Strategyzer Webinar: Save your Innovation Team from Chaos

hello hello welcome everybody my name is nick kimovich and we're going to be starting soon we're going to be starting off with the save your innovation team from uh chaos webinar starting very soon we've got our very own um alex ostervalda and of course stefano mastrogiacomo and dora as well um my pronunciation of your surname is always not the best dora but uh dora ascends i believe i'm so sorry actually that was quiet on spot thank you perfect thank you um and uh yeah welcome everybody we're gonna be just letting people join the call um and then we'll get started in about two minutes but while we're waiting a couple of things maybe grab yourself a very quick cup of coffee or tea make yourselves feel comfortable because this is going to be a really fun hour um there we go we've got the the team up on today's show there's everybody and i'm going to cycle through this a couple a couple times just while we're waiting for people to join it would be lovely to see where you're from so if you could share in the chat box where you're calling from and that would be fantastic too so we can get to know a little bit better and and everybody else dora stefano alex um help me out with the with the with the comments um as well because this is super interesting oh i can see oh i saw italy come up as well prague toronto dubai mexico whoa this is getting very international very quickly this is great um oh and also thailand nice a lot of people from bogota we always have a big group i don't see very many from from africa this time did we see india oh yeah yeah ecuador uk pubs are open in the uk where where are our friends from we often have a good group of people from nigeria nothing nothing today guinea okay there we go good sweet welcome everyone and jen yeah hello jamie i just saw so we've got a series of books as well that i'm sure many of you are familiar with um interested to know how many have you read um have you read all five or just one or two or three or four or five let us know in the chat box as well they're fantastic but we're going to be talking specifically about one of them today all of them recorded wow wow quite a few have five four that's good 2.5 not sure how this maybe in the reading thousands one five good really so those that have just joined um welcome to this webinar saving your innovation teams from chaos we are going to be starting shortly this is the team the on today's show you've got stefano alex um dora and myself we're really looking forward to going into this content we've been preparing this and we're really excited it's really good fun we're following a similar format from the last webinar which was demystified innovation so we had some really good feedback on that and we're looking forward to using some of those segments today again montreal we uh feel free to keep sharing in the chat box where you're calling from for those that have just joined and also let us know how many of these books have you uh read so far between one and five cause it's always nice to see um today's session is going to be completely based off of um this book you may have heard about it high impact tools for teams we've got um the authors themselves here stefano and alex and it's always nice as well to see the books in the wild so i've got a few of the pictures here from people showing their books in the wild beautiful even that guy in the corner as well so feel free as well to share yourself you'll pick your own selfies with the book um using the um at strategizer or um app tools for teams tools with a and then four with a number four and then teams um what else are we going with here um yeah so that's just a bit of fun i know alex and stefano really enjoy seeing when when you tag them um cool um so let's talk a little bit about what the plan is for today first of all what we're going to be doing is going through the team alignment map because that's like most important tool really from the book then what we'll do is we'll go through how to make innovation teams invincible um kind of a play on the um invincible company book then we'll move on to a very popular segment that we've got with hot or not to create some more controversy and conflict uh within the team controversially which is fun um and then we've got the team alignment mini assessment which we'll get into to help us reflect on how can we apply some of this stuff to ourselves immediately and understand where we're at but also understand a little bit more as a collective how we're doing and then lastly we'll go beyond the chaos and share um a little bit more about some next steps as well so that's the plan for today um but today's session is more about the tools for enabling teams to innovate and what we want to do also is is um show that we've got a virtual master class with david bland based off of the book testing business ideas as well and that really goes into the to the innovation tools that you need for the innovation processes so um if you haven't and you'd like to check that out we highly recommend doing that and i think we've got a code here that if you go on the website you can and you plug in this code you can get 10 off so you can't say fairer than that but as i say we're going to be focusing more on the team tools in this session um and just to help make it a little bit more interactive one thing that we can do is um use our phones you can use the qr code and you'll be able to ask questions throughout we'll try and get to a couple of those later on in the session and uh there's some interactive things that we'll be using as well some questions so this will be a great way to do that okay so one question that i have for you if you open up your phones is what teamwork challenges hold your innovation team back so i'd love for you to share that in the um in the mentee meter and then i'm going to open that up now let's have a look and see what some of your answers are [Music] hopefully this is getting slightly more seamless alex is making fun of me about my transitions between slides um while you're putting that up while you're putting that up some people were asking for the uh code for the i'll we'll put that up in a bit for the the testing business ideas yeah that will come back up again so don't worry we'll get that up again and we can always put that in the email maybe at the end as well to help okay so let's go to mentimeter so oh this is exciting so we can see already uh we've got some answers lack of focus interesting to you stefano as well dora uh alex feel free to chip in as well if you see anything that particularly resonates yeah i put it full screen so it animates yeah we'll do okay lack of focus yeah never heard of right here yeah okay okay so we've got common goals opinionated peninnated senior managers um portfolios uh visibility uh communication fear testing i like testosterone competition over ideas for ideas yeah i'm getting alignment on what projects to run well i think you're in the right place yeah yeah we can be classic the silos yeah different beliefs working styles kovid this is one for you stefano right for the physical yeah yeah yeah i don't have covid but i have ideas on how to work remotely focus uncle and clever unclear purpose that's a big one we're going to address and convince supervisors too ceo being opinionated i'm not sure we can do much about that necessarily today but you know we'll try our best so this is super interesting um this i think sets the scene nicely for what we're gonna be doing going forward now stefano i'm going to hand it over to you yep and i think you can share your screen now hopefully absolutely so um a brief introduction about why so much chaos and what we've learned so if you um have a closer look at the type of work we do together now whether we're in a startup journey or if we're managing an innovation project we all understand that we are solving complex problems that requires multiple skills with different backgrounds we have new information coming in every day a lot of surrounding uncertainty that creates a very specific setting in terms of teamwork and in terms also of managing relationships and let me share one personal finding that summarizes uh almost the entire book high impact tools for teams so we underperform when we work around each other and not with each other let me be a bit more specific about uh what i mean by that and we seem to be not so bad at working around each other there has been a study by the harvard business review presented in an article by benham tabrizi that says that 75 of cross-functional teams are dysfunctional one of the things i learned analyzing both my uh own project failures and also the literature is that that mostly occurs ultimately because of two reasons when we engage together in a joint mission with other people we tend to neglect these two important things which are the team climate and the team activities which are the very foundation of teamwork by the way so the first point is what i call the blue pill we tend to neglect the alignment and the mutual understanding that is in the team about who is doing what when for what reason and that that is a matter of sharing the right information and maintaining sufficient alignment on the new information coming in so that every participant can understand what's going on what has changed and contribute at his or her best that is the first big neglect and that's something on which we must work actively if we want to navigate in these uncertain environments and the the the key symptom for that think about your own projects now and your own teams if it's unclear who does what in that project or in that team and why you might suffer from insufficient alignment on the team activities the second uh challenge we have today is what i call the the the red pill is the the the team climate the atmosphere in which we work for multiple reasons might be perceived as unsafe and that is a matter of psychological safety which is a concept that has been uh heavily described and developed by amy edmondson and it's that belief that the team is a safe place for me to take risks and speak up and share my ideas and concerns so that we can learn from our our mistakes etc etc well a lot of things happen in that field and we tend to continue to presuppose that it's okay but while it's not now the team climate and psychological safety is a variation of trust consider trust as the fact of sharing information that makes me vulnerable the psychological safety describes more the climate when you open the door what's your kind of furtist impression when you see the team at work or when uh you join a meeting online and the key symptom for that is when yeah there is fear in the air and it's difficult to speak up uh it's rational to stay silent sometimes uh if i don't want to look ignorant uh because i don't know well i tend to stay silent if i don't want i don't want to appear intrusive then i will also remain silent and all that is a rational behavior that typically expresses a lack of psychological safety which shows that the team climate is not safe enough just just one thing to bring in on the other slide right because we're talking innovation today it's even more extreme that fear of failure and innovation or telling the you know telling the boss with favorites idea you know the boss's baby is ugly nobody can do that right but in innovation if you can't do that you're actually going to pursue ideas that are not going to work because we need to make evidence-based decisions so what we already have in normal teams is even accelerated right in innovation teams yeah and there is a direct link between the level of psychological safety in the team and our ability to innovate and that's a key key point alex uh if we don't speak up and we don't feel free to speak up and share idea and challenge the status quo well then we don't enable collective learning and we if we don't enable collective learning we come back to square one which is working around each other and not working with each other and that is what is displayed on this slide so basically we need these two pills like maintain a high level of alignment and a high level of psychological safety or a sufficient level of psychological safety to perform together and get the best out of uh our team especially when being in a startup journey or a an innovation journey if you miss one of these two pills you get very specific type of problems the worst situation of course is when you meet both when you miss both and that's where the team impact is quite low because we are a kind of a set of individuals working around each other so it's called the pseudo team and you want so to kind of enable every team member to do his or her best to boost these two elements in the team and that's what we present in high impact tools for teams a set of tools that help any team member contribute to the creation of these two important elements in the team because as the journeys become more and more complex it becomes difficult not to agree that leadership must become a shared responsibility if we assemble we are a team of specialists we all must co-own co-lead uh uh the the the team and we're all responsible of our joint success and the t the tools that we present just help every team member get kind of something very practical that boosts these two elements and this was for this short intro and now i leave it to dora to present we're going to deep dive a little more into the team alignment map yeah and just just to add to that as well we think the door is like the best person to do this because she does this regularly for strategizer clients and absolutely does a fantastic job and helping them kick start this and use this tool so that's what as a customer success manager so that's why we really thought we've got to bring dora in um not only to explain it but also to give some examples that we'll look at in a second so go ahead dora thanks for the intro nick i'm also very excited to be here let me just quickly share the presentation so we can continue so as nick mentioned i work for strategizer in customer success um i'm in touch every day with clients throughout our deliveries to make sure that we are on the same we're on the same page and we are using the team alignment map as a tool um in order to create this initial alignment not just internally but together with the clients so i wanted to take some time to explain to you two why we find this so valuable and why we're doing this multiple times throughout our deliveries so the team alignment map that we're presenting to you is a co-planning tool basically um it enables the whole team both internally and externally to plan the work um throughout the whole program and to help us and the clients to to allocate resources and reduce the project risks altogether um already at the beginning of the project basically so this is how it looks it looks extremely simple and it's in simplicity really helpful for us in the beginning of the delivery so to kick this off with um this is um a project that we do together with the whole project team internally and with the client stakeholders bringing the whole team together so first it starts with joint objectives you might be familiar with if you have read the book here we define clear high level objectives for the whole team then it continues with joint commitments here we align on the contributions and clarify every team members contributions it continues with joint resources where we add whatever resources we're going to work with or even the lack of such resources actually then we identify already in the beginning at the kickoff some joint risks that might be coming up during the delivery so this is basically a simple two-step process where we set up the team mission the objectives the roles we manage the resources and the risks and then we do a backwards pass on any missing resources and any risks this one this way we can make sure that we mitigate any risks and any missing resource is already at the beginning of the delivery so yeah here we go so it really became a very super valuable tool for us in our deliveries and we wanted to give you an example how it really goes with a real customer example so this is how tmi maintenance looks like and i'm going to do some methods for you to populate these um as a real example of a client we're not going to name today but this is how it goes so first we define the mission it's an innovation sprint for four teams that we are running for the period of 12 weeks um then we designed define the objectives together with the client and the internal team which would be to design and run experiments throughout the sprint to coach teams on the process and to communicate the project goals and the desired outcomes moving on to the joint commitments part we make sure that every stakeholder is aware that this objective is their responsibility to drive throughout the engagement so designing and running experiments is the responsibility of all client participants while coaching the teams on the progress is the responsibility of the strategizer coach communicating the goals and the outcomes would be an executive sponsor task moving on we will define some joint resources what are the resources that we're going to use throughout this whole delivery we agree together with the client that will be using the strategizer platform the reason for this is that um they can then track their progress they can track their experiments they can track their evidence on the platform and that creates a high level of transparency throughout the whole delivery another joint resource that we agree on is that all participants participating in the program will dedicate 30 of their work time to this project this is really important because we all have other works like everyday work so this specific project will need some time to dedicate and then we agree that there's a testing budget that is provided by the company that participants can use to run experiments jumping onto risks we are aiming to identify already or anticipate already risks that might come up throughout these activities and the delivery so one of the risks that we identify with the client is that there can be delays in the experiments due to the fact that they're using a third party to run these experiments another risk that we identify that people cannot dedicate enough time throughout the project so here is where the second part of the whole process comes in that's really valuable is that we're going to do the backwards pass so while we have we have identified these risks we have also identified that a risk of not dedicating enough time brings in another risk here in the joint resources of 30 percent work time might not be able uh people that might not be able to put that much time in so we'll do the backwards pass to mitigate these risks by creating new objectives that would mitigate these let's look at the 30 of work time for the first time in order to for people to be able to put in 30 of their work time we create an objective for leadership to free up time for the teams and this then gets assigned to the executive sponsor by mitigating this risk we have actually mitigated another one too of not that being able to dedicate enough time going on to the less risk delays and experiments due to third party we turn this into an objective that would anticipate this risk not to happen so we call on people to schedule experiments ahead of time with the third party mitigating this risk immediately and assigning it to the team lead this way we have freed ourselves of all risks that we have anticipated to come up this of course doesn't mean that there's not gonna be any other challenges or risks coming up throughout the delivery but it really gives us a head start to a great kickoff with the client and just making sure that we have eliminated as many risks as possible already in the beginning stefano any any pieces of feedback you give you know as as author of this tool any feedback you give us at strategizer customer success team you know um using this seeing how how we apply it uh no it's just perfect what should i tell you more i mean it's just a perfect usage of the tool and uh maybe what i like to ask dora is um how has been the customer acceptance uh from the beginning about this way of working because i see a lot of questions in the panel about the mindset what comes first the mindset or the tool i have my opinion on that what is yours actually um what i saw that some customers are are being challenged with is that how deep or low level they should go with the objectives and then reminding them actually just quoting stefano from our previous conversation that this is not a project management tool that's uh that's already very helpful yeah there is a that's an important point um the the team alignment map is not a task tracking tool we have other great tools like that out there like the kanban board or a task management apps this is a tool to make sure that we're on the same page before we do actual work and once we are aligned then we can start entering activities into proper software or other tools available out there the challenge is that we if we skip that part we might enter activities in the systems that people do not really understand sufficiently mutually and they're not that they're not sufficiently agreed so we by entering these activities first before checking the level of alignment and the story who's doing who's going to do what in the next week or the next month uh you've just created problems from the start due to perception gaps by the way yeah due to perception gaps yeah i'm a huge fan of this like really simple tool actually it just happened to us last week that we had a huge misunderstanding between uh the client and the third party then that uh like our strategizer we helped them to mitigate and what we did is basically just told them like okay pause let's just everyone get together and even though it's already the middle of a delivery let's just start doing a team alignment map so we are all on the same page exactly so that's what it does and i think it uh it does it in a fast way uh for teams now just to react on what i've seen on the chat that question about mindset versus tools what comes first in my opinion and this is based on the experience they have in implementing change in organizations i think one of the most effective ways of changing the mindset and changing the culture is to start organically by adopting tools you don't think and you don't eat the same way with a fork or with sticks it changes your view of food and so i believe is tools so if you want to change an organization i i'm a deep advocate of changing software changing tools first actually and display the value of them and don't start necessarily big but start organically in one team and then if you show results uh be reassured that other teams will start imitating you and copying you and stefano i think you've perfectly led us on to the next slide with alex's screenshot of the platform so strategize this platform you can actually use to be able to track this as you go along and i don't know alex is this something that you want to talk through no i mean just you know this is what what customer success uses right and that was an example that we simplified the door send that there are shown right in dora maybe just one one comment on how we're applying it now just to illuminate us and then we can go to our hot or not section yeah i thought it was a great idea to include a real example too so this is what we present to every client now on how we are going to cooperate together because we have a big team of client teams strategizer coaches and customer success managers coming together through for the delivery so this just basically sets the scene for um for our deliveries cool brilliant um shall we go to the exciting part yes let's go to the exciting part we're doing we're doing pretty well as well i'm just i'm the uh uh the time keeper and i think we're looking pretty good so the time has come for hot or not um i don't know could you just um okay you're ready alex i'm gonna i'm gonna ah so i'm gonna go for it i'm gonna share my screen now um please can you get the um your phones again this is fun because we want you all to participate in the hot or not you'll hear the opinion of dora stefano and myself but you're going to be able to of course participate in our traditional this is the second round of hot or not we're doing this now at every webinar yeah just getting into it so i'm just going to talk you through the concept and where it came from so um this was inspired by um what i've seen gary vaynerchuk doing recently with um the is it underrated or overrated and so what we wanted to do was take some traditional kind of concepts from um like the world of teamwork and kind of innovation and and look at them and then say are they hot or not this is not the type of thing where it's like totally scientific like we're just doing it for a bit of fun to create a debate a little bit of controversy we had a lot of fun last time and i think we're gonna have some fun this time i can see you're already voting whether um 100 remote teams is hot or not but what i'm interested to hear is uh who should we get um dora would you like to go first what do you think 100 remote teams hot or not i'm an absolute believer nick um and i wasn't before i joined strategizer so strategizer is 100 remote team and i had my doubts and it was completely shaken i think it's 100 hot and it does not reduce at all the efficiency i work with the most amazing most efficient people ever we get a lot of things done and it doesn't get in a way at all to form friendships and relationships i can see i don't know um oh alex go on alex you've jumped in there with the thumbs up 100 100 aligned with dora in the sense that why why hot because it makes things just so much more efficient um you know you don't have to travel you get much more you know interesting the right people into the room because you know you have the leaders traveling all the time when when the airplanes are flying right now they're not so you know you have the right people in the room to do the work so you can actually advance a lot faster scheduling is not a problem so i'm a big fan of uh of remote teams i can see stefano is kind of itching he's moving around he's looking uncomfortable what's going on stefano well with the highest respect i have and i know how efficient you are guys i don't think it's hot at all and all my apologies for that no i just think that um and we just published an article on that on on the strategizer blog i think it's a matter of choosing and taking advantage of all communication channel the primary of which is being face to face that's where we're the most efficient together so i believe that in the future this notion of hybrid teams and finding the right mix for each team between being present together to solve complex problems and also to strengthen relationship but also then when these complex problems are solved fine if we have to continue doing the work share updates and maintain you know progress uh status reports whatever activities non-complex tasks routine tasks can be performed better remotely while benefiting from the freedom of not traveling organizing our times or time and so on but i believe and and i have evidence that after the pandemic people will get back to the office and there is a great pwc study showing that both things we're not ready to get uh to get rid of the office and we're not ready to get rid of working from home so it's going to be about the matter of balance in the future but i would definitely uh uh recommend that you consider also meeting from time to time yearly during an upside somewhere no no that's what happens at strategizer but thank you very much but i know you do it i know you do it so and that's a good one so we can see i don't know why my skip forward button's not working but we got 3.3 so people were edging towards hot so that sounds that's pretty good fun there i think they were with um alex and dora on this one and that's as you know stefano said it's not as black and white right so it's the best the right channel for the right task i do think what dora actually mentioned before is important that there were many people that were skeptical among our coaches as well and they changed their mind right so they're seeing it's the mix and i think before we were very heavily leaning towards not remote physical and now we're getting a better understanding of what's actually possible so so alex slack hot or not so i i for me not like we use it and i like it for some things but like it's verbal diarrhea it's like a waterfall of stuff raining down on you so slack you know they say they solve the email problem i think they accelerated the email problem like slack for me is a thousand times worse than email and one of the guys at base camp i think said it's like you know scheduling a meeting that runs the whole day and has absolutely no agenda that's slack and that's what it feels to me like again it has good sides but for me the knot side is overwhelming okay stefano what are you saying on this one this time well actually let me disagree again how did you guys write a book together there's so much even my logitech camera is disagreeing with me i'm blurry uh no i think it's a hot thing uh actually the thing is not the communication it's not slack is not the problem is how we use it and what is our agreements or internal policy for using it but i believe that slack does tremendously well in terms of relieving or heavy mailboxes and putting information in context where it can be seen by other people so i believe it's a great app now it might be again we're back to square one i believe it's a hot thing but it's always a matter of balance i'm going to post uh the link to the blog post about uh uh uh selecting the right communication channels thank you stefano which one is a good consultant it depends it depends everyone's everything to depend but we're gonna we're gonna move forward no i was gonna say dory yeah this is not gonna be very hot but i'm somewhere in the middle because let's face it compared comparing to other um other messaging software that's out there it's hot like i feel it's much better than i don't want to like call out names like microsoft teams and things like that um but i also get what alex is saying of the overload on the other hand it can do tasks it can do remind me laters so depending on how you how you use it so it seems to be not so hot at the moment um as well i i can't believe it what's wrong with you i think slack is hot so somebody nick somebody was saying don't blame the tool if the user sucks so basically somebody was calling me an idiot because i can't use slack which is great i'm happy to take it i i love slack i think it's brilliant ah i haven't got my last one i'm gonna do a on the fly i'm gonna do another one because uh my last one didn't come up uh so i'm kind of talking about tools this is fun we have here kanban this is all actually working well um we're gonna do kanban as the last one so um let's go again with dora kanban hot or not i think it's definitely hot i'm a big fan and mostly about the flexibility like it's just like you you can basically name your columns and swim lane however you want it's adapted to every project i love the one i love working with campbell uh stefano um let me ask a question to the audience please respond in the chat room how many of you used a gantt chart in the last let's say six months respond just by yes or no a lot more yeses than those no no the nose are coming they're coming they're a bit slower yeah more knows now yeah no it's it seems to be half half um i believe the kanban is super hot and actually since i started using a kanban it killed the gantt chart for me so um once you start i mean i think it's just a perfect combination uh now the thing is of course it depends on the type of context i know i'm a consultant fine but uh it's not all black or white but i think kanban definitely hot super super hot and alex what do you think absolutely hot in the sense that it's a so the tools we use right are visual they get an alignment and they make clear what we're agreeing on kanban is a visual tool that shows progress so you kind of know where you are so it's a different type of visual tool that you know visualizes kind of progress um so it's a different kind of alignment i absolutely think it's hot so i do agree with doris yeah and alex this is the first time we agree by the way well we did agree on one or two things for high impact tools for teams but there we disagreed a lot as well we had some psychological safety to have a good conversation no but i think the kanban like that that that that uh comparison between the gun chart and the kanban is really illustrating where teamwork is going today so actually a gun chart is more what we used to uh is is an important tool we and by the way the tool is too hot it's almost uh 200 years old uh it's a tool that really is more like uh something for reporting and making understand where the deadline is and so on and the consequences if we postpone things uh it's a it's really a planning tool but it's not a progress monitoring tool and it's not a collaborative tool in a way as well so it really shows also the evolution of project management where we're moving from specialized tools that project managers use to a shared responsibility between all the members of the team so this has worked out well so we had a little bit of fun there with the hot or not but what we want to do as well as in this next second segment is have a bit of time for self-reflection and also think about some of the places that we're perhaps not as strong with uh team alignment and where we could maybe improve but also what's cool um is we also get a little bit of an idea of how we're doing as a collective okay but i suppose it's more helpful to think about these questions in yourself and reflect on them but also nick if i if i may jump in here just briefly before we vote so uh imagine you want to measure the level of alignment in your team for one project and there is a a good reason to measure the level of alignment in the team that is that the more aligned we are on what we have to achieve and the more clarity there is between us the higher the likelihood that we have a good and smooth execution phase and that our coordination is good so perception gaps are not so good when we enter into project delivery so there is a simple way to measure alignment in your team and we will put that in mentimator of course we are we will be measuring something different now so we're not using this for a project we're having together if you use that with your team it's for your own projects but now we are understanding where the challenges are in terms of alignment for all of us we are kind of having a different usage of that uh survey tool but uh what we see here uh okay so how do we interpret these results so if you have scores uh superior to four you're in good shape and you need scores superior to four in all four variables so in our case here you see let's say oh nick if we can move one by one and they can see the data so there seems to be okay joint objectives people seem to be somewhat clear on the objectives that is the starting point of any collaboration if we don't have a shared goal it's going to be difficult to decide what you do and what i do or what everyone else in the team does so if you score less than four on that variable uh just sit in front of the team alignment map i have a discussion on the mission and the joint objective if we move to the second variable oh by the way uh if you score less than four in joint objectives or in any of the bar variable i'm going to explain why that happens it means that there are perception gaps so there might be people in the team that believe that objectives are clear and some others that believe that objectives are not clear and that will create automatic intentions and people might go into different directions and that will result in execution problems if we move to the second part joint commitments what we can see here is that okay if you scored below 4 it means that some people might not be sufficiently clear about their own role or about what other people are doing which is also a problem and the consequence of that is that you get a lower level of engagement and one very important thing is that if you score low on joint commitments when you assess that with your team is that you sit and you first complete the joint objectives first and make sure that you agree on the joint objective before having the discussion on who is doing what and placing the names next to the objectives remember that engagement commitment comes from participation so it's important that these discussions take place together and that names are not just assigned somewhere in an application if we move to the next one the joint resources if you scored below four that is the most mechanical part of the survey just ask people what they miss to do their part and and and try listening try listening and listening very carefully what people need in terms of resources to deliver remember that all activities all human activities need resources and if we miss these resources we cannot deliver on our objectives the last part um nick if we can scroll on the last one ah okay so this is the risk management part so if you score below four then it means also that there are people that risks uh believe that risks have are not sufficiently under control and you might want to have an important conversation with these persons and sit in front of the last column of the poster to discuss their fears because remember the definition of a risk it's an unwanted event that might prevent us from succeeding and there are a lot of avoidable risks that can be mitigated from the start and um just to share some anecdotes here i've seen lots of teams now play with the team alignment map there is a real pleasure in expressing all the the the fears up front and mitigating the risks removing the problems by doing this live mitigation uh live risk mitigation process that is the backward pass because you see that problems are managed and addressed immediately together as a team so definitely if you perceive that if you are under four on this variable have a discussion on the last column can i i'd like to quickly ask the audience and then dora something where do you all see most misalignment like if people can just type into the chat window where they see most misalignment in their innovation teams and then dora you know if you look at delivery and the clients we work with you know large companies some we can mention some we can't but you know like a colgate mastercard and so where would you say is their biggest alignment where there's not so much a problem and where are they completely misaligned to start with the misalignment i would say that mostly it's the joint objectives because everyone knows you know what we want to achieve what the end goal is but the question on how we get there is many times a big disagreement between um between stakeholders and that's yeah and that's cool so go ahead sorry please continue i wanted to jump to the most alignment parts just because we're talking about objectives i want to just address something that came up in the chat somebody was talking about objectives and uh and expectations management so how in innovation where everything is unclear how do you actually set expectations and objectives and this is a big thing that we actually learned at strategizer is that you need to define after a sprint let's say the first discovery sprint when you started mapping your idea where are we going to land right and what do you need to have after those 12 weeks that's the objective and the more we made that explicit we actually do this with the innovation project scorecard we say this is the evidence you need to produce after 12 weeks you need to have evidence from customers undesirability which jobs pains and gains they have that's it and if they can't produce any evidence they won't get follow-up investments and that's okay because if they couldn't produce it but they did the activity you know that's fine right then we get to psychological safety right but what we say is you need to define which evidence the team needs to have at the end of every phase discovery sprint it's usually around desirability after validation sprint you'll have a little bit more around desirability some around viability and so on but defining what evidence that's what the key objective should actually be and that's not always defined in projects right absolutely if we're unclear on some points well let's make an objective that is clarify this and that it's a goal in itself and if i may react quickly to some of the comments and maybe give some hints and tips uh for our audience if you have problems with commitments uh well don't necessarily start with commitments this might show a lack of clarity on the objectives so uh don't jump directly on that column just make sure that people i see very often i really i see myself a lack of engagement and commitment as a lack of clarity and and and of joint clarity it might be clear for you but not for others and make sure that other peop that the others understand and we listen to them before reopen the conversation on the commitments if you have problems with resources that is a big classic i mean whoever works on a project we lack resources by definition the team alignment map can be a negotiation tool if you with with management and leadership um because well then if we have because it tells the story of what we're going to do so if we lack some resources then start opening a negotiation space and for example ask what objectives shall we change to be aligned with the level of resources we have so also you can use that as a negotiation tool and sometimes i've seen cases where actually the entire mission for the project has been reviewed once we've reached that resource stage so just like two quick tips for those who because these were these were the most mentioned ones thanks stefano and do you want to um share your screen again now to go to the beyond chaos section yep sure um getting there quickly because i think we're doing well i think we should have time for a little bit of uh q a at the end as well fantastic a couple of questions oh no i have to play inside the window play slideshow in window okay here we are because really the beyond the chaos section that we're going to be doing now again is the segment that we're following on uh from the previous webinar we'll continue with is saying look we got the problem of this chaos that we're trying to solve how can we do that and looking beyond to some of the other tools as well so stefano do you want to go for it yes is it okay with my screen now yeah yep so the idea is that we have to navigate that uncertainty together and gain more and more clarity and until we we get it right so in high impact tools for teams you will find we've just seen the team alignment map which is the primary tool of the book but there are other tools so we have uh the team contract very very important tool to be used together with the seam alignment map the team alignment map is focused on the activities this one is focused on our relationships and psychological safety it consists in responding to two questions what are the rules and behaviors that we want to abide by in our team and as individuals do we have preferences to work in a certain way taking some time to discuss that up front really reduces the re the the the the potential conflict that we might experience is because we presuppose what other people will do especially now that we work assemble the esteems of specialists with different culture more and more diversity all this is beautiful in terms of creativity and and team power but is also a source for friction that can be lowered by going through a team contract session i tend to start new projects with new teams always with the team alignment map and the team contract activities and behaviors another tool that is presented in the book is the fact finder and it's a very simple tool to understand that how to ask good questions when we feel lost in the conversation again we're more and more specialists we have different languages different jargons it's important that we stay attentive and we keep the level of understanding high and we don't get too confused because perception gaps are our enemies how can we ask good questions the tool presents different traps in which we fall typically and how to respond and ask a question to clarify and reduce the perception gaps now uh conflict and creative conflict is a good thing and it's part of everyday life we cannot deny conflict of course we're talking about cooperation but they're kind of yin and yang conflict and cooperation so the problem is not conflict is how we deal with conflict especially when we damage relationships the non-violent request guide is built on non-violent communication and is a way to prepare your feedback or your question when there is emotion in the air and there is strong disagreement it's a way of expressing different opinions in a way that are not judgmental for the other and that leave the space open to a constructive conversation and constructive conflict management and the last one but not least when we work in innovation we tend to work hard deadlines are short and certain means high when we finalize some important piece of work why not say thank you and demonstrate some recognition to the members of the team that that tool called the respect card is a checklist that gives you ideas on how to demonstrate respect to people but also recognition when work is completed small attention costs nothing big difference in terms of uh atmosphere and psychological safety when we are tacked full at the right moment fantastic this sets up well for um as well the high impact tools for team so definitely check out the book to get more details on this and you can go to our website to get it you can also get it on amazon and other places as well and we're going to be doing some courses in the future and if you'd be interested in checking those out then if you go to strategizer cop dot com forward slash what you're seeing on screen notify underscore me um underscore here understand ask is underscore courses then you can also um register interest for that it would be good if uh maybe alex or dora can you um share it in the chat so people that have um can get the link as well is that possible the url yeah if that's possible yeah i copied it yeah perfect and what i'm also going to do some typos yeah let us know if there's any issues but um what we'll do is we'll put that in the email as well afterwards or um if you want to get that so that we've got that easily available i'm going to share my screen again interesting question to the in the q a how to pitch these tools to my manager yes let's uh give it just before we go into that i'm sorry no no you're very good stefano you're keen i like it i like it just before we do do that what i would like to do because i know that we're going to get into the questions is do a quick feedback so um i'm going to share a poll so we're just going to do a q a but before we do that i'd like to get a poll so um i'm going to launch the poll i'd like to know we'd love to know so we can improve as well next time is how how would you rate this webinar did you think this was terrible use of your time terrible use give it a one or was it yeah fantastic use of my time very helpful um give it a 10. so that would be really good and if participation is too low there's no q a right that's the incentive so we'll just give it a couple of minutes for that so while we're looking we're waiting for that stephano do you remember when you invented the first version of the team alignment map i'm curious if you remember the date i remember when when we actually turned when i turned some of this stuff from from my doctoral dissertation into the business mall canvas was actually at the arvetica office for those who don't know stefano i and i were working together we had a small consulting firm and it turned you know we actually turned a whiteboard into the business small canvas so from the phd dissertation stuff do you remember when that happened for the team alignment map kind of what was the date there has been two different dates actually first the you mean the canvas itself yep oh that was about in 2012 okay yeah 2012. but the variable the four variable have been a long a lot much longer than that because you know i did all that study on re project i.t project failure and i was thinking okay what are the key things on which to focus and after analyzing more than 200 variables i came to the conclusion that these were the four we have to discuss but that is like uh i'm talking about 2005 2006 very old wow from 200 variables down to four that's amazing yeah yeah cool brilliant i'm just going to end the poll now i think we've done pretty well nick i cannot vote yes because you're a panelist i will say that no yeah i'm just going to see if i can uh end the poll this is while the while nick is ending the poll stefano you picked you singled out a question that you wanted to start with yes uh so there was the question how to pitch these tools to my manager um well this is how what i've learned pitching these tools to management it's not about presenting the pros and cons and the benefits of the tools it's to apply them directly to solve one problem so if there is one current challenge where one of these tools can help just like do it uh say oh i have a if i'm allowed i have this new way of addressing that and after a while if it has value and the the manager sees value it's just like uh the best way of pitching them using them to solve real problems straight from the beginning no theory in advance uh if i look um your highest paid person opinion well i'm not sure i understand exactly what that means but it means like if we're only in the room in the same room doing the exercise the the hippo opinion is more important than the other ones yeah that one's not so specific though well but you know i i would say that if you in that case i would do the team contract first and do the team alignment map second so agree on the rules of the game and i would make sure that i put a post-it on the team contract it's in to have equal speech time okay let's do the last question so does team size influence the use of the tam tool yes it does absolutely so of course we know the ideal team for doing this type of exercise is like between well actually from two to five six if it's more than that seven if it's more than that split in sub teams that's the mechanism for scalability it's to separate in sub-teams sub-teams you can have as many as you want i had up i don't know maybe up to 40 sub-teams in parallel that's fine it just takes a bit more time on consolidating the results and it's part of the process but we have to split in sub-teams sub-teams could have then one specific or one dedicated area of the problem or if we're all together on this and we're talking at a high level we work all on the same and then we compare uh the results from one team to the other uh there is uh in the section of the book an explanation of how to manage that uh that sub teams and consolidation process in the chapter about organizational alignment cool i think we're going to wrap it up there because i want to do the swiss time um you know that's the key with these webinars we get you know alex is always look it's for alex's smile that's why we do it with with the cowbell as well so i'm going to um just do one we're wrapping up now one last thing we promised to share the testing business ideas um thing again so i'm just going to bring up my slides quickly here and then we'll wrap it up so the last thing is the testing business ideas if you wanted the code you can see it here on the screen now so join us underscore tbi bmc 10 um and then you can get a 10 off discount and if that's not enough the other bonus is that we've got our next webinar is about testing business ideas we're going to have um david bland himself on that webinar on the 5th of may at the same time so we'd love to see you all there that's pretty much all we've got so thank you so much everybody it's been an absolute pleasure and thank you so much to stefano dora and alex for uh being on the call so we look forward to uh seeing you all next time thanks for having me thank you everyone for attending thank you everybody take care thank you good evening morning geneva you

Channel: Strategyzer

Views: 1,946

Rating: 4.8947368 out of 5

Keywords: Innovation Teams, Corporate Innovation, Team Management, Project Management Tools, Alex Osterwalder, Stefano Mastrogiacomo, Strategyzer, Strategyzer Webinar, High Impact Tools for Teams, Team Alignment Map

Id: BTCTjlwmLw4

Length: 63min 17sec (3797 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 14 2021