Great teams don’t do basics better. They obsess over obvious principles that others ignore. – David Kline
Do you compete against your potential? Or the market?
When was the last time you accepted some totally unvarnished feedback? Or took radical accountability, with no blame, no excuses?
Do you obsess over standards? Sprint when inspired, and rest when needed? Subtract from your tasks, rather than add to them?
When was the last time you got excited about something new at work?
These 7 questions are critical. They point to a set of habits that we can build, to go beyond average.
In truth, average quickly becomes invisible in our quickened and complex world. As humans, we are perfectly imperfect – often blind to our own shortcomings and sometimes, as Margaret Heffernan points out, wilfully blind. Motion is not momentum, and what does not compound is not worth investing in. If excellence is not spreading and inspiring, excellence leaves.
It’s common for us to talk about values being “what we do, proven daily”. And to assume that with the right set of values, our teams will fly. The time has come to sharpen up, create small mission driven teams with laser focus, to build and support teams who get excited about possibility. They are slow to hire and will benefit from heavy investment, but their impact will outstrip the mediocrity that bores some teams and businesses into non-existence.
A Blueprint of 7 Habits
Explore these 7 habits to position beyond mediocrity:
- Simplicity – subtract where you can, remove what does not compound
- Controlled challenge – sprint and rest when needed
- Contagious improvement – fix small cracks daily
- Outrageous standards – compete against your potential, not the market
- Bold accountability – no blame, no excuses
- Radical candour – commit to getting and giving feedback
- Energy for the new – get excited about possibility.
Actions
💡 To put actions behind this blueprint, deep dive into the team habits work of Charlie Gilkey.
Team Habits: How small ideas create extra-ordinary results is less ‘filler’ and theory. It is more ideas to experiment with. We used some of them to introduce targeted, small actions to catalyse change in the ‘innovation hub’ of a large water utility, a geographical area selected based on water scarcity in that region. The actions mapped to the results of a quick survey that indexed critical levers to pull for evaluating ideas and translating them into tangible benefits.
💡 Read this bumper post on habits from Farnam Street, which explores habits versus goals, how habits can be as small as necessary (a useful concept to apply when working with teams), how they compound, and the value of building a system.
💡 Explore short immersive experiences for your team ‘together time’ that bring each of the 7 habits in the blueprint to life. Mail us if you would like some ideas on how to do this.
“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”
