Perfect your team’s crafts by Lean Annual Planning!
At Fusion, the enterprise accelerator of Optum, we shift thinking paradigms. We created a new way of thinking about strategic planning called Lean Annual Planning. It is a mix of fun, creative exercises and craft building. We realize we can’t predict the future. What we know though are the necessary crafts to create opportunities.
In this article, I’ll share with you some of the activities we went through to develop the crafts of our team as part of our yearly team event.
As far as my role, I worked with my colleagues Haya and Ryan to design and lead the 2 days events that we created for our team of 15.
Stagecraft — poetry of mantras and stories
1- We always seek to raise the bar on our storytelling chops. This skill helps us deliver precise communication. That means a clear and concise message based on the audience, that will be acted upon and reinforces conversations instead of shutting them down.
We were lucky enough to get an improv class delivered by a comedian at the Improv Asylum in Boston. We re-learned to leverage the power of YES AND. We built stories off each-others ideas. We got out of our comfort zones and we had tons of fun!
2 — We believe in the power of stories to raise empathy. This skill helps us understand the deepest pains that are under the surface of people’s skin. We also know that complexity is everywhere in our organizations. Communicating that complexity is challenging.
Greg lead us through a Lego Serious Play to do a full retrospective on the way we use OKRs. This was all done through building Lego models and telling stories about it.
Statecraft — pursuit of purpose and value for others
3 — We are helpers and don’t expect something in return. We always start with the question “How can we help you?” because we know it’s a snowball effect. Our team had the mindset, but how do we make it more actionable?
My colleague Jake introduced us to the Reciprocity Ring. It’s a framework built around asking for and giving help. It taps the collective knowledge, networks and energy of a group to meet each person’s request. You’re able to access a much wider knowledge base: Who you know? becomes Who (and what) do we all know?”. Everyone was then able to help each other in the team and setup actions. Haas — Help-as-a-service.
4 — We are self-improvers and coaches at the same time. We welcome feedback from our peers, mentors and leaders to improve the way we work, live and play. We hate opinions and non-actionable or untimely feedback. We needed to build our feedback muscle to make it a habit, not an exception.
Haya brought back to the team what she learned from Joseph Weintraub. He is the founder of the Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork Program at Babson College. We had open discussions around the concept of evaluation, feedback and coaching. We’ve setup team habits to enable the team to deliver more structured feedback.
5 — We share the same values making our team flexible yet aligned. Affirmations are guiding principles that are true in the context of the team. They help teammates understand expectations and live the unspoken culture of a tribe. What happens when a new member joins us?
Sarah and Ed had the team describe their personal affirmations. The team then narrowed it down to a shorter list applicable to our team. The output will be an experimental deck of cards with our affirmations. New colleagues can review when they join. Others can review, reflect or share with others.
Tradecraft — mastery of focus and execution
6 — We focus and prioritize our work to achieve our vision. OKR is a management tool that allows our team to bring a high level of focus and ownership. Direction coming from objectives is firm and lead us toward that vision. Key results are flexible stretch goals and evolve as the work progresses. They keep us accountable to see if we meet our objectives.
We defined our 2019 OKRs as a team because we believe it is a collaborative process. With contribution comes engagement and ownership. This year, we created 3 categories of OKR to bring even more focus as they evolve through time: Experiment are objectives where we want to investigate and test. Grow are objectives where we want to improve and gain maturity in. Scale are objectives that are working and needs to be spread across the organization.
7 — We create momentum for easy execution by identifying actions, timelines and owners. We call it the massive action plan. Massive stands for the amount of value it will create, not the number of actions in the plan.
We had the team review the full 2 days. They listed all the actions that will create massive value for our team and our organization. We like to give ourselves short timelines of 7/14/21 days and do a check-in after 21days.
Food for thought
Reflecting on our time mastering our crafts, it was a success because:
- We leveraged face to face time to do things that we could not do remotely.
- We reviewed our past through storytelling to extract insights and empathy.
- We planned for focus and worked on specific aspects of our team DNA.
We also increased opportunities for individuals to contribute and engage. We had external and internal leaders. We gained empathy. We gained alignment and ownership.
Do you want your team to be a “WE”? Reach out to us so we can craft your next team event.
Special thanks to Ed Boudrot for adding his point of view and to Jeremy Smith for his help reviewing this story.
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A Fusion publication. We are employees of UHG and these views are our own and not those of the company nor its affiliates.
