Team Tune-Up

Group issues don’t go away on their own. Teams need to work through their problems by talking about them, not in pairs, but in the context of the whole group.

What teams need is a model and a map to get them started. We make use of the Drexler Sibbet Team Performance Model to illustrate the stages a team goes through on the way to high performance. The model helps by focusing areas for team members to discuss what they see and what they want.

 

As you might imagine, a professional facilitator, with a lot of experience will help the leader and the members to put the difficult issues on the table and work through them. We make use of what we call the Tune up Kanban process to guide teams through these topics. The model serves top point out in where the issue resides and, the Kanban board allows members to surface their description of the problem and its effect on team productivity.

Teams identify the problems as “options to solve.” They pull one of these options to the “Solving” column, and they work on it. We call this Action Research, and it involves a few steps.
1. Describe the issue/problem and state how it affects the team’s productivity.
2. Jointly agree on how to approach the concern (collect more data, interview each other, etc.
3. State the findings and own the issue/problem.
4 Generate solutions.
5. Choose a solution and jointly agree on actions, point person, and time frame.

Tune-ups are energizing. They can be done in a day or linked with other strategic priorities as part of a larger meeting. Like constructive feedback or robust debriefs, Tune-ups are an acquired taste. Doing them often and well can lead your team to high performance quickly.

Here is an example of a team Kanban Board using Trello. You can also use a flip chart and sticky notes. Have Fun with this.