Actually, there are several things you can do to prevent the worst team experiences from occurring.

One of the worst experiences is the “misfiring band of misfits” experience.

It’s the team that’s not well-organized or well-led for the work ahead.

One simple thing that’s helps avoid this experience is to schedule, and hold regular team check-ins.

It’s a simple but important way you can keep a group’s attention and efforts focused on their shared customer, and their shared customer goals.

The time it takes to plan and hold these team check-ins is minor compared to the time it will take the group to clean up after misdirection and mistakes.

Here are a few tips for how to have good team check-ins:

1. Start on the same page

Make sure everyone knows who your customers are for this work or project, and what they want from you.

Translate the customer goal – the team’s goal, ultimately – into smaller goals that are well-aligned with the overall plan.

These can be assigned, along with due dates for them, to small groups or individual members of the team.

In addition, to make sure you’re talking about the same thing as you work, simple tools like a glossary of often-used terms can be valuable. This is especially true if the work is very specialized, and the team is a cross-functional one.

Plan how and when you will hold your regular team check-ins. If possible, hold at least the kickoff meeting in person.

Get all regular check-ins on everyone’s calendar – and keep them there.

2. Stay on the same page

Hold your regular team calls or meetings as planned.

Make sure the meetings or team calls are productive and efficient. Many teams find that if they use a standing agenda, the reporting, discussions and other work they need to do together with that time can be done more efficiently. People know what to expect.

Create team ground rules and use them. Contact me if you need a set of ground rules you can start with, and adapt, as need be, for your particular team.

Hold people accountable for using each others’ time effectively.

And throughout the process, stay focused on your shared customers and goals. This goes a long way to keep everyone on the same page.

3. Don’t assume you’re on the same page just because you started that way

For some reason, assumptions are easy to make.

Often assumptions arise innocently enough.

They may crop up as a way to try to speed up and simplify communications and the process of reaching conclusions and taking action.

But often simplification airbrushes, or wipes away, your ability to notice something significant.

For example, you may see a problem start to emerge and assume that everyone else does, too.

But that may not be the case…it may have been just you who saw the signs of problems or danger.

Often, urgencies and emergencies or smaller problems (but problems, nonetheless) can be avoided with simple team follow-up and communication.

All it takes is taking the time and making the effort to clarify or verify a detail that turns out to be highly significant.

When in doubt, check.

4. Finish together

Start as a team.

Stay a team.

Finish as a team.

Don’t become a bickering band of well-intentioned but misfiring band of people who are filled with the awful feelings of, “Don’t ever make me work with some of these people again!”

Team experiences just don’t have to play out that way.

And whether you work together in the future or not, you’re probably going to learn some things on this and each team project that make future team experiences more effective.

Make this particular project or team a high-performing, and highly positive experience.

“Teams, a good experience?!” you ask?

They definitely can be…and may even be some of the highlights of your career and work life, when they’re created and managed very effectively. Regular team check-ins are an important part of that experience.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

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Freedom equals a rule-free life, right?

Maybe you remember having the feeling as a child that one of the great things about being an adult would be that no one could tell you what to do anymore.

But adulthood’s not quite like that, is it?

Nor is working in a group, or on a team, of any size.

A team that gets a great job done does so because they have a few rules – the right rules for their goals and their game – and they play it better than their competition does.

Your team can be good, better, best when you set and then play by the right rules to guide you to desired outcomes easily.

There are two basic ideas underlying this advice:

1. A team with no rules at all can quickly become an unintended free-for-all of indirection, miscommunication, wasted effort, frustration, conflict and chaos.

2. Too many rigidly applied rules can create a bureaucratic nightmare when the purpose of rules is forgotten as they continue to be mindlessly or thoughtlessly applied.

Either situation – too few rules, or too many – can become the basis for big, awful team stories.

Almost everyone has at least a few big, awful team experiences.

The problem of reaching that perfect balance of the right rules, well-applied is more common than you might guess.

It’s also more costly than you might expect if you miss finding the sweet spot of just enough structure, but not too much, that allows great results to be created by your team consistently.

If you’re the leader of an organization, you might be surprised to find out that your employees may want more rules and direction than you expect.

Uncertainty and too much indirection and independence can be exhausting, believe it or not.

It leaves individuals and groups unable to plan or make the most of the resources they have. They can waste or in other ways miss precious and fleeting opportunities.

Tools, rules, standards, measures and communication expectations can give a team a clear sense of – to use one metaphor – the edge of the pool and the lanes of action.

And without that clarity, a team can feel adrift in the midst of an ocean of possibilities. They’re often unable to choose or agree on a clear direction, make a plan, take action, or have any hope of achieving success together.

One person described great frustration recently in the high-pressure, high-expectations, but otherwise relatively-directionless environment in which he worked.

“We need enough rules to focus on what our customers really want. Right now, we have no idea what that is. Or if our managers know, they haven’t shared it with us.”

Why do leaders avoid setting rules?

Here are just a few possibilities:

- To give themselves maximum flexibility in case their guesses about the future (or what customers really want) are wrong

- To avoid bureaucracy they hated somewhere in their own past

- To encourage creativity in their team or organization

- Because they’re not comfortable in a leadership position, want to be liked, and think there’s a better chance of that happening if they set and have few rules to enforce

- They have no idea where to begin, or what to do to create enough, but not too much, structure to produce success with their organization or team

What can be done to solve the problem?

1. Be clear –or get clear – about your customers, goals, and challenges.

2. Be clear – or get clear – about who’s on your team and the work that needs to be done.

3. Figure out what rules you really need to guide information, decision, and action flows so you can meet your shared goals most easily.

4. Create a basic set of rules that you think will give you enough structure to enable you to work well, but not so much that it weighs the team down and makes them unable to move.

5. Communicate the rules clearly to everyone who needs to use them.

6. Try them.

7. Check to see if they worked.

8. If the first set of rules didn’t work well, list users’ aggravations with the rules as they were designed and implemented.

9. Get rid of or reduce the aggravations.

10. Refine the rules, communicate them, and try the new ones.

11. Check in again to see how they worked.

12. Keep experimenting until you find the set of rules that guides your team most easily to success.

Set your team up to succeed.

Find, or create that sweet spot between chaos and bureaucracy.

You’ll find that when you work in that way as much as possible, it’s where the best results, and the best experience exist for your customers, team and company.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

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Don’t make a wrong turn right from the beginning.

Let your team know what their customers’ target is, and where they’re going.

Some managers and team leaders forget – or overlook – the vital step of sharing their customers’ vision of success with the team that is charged with producing it.

Perhaps these leaders think it’s a waste of time to create a clear picture of the destination their teams need to drive toward, and reach.

Or they forget how important that clear target was to them at times when they were on, rather than leading, a team.

In my experience, teams are hungry for a clear, shared sense of their common goal.

They want to know what the customer views as success.

They want to be able to put their time and talent to good use, and having a clear customer target makes a big difference in whether or not they can do that.

As a senior manager at one company I worked with said recently with a rueful laugh, “Our customers know what they bought. We just don’t know what we sold them!”

That situation he was laughing about?

It caused a lot of frustration and inefficiency throughout the company, and was a big source of many of their difficulties.

What does this cost your company, if it is a problem that ails you, too?

For starters, you’re wasting money, time, talent.

You’re wasting opportunities.

You’re losing goodwill.

Why does this problem of having no clear target happen?

- It’s not always easy to translate customer requirements into a clear picture of success and then to communicate that clearly and completely throughout your organization.

- No process has been set up to do this with predictability and ease.

- People don’t realize that it’s desired and valued.

- Leaders, if they tried a few times to share a vision of success and then got pushback or reluctant participation, may give up, never to try again, or to guide the team to more productive habits.

How can you solve the no clear target dilemma?

1. Start by being clear – or getting clear – about what your customer really wants.

Know. Ask. Don’t just guess.

2. Translate those customer requirements into product and process requirements your team can understand and use successfully.

3. Communicate the target fully.

4. Use that information regularly to help the team keep the team on track, and to do so most easily.

If, then, you’re the leader of a company or team, you may think “the vision thing” is not needed or desired.

You may see that the time it takes to create that clear target is a luxury you don’t have.

But look at it this way: you’re likely to spend that time you think your team doesn’t have, one way or another.

You can take the time to do the planning and solid base-setting work for your team now.

Or you can do rework later, if you miss the target.

Set yourself and your team up for success.

Avoid the wasted time, miscues, finger-pointing, frustration, and, well, the feeling some employees may have of, “I’m wasting my time and life on this team (or perhaps even, in this job).”

It’s a feeling and experience they don’t have to have.

Create a clear vision of success and then work as a team – a real team – to reach the customer-valued outcome.

Then celebrate your team’s success, and the goodwill you generated with the customer, and each other, with the time you saved in that superior team experience.

And move on to do it again…even easier the next time.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

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