Teams need to prioritise creating and maintaining clarity, especially during times of disruption and uncertainty. While purpose and shared goals have held steady in Squadify’s latest Team Tracker data, the importance and presence of more granular aspects like a clear plan and measures of success have dropped, creating a significant clarity gap.

Juliet Hammond joins Dan and Pia to discuss how teams need to focus on defining short-term priorities, experimenting, and reflecting in order to stay aligned and effective in a rapidly changing environment.

Takeaways from Dan and Pia

• Teams can create a holistic map for their outcomes, by setting a clear purpose and strategy, along with interdependency and prioritisation choices.
• By creating a shared purpose, organisation can bring their teams together and avoid burdening senior leaders with the responsibility of coordinating everything.
• Most teams are merely groups of people, rather than coordinated units.
• Flexibility is important when setting goals, and while clarity is key, goals should be held lightly and be subject to change while still ensuring that everyone knows what they’re working towards.
• Being overwhelmed by ambiguity and finding it difficult to land on a goal is a natural human reaction. But it's important to seek clarity by focusing on what is undeniable and to make micro adjustments to avoid sailing down the wrong route for too long.

Links

• Connect with Juliet via LinkedIn
• VUCA: Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity
• Locke's Goal-Setting Theory
• Gallup's Q12 Employee Engagement Survey
• Leave us a voice note