Finding the Team's North Star
What makes a team, really a team? When I meet a new team, I often find that they operate in a shortsighted way, focusing on tasks and lacking in vision - a common North Star. Defining a common vision, mission and values helps the team to understand their purpose, gain autonomy, become more driven and come together as a functioning team.
Frank M.L.
4 min read
One of the most common things I observe when joining new teams has been: Everyone is very busy, there is a lot of talk about tasks, but almost no-one is focused on the big picture. The guiding motivations are usually around just delivering the next task that the manager or Product Owner has assigned to them.
But this makes the team highly dependent on micro-management and very inefficient in the Complex Environment they are in. In a Complex Environment you want an autonomous team, capable of developing a hypothesis, validating it as fast as possible, and being able to adapt to the changes of the given environment and these teams aren’t able to do this yet.
All these teams have a similar experience initially:
Lack of ownership over their responsibilities/products.
Focus on low priority or outdated tasks.
They don’t have the customer in mind.
Resistance to change.
And moreover, face the same questions from higher management:
Why is the team not focused on the highest priority?
Why are we missing these deadlines?
...
In summary: Why is this team underperforming? or Why does the team take so long to focus on what really matters?
And the point of view from the team is: We are working a LOT! Why aren't we recognised for our work?
There is not a single solution to this, but if we want to start building a high performance team, we need to start by making sure the team sees the bigger picture! Which is, WHY they are working together!
In my experience, a purpose driven team:
Takes ownership of the product or domain.
Focuses more on what is really important.
Puts their users in the centre.
Are able to adapt their focus as the priorities change.
Here I share with you the session I use with my teams to define the vision, mission and values. This is not the only way of doing it, so I encourage you to find the best way for your team!
Start Building the Vision together
[Session duration: ~ 1h 30 min]
For this session I like to use a common canvas. A physical whiteboard if they are in the same location, or a digital one for distributed teams e.g. Miro is a great tool for this.
Prepare the canvas with a brief definition and examples of the vision, mission and values. This is a great opportunity to review those of the company with the team. I commonly find some of the team members disagree with these statements. This is fine, it gives you visibility about misalignments in the team, which can be worked on during the one-on-one sessions.
I set the meeting in the team calendar with a clear description of the goals, so that the team arrives at the session with the right mentality.
Introduction
[Time limit: ~5 min]
I welcome everyone and review the goals of the session. Present the common canvas and share the definition of the values, mission and vision. Reviewing those of the company.
Building the Foundation: the Team Values
[Time limit: ~20min]
The values are going to be the foundation of the team, the common characteristics shared and embodied by all the members of the team.
Even if the company has its defined values, every team and even team members will have their own set of inner values. It is important to acknowledge this and give them visibility.
I start by giving this question to the team members: Which values do you think our team embodies?
[time limit: ~10 min]
Then we start the grouping phase, the main goal of grouping them is to find the 5-6 top values for the team.
[time limit: ~10 min]
During the grouping phase, it has been super useful to get brief explanations of the values from the team members. This helped to discover and clarify different interpretations within the team.
WHAT are we doing now?: Team Mission
[Time limit: ~20 min]
The Mission is WHAT the team does. Or in other words, the reason that the team has to be working together as a team.
The goal of this phase is to find a statement that summarises the actual reality of the team. We usually use the company mission to support us, but you can use other examples also. Most importantly, keep in mind the team values and the recent goals and achievements in the team.
Finding our North Star: Team Vision
[Time limit ~30 min]
And the last step of the session is finding our north star, the vision. This is an aspirational statement that should answer the questions: Why are we pushing together? What is our view of the future of our work?
This statement will be the reference point for the team and has to direct them towards the company vision. We use the vision as a base for our technical and product strategies, so we work until the team reaches a consensus on this vision.
Always review your course!
As I commented earlier in the post, in this Complex Environment, you will find a lot of changes over time, i.e priorities, team members, even the team purpose. So it is important to review the vision, mission and values. I recommend doing it at least once per year.
I hope this post helps you to bring this step up in your teams!
If you have any doubts or feedback about this topic, please contact me:
