of our Offsite Day 2, we&#8217;d use a tool (Trello cards) to codify <strong>deliverables<\/strong>, breakdown to <strong>tasks<\/strong>, assign <strong>teams<\/strong>, define <strong>dates<\/strong>.&nbsp; One rule was every card had to have <strong>a title containing a verb<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">My observation (over ~20 years of running companies) is that team alignment has a half-life \u2014 about 12-weeks is all it takes for people to find, dig and dig-in to silos. A 12-week plan help create an intervention in that cycle.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Using the Trello API, and titles with verbs, we could be really succinct and clear about what people were doing and their targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Below is a copy of what was a&nbsp;<strong>public<\/strong>&nbsp;web page detailing everything the organisation was working on and its progress completed. We also had screens (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/dgen\/21543653728\/\">ODI TV<\/a>) around the office with key project summaries, project data \u2014 and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/dgen\/21108404914\">messages<\/a> to visiting delegations \u2014 updated on a rolling basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the snapshot after the end of the year and you can see many things didn&#8217;t get done, were &#8216;halted&#8217; or missed. We didn&#8217;t hide this, we featured it. You can see in the data below that the % of things everyone thought they would do went down by about 10% between Q1 (83%) and Q4 (72%). This is not because we became &#8216;less good&#8217; but &#8230; the size of the team doubled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My interpretation and observations were that with a larger team, people&#8217;s perception of what they could achieve went up, but that increasing team size is non-linear to delivery capacity. The year prior, with a smaller team, the year before, delivery was over 90%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote has-medium-font-size is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Publishing what you are doing in the open can seem terrifying, but done well it can be adrenalising and motivating to the entire organisation. In the ODI&#8217;s case, it let to exponential growth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>We also published our progress against our targets openly, for example<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1400\" height=\"1050\" src=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4815\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite.png 1400w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite-768x576.png 768w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite-1024x768.png 1024w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite-830x623.png 830w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite-230x173.png 230w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite-350x263.png 350w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-dashboard-template-for-slides-2015-01-offsite-480x360.png 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"3264\" height=\"1930\" src=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4797\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard.png 3264w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard-300x177.png 300w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard-768x454.png 768w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard-1024x605.png 1024w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard-830x491.png 830w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard-230x136.png 230w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard-350x207.png 350w, https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-public-dashboard-480x284.png 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 3264px) 100vw, 3264px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">If you are developing your own organisation, start with a question: what is the right combination of scope, time, and budget?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Given the number of times that people\/startups ask me for insights about team-building (and the fact I&#8217;m building upon them with Icebreaker One&nbsp;under lockdown conditions) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,35,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-culture","category-startups"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ODI-Guide-communications.001.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfJFK3-1fm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4796"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6328,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796\/revisions\/6328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgen.net\/0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}