How to use the team strategy document to help you manage your team
In my previous article, I provided four uses for how a manager can use a team strategy document (example here). Today, I provide four more! Today, I focus on the internal uses – within your team — of the team strategy document.
1. Use it as a basis for improving processes, workflows and operational innovation
When you have a team strategy document, it allows you to better understand what the team is trying to achieve. With this, now you can start looking at your team processes and workflows. It also affords the opportunity for you and the team to discuss areas of innovation and opportunity that your team can perform to better achieve the goals. With a strategy in place, you and your team are less likely to meander in the status quo and more likely to strive toward a higher level of performance.
2. Use it as a guideline for strategically placing work assignments and identifying gaps in team capability
The team strategy document identifies who is on your team. You can also add some biographical and work interest info about each member. For example: Walter – management consultant, performance improvement, innovative instructional design. With this info, you can look at the strategy, and think about the job roles of the people on your team, and identify the strategic placement of where the people on your team perform their job. If you have someone who is outgoing, and makes excellent connections with people on their first meeting, and if you have as strategic need to make new connections outside your team, perhaps you should put that person on the task of developing new relationships. Read more
Teams should have a team strategy document. Here’s an example.
In my prior post, I discussed the need for team managers to produce deliverables that contribute to adding up to managing. Individual contributors are used to delivering specific items, but when they become mangers, a new manager can believe that there is no longer a need to produce deliverables. However, this is not true! A manager for any team should have at least one deliverable: That is a team strategy document.
It doesn’t matter what team you lead, if the team does not have a team strategy document, then it is the manager’s responsibility to create one. At the minimum, having a team strategy document is better than not having a team strategy document. Once a team manager has created a team strategy document, the manager has “delivered” something that is designed to increase the performance of the team. It is a step in the right direction, and a leading indicator of success. Not having a strategy document is a leading indicator of failure.
What is on a team strategy document? It can vary because there are so many teams out there, and so many ways to define strategy. But there should be some sort of the following elements on it:
The team name
Who is on the team
What the team is trying to accomplish/what it produces
Guiding principles and expectations
Metrics that rate the productivity and quality of the team
Business metrics that the team could affect
The plan for how to meet the metrics that rate the productivity of the team
The Value of Providing Expectations: Positive reinforcement proliferates
In my previous article, I noted how setting team expectations can help a manager identify when and how to provide corrective feedback.
There is another value to providing expectations to your team: It allows you and your team to provide reinforcing feedback, and more of it. Reinforcing feedback, also known as positive feedback, is much easier to give and receive than corrective feedback. The key is to reinforce the right thing!
That’s where the expectation-setting comes in. If the team expectations have been set, then they can be reinforced. On the flip side, if no expectations have been set, then what gets reinforced will be generally random. Some of good behaviors get reinforced, and some of bad behaviors get reinforced.
So if you set team expectations, then you and your team are much more likely to reinforce the desired behaviors. As previously written on this blog, the manager should be spending a good chuck of time reinforcing positive behaviors.
In the example I used in the previous article, was the manager set the following general team expectation:
The team will foster an atmosphere of sharing ideas
In this example, let’s say the team actually conducts a meeting where the various team members support each others’ ideas, and allowed everyone to provide their input. The manager observes this and agrees that this reflects the expectation of “fostering an atmosphere of sharing ideas.”
Now the manager needs to reinforce this! The manager can reinforce this in a few different ways.
1. Feedback to the group at the end of the meeting
At the end of the meeting the manager can say:
“This meeting reflected what we are looking for in fostering an atmosphere of ideas. I saw people on the team asking others for their ideas, and I saw that ideas, once offered, weren’t shot down and instead were praised for being offered. This allowed more ideas to be shared. Thanks for doing this, and I like seeing this.”
The art of providing expectations: Tie the expectations to the larger strategy
Providing expectations for how the team operates is an important skill for any manager or leader. It doesn’t matter what level of manager you are, this is an important early step to establishing yourself as a manager and leader, and to set the right tone that reflects your values as a manager and your team’s values for how it executes its duties.
In previous posts, I’ve discussed the following artful elements of providing expectations:
Establishing expectations early
Using existing performance criteria for specific tasks
Providing general guidelines for behavior
Today I’ll discuss how to tie in the act of providing expectations with the larger strategy of the team and organization.
Providing expectations is different from defining the larger strategy of a team. The larger strategy of a team or group dictates more what the team is working on and the resources it devotes to working on it to create a result greater than the individual work items. The strategy should indicate what it is the team is actually producing. The expectations should be consistent with the strategy and be the next layer down that translates more closely to the behaviors you expect and the areas the team should be working on.
So the expectations should feed into the larger strategy of the team or group. If you don’t have a strategy, perhaps it’s time to get one! It’s kind of a big topic, but let’s try to tackle it!
Let’s take a look at some examples of expectations that feed into a team or org strategy:
The art of providing expectations: Describe the general guidelines of behavior
Providing expectations for how the team operates is an important skill for any manager or leader. It doesn’t matter what level of manager you are, this is an important early step to establishing yourself as a manager and leader, and to set the right tone that reflects your values as a manager and your team’s values for how it executes its duties.
In my previous post, I describe two aspects of providing expectations: Get team input and provide expectations early rather than reactively. In today’s post, I’ll discuss another aspect of providing expectations: Set guidelines – the more you can do this, the more artful the expectation providing.
In discussing the performance management part of being a manager, I advocate for specific and immediate feedback, using behavior-based language. That’s for providing feedback. Providing feedback comes after providing expectations.
When providing expectations, you are preemptively identifying the course you want the team to go on. However, you can’t anticipate all events, all behaviors, and all specifics. (If you can predict specifics, then check out this article on letting performance criteria be known.) Outside of the repeating tasks, in the expectation-providing arena, this is your chance to identify more broadly what the team should focus on and how it should provide its focus. These should be considered guidelines or even “guardrails”.
The art of providing expectations: Get input and the earlier the better
The Manager by Designsm blog seeks to provide great people management tips and awesome team management tips. An important skill that managers need to have is the act of providing expectations for how the team and individuals operate. In my previous article, I discussed how it is necessary for a manager to provide expectations for the repeatable, established tasks. But this does not describe all of the tasks that many teams are expected to perform.
Many times teams, in addition to the repeatable work, are doing something for the first time, and must go through iterations to get it right and get the work done. These are situations where the work does not have an established, repeatable rhythm, but is filled with problem-solving, new ideas and creative efforts. So in addition to the repeatable tasks, let’s talk about providing expectations for forging forward into unknown territory, which increasingly describes many work teams!
Because something is new, this does not mean that a manager does not need to set expectations. Instead, the manager must provide expectations on the level of how the team works together to achieve the goals set out for them.
So when I say “providing expectations,” I’m describing the act of establishing both the “what” the team on works on and “how” the team works together. It is the act of setting the baseline understanding of what the team does and how it does it. And once the repeating tasks are established and the criteria for quality are determined, these expectations can then be provided.
The art of providing expectations: If there are established performance criteria, then make them known!
The Manager by Design blog seeks to provide great people and team management tips. An important skill that managers need to have is the act of providing expectations for how the team and individuals operate. In a previous post, I provided examples of providing expectations to your team. It today’s post, I start a series of tips on how to better improve how managers provide expectations to their employees. I call it the art of providing expectations.
We’ll start with the basics: If there is a specific, established performance standard for something your staff must do, then make this known.
Here’s what I’m talking about. Let’s say that there are basic items that your staff must do and to a standard of quality that your staff must perform on an ongoing basis. You need to provide expectations for how these tasks are done and to what level of quality. Of course this is done all the time in many organizations, but there are many orgs that newly formed, fast growing, or simply disorganized enough where this has yet to be done. Let’s look at some examples of these:
In an IT department, it could be requirements gathering, and the document that is produced in the process.
In a strategy development group, the development process of the strategy (i.e., who needs to be discussed with and approval process), and the actual strategy document.
In a business development group, the core elements of a contract that must be performed and following the process for getting them processed.
Other basic expectations of behavior could be the following: When to show up for work (if this is important in your org), response time to inquiries from customers, when status updates are due, to whom, and in what format.
So many things. . . The common denominator for these “basic tasks” are that they are ongoing, repeatable, and proven that they can be performed by the average performer on your staff.
1. Identify what the basic things you expect anyone on your staff to do.
So think about the things on your staff that you expect them to do that are ongoing, repeatable, and proven to be able to be done. Now, is this documented anywhere? Or is there an implicit understanding that these things are performed? If you haven’t made this clear to your staff that these things are done on an ongoing basis, now is the time to start.
