Turning People Into Teams: Rituals & Routines That Redesign How We Work

Checked out. That’s how you could describe your new team. Here you are, in another meeting with the right people, at the right place, at the right time, and yet… when you look around the room, it’s a sea of blank, disengaged stares. This isn’t a team, you think. But maybe, this time, it will be different.

Teams take the ingredients available to them and transform them into exceptional outcomes. They craft software applications, from early ideas to compiled software. They create plans for social services and urban centers and Michelin-starred meals and bring them to life. These teams bring the best effort of each individual into their collective work. They debate and align on critical decisions, pursuing a common purpose. They solve problems for the benefit of others and take ownership of what they produce. Most important, they thrive under a shared vision of success.

When we put it that way, don’t you want to be on a team, all of the time? Sure you do! Except that teams are made up of people. And people are messy and complicated, even when they’re trying to be logical about making decisions and solving problems. They — we, you, all of us — confound each other, even on the best of days.

This is the central contradiction of work: team ideals versus people reality. We’re thrown into a room with a bunch of strangers and asked to do the seemingly impossible. And to manage the impossible, we need a way to get things done with some semblance of order. We never have enough time to do any of this, and sometimes we make distressing compromises to deliver. All to sell and ship and innovate and save lives and change the world.

Today’s teams strive to serve their customers with the highest-­quality products, services, and experiences they can create. And while their attention is focused on creating great project outcomes, we’ve seen that the quality of teams’ experiences — how they work together — often falls by the wayside. Many organizations struggle to define how their employees will be successful at teamwork over the long-term.

That’s why Mary Sherwin and I wrote Turning People Into Teams: Rituals and Routines That Redesign How We Work. The central idea of the book is this:

Create a culture where coworkers are designing and building the team experience they want. Create shared rituals.

Rituals give teams the ability to create a collective point of view and reshape the processes that affect their day-to-day work. Turning People Into Teams has dozens of rituals that will help your teams make better choices together, no matter whether they’re finding common purpose at the beginning of a project, all the way through to wrapping things up. Customizable for any industry, work situation, or organizational philosophy, these rituals have been used internationally by many for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. We also include details in the book on how to design your own rituals with your teams.

But you might have more questions you’d like answered about the book before you get a copy. So let’s answer them:

You keep saying “you.” Who is this book for?

You are on a project team. Your nonprofit is launching a new service. You’re with a software company. You’re a designer, a programmer, a developer, an engineer, a content strategist, and you also do interaction design, UX/UI, packaging, and finance. You aren’t C-suite, but you might be some day. It’s your first week. You’ve just been made the team lead. You’re the project manager, the product manager, and the program manager. You’re on your first team. You’ve been here for years. All of you want the same thing: to have a better overall team experience that helps everyone get things done. This book is for you.

Why did you write this book?

Throughout all of our time working with teams, several patterns emerged. Teams wanted more alignment, better decision-making, and of course, a sense of agency and ownership. This book is a collection of the best rituals we’ve given to teams to help with those things. The book reflects our ultimate goal: to build teams that capture the strengths of each individual.

Why did you really write this book?

Honestly? Because we believe that teams should have the power to shape the processes and systems that affect their day-to-day work. Teams are tired of waiting for the entire company to change in order for them to improve their jobs. Teams should not have to wait for a special initiative, for budget approval, or for a distant executive to issue mandates. Teams should be able to start making things right — today, not tomorrow.

How is this book organized?

This book is structured by project timeline, in three parts. Part 1, “Better Beginnings,” is useful for projects that are just starting. If you’re at the beginning, that’s great! If not, that’s fine, too. You might go directly to Part 2, “We’re Stuck, Now What?” It’s a popular starting point. The rituals in Part 3, “Sprinting to the Finish,” are intended to help wrap up a project. When your team finishes a project and begins the next one, then jump back to the beginning.

When I’m reading the book, is it okay to skip around?

Of course! People don’t read business books like normal books. They mostly skip to the parts that are relevant, read those, and ignore the rest. That’s perfectly fine.

You might be searching for something specific for your team. We want to state clearly that there are a few things you will not find in our book: “inspirational” but essentially useless stories masquerading as case studies; jargon or weird acronyms; arguments about methodology or dogma; quotes from or about Steve Jobs.

Anything else?

Investigate. Explore. Experiment. Make choices as a team. Together. After all, like we said, this book is for you.

Great, where can I get it?

Turning People into Teams is published by Berrett-Koehler and available through Amazon.com in the U.S. and internationally through all major booksellers via Penguin Random House. Along with the paperback, there is an e-book edition, an audiobook narrated by Mary Sherwin, and a digital toolkit that contains the instructions and diagrams from the book.

For press inquiries, or if you’d like to review the book, please contact us at questions (at) ask the sherwins (daht) com.