In the quest of the high performance team
Part one: The Team Canvas and Tuckman’s team dev stages
Once upon a time, there was a team. Looking from above, it was a “normal” team: it had a name, everyone sat at the same table, had meetings together and shared problems and beers. But when sprint ended, there was zero product increment -or a little one- ready to use. And when the sprints went by and the results were the same, the team morale came down. Why we can’t deliver? they asked sadly to themselves. Of course the stakeholders weren’t happy either. It seems that deliver value and team morale has a symbiotic relationship.
When retrospectives are not enough
Facilitate retrospectives when the team morale is down is one of the hardest things I ever had to do. Is like the Groundhog Day movie: each retrospective with the same problems, with more frustration, zero optimism and more reluctance to propose and to do new improvements. So, I started to learn how to breed unicorns a.k.a high performance teams.
What I mean by “high performance team”
Is common to understand high performance as synonymous of high productivity. But I am more aligned to Lyssa Adkins’s concept of high performance team and its beautiful analogy of the high performance tree.

Understanding the Tuckman’s stages of team development
It is said that all models are wrong, but some are useful. And this model help me to understand the common stages that a team passes thru its life. Here is a great post explaining this model using cats gifs 😸

The Team Canvas
One of the first things we do when a group of people must work together is to set some rules or use a process that other group stablished. In the assumption that everyone will understand the same and that the rules creator is a kind of illuminated master that knows everything, we started to work according to them. Sooner or later, the complexity and the culture will eat the team with chocolate and churros, keeping it from being a high performance team.
Probably, that team is in the Tuckman’s forming or storming stage and need some additional help. Thats when I use the team canvas. This activity take up to eight hours, so, a cozyplace with food and no interruptions is a must.

I like canvases because is a structured way to facilitate conversations. And this canvas promote sharing understanding of the team goals, the motivations of each member, and know each other not to avoid conflict, but to understand and propose how to work with less friction.
Another aspect that I like of canvases is that we can use whenever we want to discuss. So, I start with the people and roles section using Personal Maps from Management 3.0. I use it because is a practice to build empathy, something very useful for this team building day. Then, we discuss about common & personal goals and team values. For this section, I’ve used Lego Serious Play (LSP). I learned this methodology from one of my ex-coworkers at Segundamano, Joel Ortiz. What I value the most of LSP is that we talking about the model instead as oneself, and that brings safety to the team members. And its fun!


The discussions that have been held so far prepare the stage for the team’s purpose. Help the team to identify it is a big asset for the retrospectives. The purpose have to be simple to understand and shared by all. If a team have problems to identify it, I can assure that there are bigger problems underneath them. In that case, I recommend to stop the activity and try to understand what the problem is. I recommend this because if the team can’t agree on it’s purpose, there is a chance that any agreement that they do won’t be valuable or will be made just to fill up the canvas.
For the strengths & assets / weakness and risks I use a simple SWOT with post-its. This retrospective facilitation explain how to do it. And in the end, I facilitate the discussion of rules (I better like to call them agreements) & activities of the team. Is important to make conscious to the team that are their first agreements, they could change as the time passes by. My proposal is to limit this agreements to three. Also, if a team member is not agree with one point, that point won’t be included at the team’s agreements. Is better to have one great agreement than a lot of them but with less commitment. Instead of rules I also have used the Even — Over Statement. This provide simple guide when the team has to take hard decisions.
Conclusion
Sitting a bunch of people together and expect that they work without friction, like a well oiled machine is not only naive, but also irreal. The teams are more similar a natural organism, like a tree or an ecosystem. Is the leader’s responsibility to understand the complexity of being a high performance team. They must help and guide the teams on its firsts steps. I’ve found that the Team Canvas is great way to start.

