Transformation Teams: First step to tackle Uncertainty.
Author: Gustavo Niño.
Every time we are in the face of the unknown (let’s say people, job, city and so on), we are to experience different sort of emotions, that may either make us so uncomfortable that we can not really engage with it, or may inspire and motivate us to dive deeper and achieve our objectives.
Consequently, as part of this multidisciplinary innovation team (or even as a leader within any change process), we face complex challenges and scenarios. There is this constant feeling of uncertainty, either for not having enough knowledge or for having new insights that lead the (innovation) processes in new directions. This condition is common in every transformation process (within institutions, teams communities) and requires energy and tools to keep all the team’s efforts focused on the common objectives. In other words, we need to know WHY we’re doing this.
Why do teams need a WHY?
Many of us can relate now with the famous Golden Circle from Simon Sinek. He proposes a strategic and communications paradigm, where you build and work over a profound sense of purpose that inspires people to gather and put the effort in order to achieve their goal.
Therefore, this framework was one of the tools we used to come up with our team and project definition, at the Digital Society School (DSS). Our team is made up of five multidisciplinary members, and our coach who suggested this approach for us to help align our goals with those of the partners. Our project is part of an alliance, between Amsterdam’s Football team AFC Ajax, the Johan Cruijff Arena (which is a big event venue and home of the Ajax and Dutch football team), the Lectoraat Crossmedia (a research group at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam), and the Digital Society School Itself.
Our challenge is to discover “How can AI and interactive Technologies (such as chatbots), be used to create inclusive experiences for fans?”. While this framing question holds the key intention and elements of our challenge, we needed a team declaration to align our efforts and will, in a deeper and personal (emotional) way, and likewise create the feeling that we all belong to each other and to the project.
How did we approach the ‘WHY’ question?
Being asked ‘WHY’ was intimidating for our newly formed team. New coworkers, a new project with new challenges, put a lot of uncertainty into everyone. So then it gets hard to answer the question of WHY: “why are we here?”, “why are we doing this?”, “why are we part of this project?”, “why do we want to achieve…?”
In order to get to our team’s deep purpose, I built a short session where everyone could smoothly run into different elements that could lead us to find (initially) our shared deep reason to be in the project (including why we are now part of the DSS). We used a technique called Brainwriting. This consists of 6 rounds of questions, from which in rounds 2–5 everyone gives answers then pass their answer to the next person, repeatedly, along 3 or 2 minutes. For this activity, we shared all the answers at the end of each round, but only started to have discussions after the fourth round.
We started with the obvious question: “What would you say is our why right now?”. With this question the purpose was to start with the ideas that everyone already had, so along the next questions we could gain clarity.
Then, I used two questions to bring the team to a broader (and maybe more ‘creative’) view of our purpose. For this purpose the questions we used where: “What would be unbelievable to achieve by the end of the project?” and “What would you do if this project makes us famous?” . The ‘joyful’ element in these questions helps to build a more comfortable experience, in the way it allows to imagine a new reality and build over the personal imagination of the participants. It also allowed us to share this new imaginary reality, and built it together.
The next round had a double question which was: “Which Skills do you bring into the group? And, which do you consider are (your) unique skills?”. To ask this helps the team understand their shared capabilities, and to gain clarity on the possible approaches that could lead to the development of the project, especially at its initial stage. In the same way, it opens the opportunity to know each other from a different view.
Then comes the moment to understand the personal vision that everyone has about the project. These are the results, social implications, future development opportunities, and so on. In consequence, and as we had already answered to the question of what unbelievable achievement would we reach by the end of the project, I pushed them a little bit into the future (maybe a little bit to much), by asking “How Could be a headline 50 years from now about this project?” The number of years maybe was a little bit unrealistic, but that’s the point!. In this situation it was necessary to go beyond the common and already known answers.the real intention here was to dig deeper on future effects and results of this project, even with the team not involved. This also helped to give a sense of transcendence on what we are doing.
What was the result?
Following this sense of transcendence, we needed to converge all our different ideas into a single statement. I simply asked the team to individually come up with their “New Definition of Why”. Then, we shared each statement, and there was a strong feeling of surprise, inspiration and relatedness. When we grouped every statement we were aligned to achieve common objectives, and also with a clear greater purpose to lead us along future journeys.
At the end this was our outcome:
What to do next?
After this exercise, we were at a better spot to face all the questions that we had in relation to the project, and to embrace the uncertainty in which we ran into. For future sessions, I will be sure to use an energizer, or some kind of warm-up activity, so the team can smoothly go into this experience, and be more open when engaging in discussions and providing answers to the questions.
Thank you for reading and if you want to keep track of the team and the project you can follow us on:
Team’s Instagram | Team’s Medium | Gustavo’s Medium | plakband.dss@gmail.com
The Digital Society School is a growing community of learners, creators and designers who create meaningful impact on society and its global digital transformation. Check us out at digitalsocietyschool.org.
