Some principles for clear teams

A work-in-progress exploration of what makes a clear team

Besides developing the Very Clear Ideas process, in recent years I’ve been working on how to build clear teams and how to make very clear deals. The intention of this work is to make it easy for everyone to do the work they need to do — effortlessly. And to make it very easy to talk about what you are doing and why and how.

In the coming weeks and months, I’m going to be doing more work on deals and teams, but here are a few principles to be going on with. (I could probably write an article about each, but — for now — some one-liners.)

1. Teams are made out of deals.
2. Clear teams are made out of clear deals.
3. If you haven’t made any deals with each other, then you’re not a team. You’re just some people.
4. Deals don’t have to be explicitly made. But explicitly made deals are more useful.
5. If no one is in charge, then the team isn’t doing anything. You are either not doing anything, you’re doing lots of different things or you are actually lots of different teams. Or you’re just some people.
6. If the person in charge of a team is not clear about their vision, then no one in the team can be clear about what to do.* The less clear the person in charge, the less clear the team.
7. Even if the person in charge of a team is perfectly clear about their vision, it’s still quite possible that no one in the team will be clear about what to do.
8. The person in charge of a team has to be clear about what they are doing — and what they need help with. This doesn’t have to be made explicit — but it is more useful if it is.
9. Every deal made — between the person in charge and the people who are helping — is an opportunity for the vision to be diluted, weakened, destroyed and taken off course.
10. Making clear deals preserves the clarity of the vision.

These are a little bit work-in-progress. If you have any questions or suggestions — I’ll be happy to hear from you in the responses here.

Also, if you have a team and you’d like to be clearer about how you work together, I’d love to hear from you. Especially in Bristol and London — but also anywhere. Please get in touch and we’ll have a chat. You can read more here:

How to be clear when we work together

NOTE: My work with clear teams builds on Peter Koenig’s research into the role of ‘source’ in organisations. Particularly his insight that an organisation can only ever be as clear as its ‘source’ (the person in charge) — number six. My work has been to develop a set of replicable processes that make it easy for people working together to be clear about what they’re doing and how it gets done.