Process is Pivotal: Make collaboration painless.

6 min readDec 22, 2023

[Part #5 of 5 in Essential Pillars of Strong Leadership]

In the final chapter of the Essential Pillars of Strong Leadership, let’s turn our attention to the backbone of execution: effective process. Collaboration is the engine of innovation and great processes are the oil that keeps this engine running smoothly. Done right, processes align and empower teams, support focus, and turn collective efforts into collective triumph.

3 Things to Remember:

🔑 Trust & empower your teams.
🔑 Make processes as light as possible.
🔑 Asynchronous communication supports focus.

Collaboration is the lifeblood of any thriving organization, and as leaders, our role is to facilitate this by making teamwork as frictionless as possible. This involves streamlining processes, identifying and removing bottlenecks, and fostering an environment where each voice contributes to the collective intelligence.

Mutual respect and shared purpose drive excellence.

Empowerment is a catalyst for action. By trusting your teams, fostering a culture of initiative, and giving them the autonomy to act, you will unlock their potential to innovate and solve problems. Consider Trello’s early value of “Don’t do nothing.” This memorable double-negative essentially means that if you see a problem, you don’t necessarily need to solve it yourself, but you should do something about it. This ethos encourages team members to address issues as they arise, fostering a culture of engagement and proactive problem-solving.

Ownership and accountability are the antidotes to turf wars. They provide team members with a clear sense of their roles and the authority to make decisions, which is essential for swift and effective action.

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” — Steve Jobs

⚠️ Warning: Empowerment Requires Trust-Filled Relationships

Trust requires a strong foundation. If you find yourself hesitant to trust your team, it may be time to revisit these foundational elements:

Have you created a foundation of values & empathy?
Have you created clear goals and success criteria to move the business forward?
Did you hire thoughtfully? Can you trust their skills?
Have you established clear criteria for success in roles and tasks?

Default to trust. Deal directly with any individuals who undermine it, rather than allowing doubt to erode the entire team’s dynamic.

🏆 Cross Functional Teams Foster Empowerment & Independence

“Don’t ship the org chart.” — Steven Sinofsky’s paraphrasing of Conway’s law

Your structures should reflect your desired business outcomes. Cross-functional teams embody this principle, bringing together diverse skills and perspectives with shared accountability for the team’s success. In “Brave New Work” Aaron Dignan suggests SLAM teams:

Self-Managed: authority to make decisions and work unencumbered without disruptions from outside leaders
Lean: small enough to move quickly
Audacious: have a lofty goal with clear success metrics
Multi-Disciplinary: contain all skills they need to achieve their mission

Cross-Functional Teams achieve better work, done faster.

🥳 Guidlines for Phenomenal Cross-Functional Teams

Equip Teams for Full, End-to-End Problem-Solving: Ensure teams have everything they need to fully solve a customer problem. This includes: fully understanding the problem, crafting potential solutions, soliciting feedback from customers, delivering the solution, measuring the impact, and iterating if necessary.
Make Teams As Small As Possible: 7 people (plus or minus 2) is widely considered a magical team size. Jeff Bezos’ famous “Two Pizza” rule says no meeting should be so large that two pizzas can’t feed everyone.
Focused Team Members: Dedicate team members to a single team to minimize context switching and allow them to truly focus on a particular problem space or customer type.
Facilitate Coordination: Appoint process shepherds to streamline efforts and maintain momentum.
Connect Work to Impact: Enable teams to see the results of their efforts to stay engaged and motivated. I have worked with thousands of engineers from all over the world, and one thing is consistent with almost all of them: They love solving meaningful problems.
Prioritize Learning & Iteration: Encourage continuous learning and adaptation to keep teams sharp and innovative.
Provide Facilitators: Ensure you have people dedicated to facilitating and shepherding processes, especially when coordinating large efforts.

🚀 Crafting Light & Asynchronous Processes

The art of great processes is ensuring a balance between supportiveness and simplicity. The goal is to create a framework that guides but doesn’t stifle. Processes should serve the people and not the other way around. To achieve this:

Prioritize clarity: Every process should be easily understood and executable without extensive training.
Automate the mundane: Use technology to handle repetitive tasks, freeing up human creativity for complex problem-solving.
Iterate and evolve: Treat processes as living entities that should adapt to the changing needs of the team.

Everyone needs time in the day for actual work! Unfortunately, in many organizations there’s a perfect storm of disempowered, convoluted teams with unclear goals, and an avalanche of exhausting meetings. Asynchronous communication creates space for deep focus work without the constant interruption of meetings. It also supports different working habits, fosters inclusivity, and encourages thoughtful communication. These are key ingredients for thriving, diverse teams!

The Two Core Key Async Tools:

Another benefit of async communication is improved transparency and documentation. Unlike email, these tools foster more open communication that can benefit the entire team. They’re designed for exactly these purposes: searchable and more scalable even if your team grows or people leave.

Information Repository: Platforms like Confluence can house company and team goals and strategies, an employee and office directory, key resources & training, ongoing projects, decisions, and updates.
Real-Time Chat: Tools like Slack facilitate immediate communication without the drawbacks of email.

🔎 Case Study: Creating Effective Teams As You Grow

There was a time at Trello when even defined cross-functional teams would have been too heavy of a process. As a young organization with extremely talented and empowered people, they created huge success with very little explicit process. They relied on Trello as their information repository and used real-time chat as the default instead of meetings or email.

In 2016, when I was hired as the first external product manager, leadership had realized that their style of working was no longer scaling to support their continued growth and success. The executive team created four explicit goals, each with a defined customer type and success criteria. Each team was then empowered to develop a roadmap intended to reach those goals. Each team was given support but freedom to work in the way they found most effective. While all teams had quarterly touchpoints with one another, their key activity had significant flexibility and was tailored to their unique needs and styles.

🌱 Baby Steps to Implement:

Start small by reviewing your current processes. Are they clear, concise, and truly necessary? Simplify one process at a time, seeking feedback from those it affects most. Encourage your teams to suggest improvements. Often, the best process innovations come from those who use them daily. Implementing Retrospectives with your direct team is an excellent way to get started!

How do you ensure your processes bolster collaboration and don’t hinder it? How have you created a culture of trust and empowerment in your teams?

Feel free to share your thoughts or reach out for a chat — I’d love to help.

Thank you for reading my Essential Pillars of Strong Leadership series! If you missed one, dive back in!