Lessons from Mars

In this final episode, I summarize all of what I covered in the preceding 26 episodes and discuss the resources available to listeners.

All teams attempting to enhance their performance must deal with trust. There are lots of theories about what trust is, why it matters and how to develop it. There are also countless exercises and activities designed to build trust. Most of these theories and approaches assume that trust is the key to effective teamwork, a necessary precursor. Our research led me to believe is that trust is an outcome, not a prerequisite. This difference it crucial for understanding how to approach trust in teams.

The key to this framework are the insights and theories that lie behind it. The name of the Imperatives and Practices are just labels; we encourage you to adapt this Framework to your organization and culture.

Great teams don't just conduct their business. willy-nilly. They align their collaborative processes, like meetings and decision making, to support the value they've agreed to deliver. For instance, they figure out what meetings are essential to getting their work done and then schedule only those meetings.

Any team can hit its stride one or twice. Superior teams have a discipline of reflection, inquiry and learning that sustain their success over time.

Once a team knows why its collaboration matters and what work will deliver on their purpose they can begin to cultivate the relationships and commitments needed to deliver.

Once a team understands the context it's operating in, it needs to figure out how its collaboration can create the greatest value for the organization. A team's purpose captures that value proposition and provides a "why" for their collaboration.

Understanding "why" a team's collaboration matters is a good start but it isn't enough. The next practice helps teams to figure out exactly what work requires collaboration, and which doesn't, and how their work will deliver on their purpose statement.

Strong teams begin with a clear sense of how they fit into the larger organization, they know what's expected of them to deliver value to external stakeholders.

Even with all the Clarity and Intentionality in the world, collaboration will sputter without sufficient and appropriate discipline.

Intentionality is the critical element in effective teamwork. It begins with Clarity and relies on specific efforts and practices to deepen and extend it.