Strategyzer Webinar: Save your Innovation Team from Chaos

Hello.

Hello. Welcome, everybody. My name is Nik Kimovic and we're going to be starting soon. We're going to be starting off with the save your innovation team from Chaos webinar. Starting very soon. We've got our very own Alex Osterwalde and of course, Stefano, Mastro, Giacomo and Dora as well. My pronunciation of your surname is always not the best Dora, but Dora ascends, I believe. I'm so sorry.

Actually, that was quite on spot. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you. And yeah, welcome, everybody. We're going to be just letting people join the call 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. There we go. We've got the team up on today's show. There's everybody. And I'm going to cycle through this a couple of 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, that would be fantastic too, so we can get to know a little bit better. And everybody else, Dora, Stefano, Alex helped me out with the comments as well, because this is super interesting. I. 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. Oh, and also Bogota, Thailand. Nice.

A lot of people from Bogota. We always have a big group. I don't see very many from Africa this time. Or did we see India, Ecuador?

UK Pubs are open in the uk.

Where are our friends from? We often have a good group of people from Nigeria. Nothing today. Guinea.

Okay, there we go.

Good.

Sweet.

Welcome, everyone.

And 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. Interested to know how. How many have you read? 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. Ricardo. Wow. Quite a few have 5.

4.

That's good. 2.5. Not sure how that's maybe in the reading process. 1. 5. Good.

Brilliant. So those that have just joined, welcome to this webinar saving your innovation teams from chaos. We are going to be starting shortly. This is the team on today's show. Got Stefano, Alex, 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 Demystify Innovation. So we had some really good feedback on that and we're looking forward to using some of those segments today again.

Montreal.

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 read so far? Between one and five, because it's always nice to see today's session is going to be completely based off of this book. You may have heard about it. High impact tools for teams. We've got the authors themselves here, Stefano and Alex, and it's always nice as well to see the books in the wild. So got a few of the pictures here from people showing their books in the wild. Beautiful. And 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 using the Strategizer or Tools for teams. Tools and then four with a number four and then teams. What else are we going with here? Yeah, so that's just a bit of fun. I know Alex and Stefano really enjoy seeing when you. When you tag them. Cool. 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, kind of a play on the 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 within the team, controversially, which is fun. 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 a little bit more about some next steps as well. So that's the plan for today, but today's session is more about the tools for enabling teams to innovate. And what we want to do also is show that we've got a virtual masterclass with David Bland based off of the book, testing business ideas as well. Well, and that really goes into the innovation tools that you need for the innovation processes. So 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 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. And just to help make it a little bit more interactive. Why? One thing that we can do is 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 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. In the Mentimeter. And then I'm going to open that up now. Let's have a look and see what some of your answers are. Hopefully this is getting slightly more seamless. Alex is making fun of me about my transitions between slides.

Oh, while you're putting that up. While you're putting that up, some people were asking for the code for the. We'll put that up in a bit for 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, let's go to Mentimeter.

So. Oh, this is exciting. So we can see already we've got some answers. Lack of focus. Interesting to Stefano as well. Dora, Alex, feel free to chip in as well. If you see anything that particularly resonates.

I put it full screen so it animates. Okay. Lack of focus. Yeah. Never heard of. Right.

Fear.

Fear.

Okay.

Okay.

So we've got common goals. Opinionated. Opinionated. Senior managers. Portfolio. Visibility, Communication. Fear testing.

Testosterone. I like testosterone.

Testosterone.

Competition over ideas or ideas. Yeah.

Getting alignment on what projects to run. Well, I think you're in the right place.

Yeah.

Yeah. Big classic. The silos.

Yeah.

Different beliefs, working styles. Covid, this is one for you. Stefano. Right. For the physical.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't have Covid, but I have ideas on how to work remotely.

Focus.

Unclear purpose. That's a big one.

We're Going to address unconvinced supervisors.

So many projects, conflicts in politics, 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. This, I think, sets the scene nicely for what we're going to be doing going forward. Now, Stefano, I'm going to hand it over to you and I think you can share your screen now, hopefully.

Absolutely. So a brief introduction about why so much chaos and what we've learned. So if you have a closer look at the type of work we do together now, whether we are 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 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 what I mean by that. And we seem to be not so bad at working around each other. But there has been a study by the Harvard Business Review presented in an article by Benjam Tabrizi that says that 75% of cross functional teams are dysfunctional. One of the things I learned analyzing both my 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, 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 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 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 challenge we have today is what I call the red pill. Is that the team climate, the atmosphere in which we work for multiple reasons but might be perceived as unsafe. And that is a matter of psychological safety, which is a concept that has been 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 mistakes, et cetera, et cetera. 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 earth impression when you see the team at work or when you join a meeting online? And the key symptom for that is when there is fear in the air and it's difficult to speak up. It's rational to stay silent. Sometimes if I don't want to look ignorant because I don't know well, I tend to stay silent. If 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.

Stefano, 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 boss favorites idea the boss's baby is ugly. Nobody can do that. 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 point, Alex. If we don't speak up and we don't feel free to speak up and share ideas and challenge the status quo, well, then we don't enable collective learning. And 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 our team. Especially when being in a startup journey or 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 a pseudo team. And you want to kind of enable every team member to do his or her best to 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 almost co own, co lead the team and we're all responsible of our joint success. And the tools that we present just help every team member get something very practical that boosts these two elements. And this was for the 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 to add to that as well, we think that Dora is like the best person to do this because she does this regularly for Strategizer clients and absolutely does a fantastic job helping them kickstart this and use this tool. That's as a customer success manager. That's why we really thought we've got to bring Dora in, 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. I'm in touch every day with clients throughout our deliveries to make sure that we are on the same, we are on the same page. And we are using the team alignment map as a tool 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 it enables the whole team, both internally and externally, to plan the work throughout the whole program and to help us and the clients to allocate resources and reduce the project risks altogether. Already at the beginning of the project, basically. So this is how it looks. It looks extremely simple and it's in its simplicity, really helpful for us in the beginning of the delivery. So to kick this off with, this is 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 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 member's contributions. It continues with joint resources where we add what are the 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 way we can make sure that we mitigate any risks and any missing resources 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 team AIM management looks like. And I'm going to do some metrics for you to populate these 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. Then we 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 we'll be using the Strategizer platform. The reason for this is that 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 on to 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 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% work time might not be able. People 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 for people to be able to put in 30% of their work time, we 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 being able to dedicate enough time Going on to the last risk delays in 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 going to be any other challenges or risk 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 pieces of feedback you give as author of this tool, any feedback you give us at Strategizer Customer Success Team using this, seeing how we apply it.

No, it's just perfect. What should I tell you more? It's just a perfect usage of the tool. Maybe what I'd like to ask Dora is how has been the customer acceptance 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.

What I saw that some customers are being challenged with is that how deep or low level they should go with the objectives, then reminding them. Actually just quoting Stefano from our previous conversation that this is not a project management tool. That's already very helpful.

Yeah, that's an important point. The team alignment map is not a task tracking tool. We have other great tools like that out there like the Kanban board or 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 if we skip that part, we might enter activities in the systems that people do not really understand sufficiently mutually and they're not sufficiently agreed. So by entering these activities first before checking the level of alignment and the story who's going to do what in the next week or the next month, you've just created problems from the start due to perception gaps, by the way. Due to perception gaps.

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of this really simple tool. Actually it just happened to us last week that we had a huge misunderstanding between the client and the third party. Then that like us 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 does it in a fast way 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 I 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 it's tools. So if you want to change an organization, 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, be reassured that other teams will start imitating you and copying you.

And, Stefano, I think you've perfectly led us onto 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 this is what Customer success uses. Right. And that was an example that we simplified the Dora send that Dora showed. Right. And Dora. Maybe just 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 for. For the delivery. So this just basically sets the scene for our deliveries.

Cool. Brilliant.

Shall we go to the exciting part?

Yes, let's go to the exciting part. We're doing pretty well for time as well. I'm the timekeeper, and I think we're looking pretty good. So the time has come for Hot or Not. I don't know. Could you just.

Okay. Be ready, Alex.

I'm gonna. I'm gonna. So I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna share my screen now, please. Can you get the. 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 gonna 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 this was inspired by what I've seen Gary Vaynerchuk doing recently with the Is it underrated or overrated? And so what we wanted to do was take some traditional kind of concepts from the world of teamwork and kind of innovation 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. 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 100% remote teams is Hot or not. But what I'm interested to hear is who should we get? Dora, would you like to go first? What do you think? 100% remote teams, hot or not?

I'm an absolute believer, Nick, and I wasn't before I joined Strategizer, so. 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 lots of things done and it doesn't get in a way at all to form friendships and relationships.

I can see. Oh, Alex, go on, Alex. You've jumped in there with the thumbs up.

100% aligned with Dora in the sense that why hot? Because it makes things just so much more efficient. You don't have to travel. You get much more interesting, the right people into the room because you have the leaders traveling all the time. When the airplanes are flying right now they're not. So 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 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 and we just published an article on that 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 progress status reports, whatever your activities, non complex tasks, routine tasks can be performed better remotely while benefiting from the freedom of not traveling, organizing our time and so on. But I believe 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 rid of the office and we're not ready to get rid of working from home. So it's going to be a matter of balance in the future. But I Would definitely recommend that you consider also meeting from time to time yearly during an off site 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.

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's pretty good fun there. I think they were with Alex and Dora on this one.

And as 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, Alex, Slack, hot or not?

So for me, not like we use it, and I like it for some things, but it's verbal diarrhea. It's like a waterfall of stuff raining down on you. So Slack, they say they solved the email problem. I think they accelerated the email problem. Slack, for me, is a thousand times worse than email. One of the guys at basecamp, I think, said it's like 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 not side is overwhelming.

Okay, Stefano, what are you saying? 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. No, I think it's a hot thing, 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 lot, but it's always a matter of balance. I'm going to post the link to the blog post about selecting the right communication channels.

Thank you, Stefano. Which one?

Stefan was a good consultant. It depends.

It depends. Everyone's. Everything's A depend. But we're gonna. We're gonna move forward. No, no, I was gonna say Dora.

Yeah, this is not gonna be very hot, but I'm somewhere in the middle because let's face it.

Thank you, Dora.

Comparing to other, other messaging software that's out there, it's hot. I feel it's much better than. I don't want to call out names like Microsoft Teams and things like that. But I also get what Alex is saying of the overload. On the other hand, it can do tasks it can do. Remind me later, depending on how you use it.

So it seems to be not so hot at the moment as well. 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 love Slack. I think it's brilliant. I haven't got my last one. I'm going to do on the fly. I'm going to do another one because my last one didn't come up. So I'm kind of talking about tools. This is fun. We have Kanban. This is all actually working well. We're going to do Kanban as the last one. So 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 can basically name your columns and Swimlane however you want. It's adapted to every project. I love working with Kanban.

Stefano, 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 no's.

No, no. The nos are coming.

They're coming.

They're a bit slower.

Yeah.

More no's now.

Yeah, no, it seems to be half. Half. I believe the Kanban is super hot. And actually since I started using a Kanban, it killed the Gantt chart for me. So once you start, I mean, I think it's just a perfect combination. Now the thing is, of course, it depends on the type of context. I know I'm a consultant, fine. But it's not all black, all white. But I think Kanban definitely hot. Super, super hot.

And Alex, what do you think?

Absolutely hot in the sense that it's. So the tools we use 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 visualizes kind of progress. So it's a different kind of alignment. I absolutely think it's hot. So I do agree with that. Dora.

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 comparison between the Gantt chart and the Kanban is really illustrating where teamwork is going today. So actually Gantt chart is more what we used to is an important tool. And by the way, the tool is almost 200 years old. It's a tool that really is more like something for reporting and making understand where the deadline is and so on and the consequences if we postpone things. 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.

But what we want to do as well as in this next 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 team alignment and where we could maybe improve. But also what's cool 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 it's also Nick, if I may jump in here just briefly before we vote. So imagine you want to measure the level of alignment in your team for one project. And there is 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 mentimeter. Of course, 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 survey tool. But what we see here. Okay, so how do we interpret these results? So if you have scores 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. 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 4 on that variable, just sit in front of the team alignment map, have a discussion on the mission and the joint objective. If we move to the second variable. Oh, by the way, 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, 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 tensions 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 try listening and listing very carefully what people need in terms of resources to deliver. Remember that all activities, all human activities need resources. And, and if we miss these resources, we cannot deliver on our objectives. The last part, Nick, if we can scroll on the last one. Okay, so this is the risk management part. So if you score below 4, then it means also that there are people that believe that risks 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 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 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 fears up front and mitigating the risks, removing the problems by doing this live mitigation, 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 4 on this variable, have a discussion on the last column.

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, if you look at delivery and the clients we work with large companies, some we can mention, some we can't, but quite 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 what we want to achieve, what the end goal is. But the question on how we get there is is many times a big disagreement between stakeholders.

And that's cool. So go ahead, Dora.

Sorry, please continue. I wanted to jump to the most.

Alignment part 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 expectations, management. So how in innovation, where everything is unclear, how do you actually see 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 on desirability, 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, that's fine. Right? Then we get to psychological safety. 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 for our audience. If you have problems with commitments, well, don't necessarily start with commitments. This might show a lack of clarity on the objectives. So don't jump directly on that column. Just make sure that people I see very often I see myself a lack of engagement and commitment as a lack of clarity, of joint clarity. It might be clear for you, but not for others. And make sure 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 with management and leadership 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 the most mentioned ones.

Thanks, Stefano. And do you want to share your screen again now to go to the Beyond Chaos section?

Yeah, sure. I'm getting there quickly.

I think we're doing well. I think we should have time for a little bit of Q and 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 from the previous webinar and 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.

Yeah. So the idea is that we have to navigate that uncertainty together and gain more and more clarity until 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 the team contract very, very important tool to be used together with the team 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 upfront really reduces the potential conflict that we might experience because we presuppose what other people will do. Especially now that we work. Assembled as teams of specialists with different culture, more and more diversity, we all. This is beautiful in terms of creativity 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 project 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 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 then? 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, 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, the problem is not conflict is how we deal with conflict, especially when we damage relationships. The nonviolent request guide is built on nonviolent 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 deans 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 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 atmosphere and psychological safety when we are tactful at the right moment.

Fantastic. This sets us up well for as well the high impact tools for teams. So definitely check out the book to get more details on this. You can go to our website to get it, but 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 strategizercop.com what you're seeing on screen, notifyme Underscore, hit Underscore Masterclasses, Underscore courses. Then you can also register interest for that. It would be good if maybe Alex or Dora. Can you share it in the chat so people that have 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 what we'll do is we'll put that in the email as well afterwards. Or if you want to get that so that we've got that easily available. I'm going to share my screen again.

Interesting question in the Q and A. How to pitch these tools to my manager.

Yes. Let's give it. Just before we go into that.

Sorry.

No, 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 I'm going to share a poll. We're just going to do a Q and A, but before we do that, I'd like to get a poll. So 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 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. Give it a 10. So that'd be really good.

And if participation is too low, there's no Q and 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. Stefano, 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 we actually turned. When I turned some of this stuff from my doctoral dissertation into the business model canvas was actually at the Arvedica office. For those who don't know, Stefano and I were working together. We had a small consulting firm, and it turned, you know, we actually turned a whiteboard into the business model 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 along much longer than that because, you know, I did all that study on Project it, 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, 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 gonna end the poll now. I think we've done pretty well.

Nick, I cannot vote.

Yes. Because you're a panelist.

I will say give a 10. No.

Yeah. I'm just going to see if I can end the poll.

While Nick is ending the poll. Stefano, you singled out a question that you want to start with.

Yes. So there was the question how to pitch these tools to my manager. 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, say, oh, if I'm allowed, I have this new way of addressing that. And after a while, if it has value and the manager sees value, it's just like the best way of Pitching them, using them to solve real problems. Straight from the beginning, no theory in advance. If I look for 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 Hippo opinion is more important than the other.

Yeah, that one's not so specific though.

Well, but you know, 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 2 to 5, 6 if it's more than that, 7 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 have, 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 the results from one team to the other. There is in the section of the book an explanation of how to manage 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. 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 the cowbell as well. So I'm going to just do one. We're wrapping up now. One last thing. We promised to share the testing business ideas 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 that testing business ideas. If you wanted the code, you can see it here on the screen now. So join us. TBI BMC 10 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 David Bland himself on that webinar on 5 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 being on the call. So we look forward to seeing you all next time.

Thanks for hosting.

Thank you, everyone, for attending. Thank you, everybody.

Take care.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Morning, Geneva.