More bumps in the road
More bumps on the road
Below are more bumps that teams have encountered in the past. As you did earlier, scan the bumps on the left, and if you are experiencing or anticipate a similar situation with your team, go over the corresponding ideas on the right.
If you try these ideas or experiment with new ones, please send us a note and let us know how it went. If we feel that it has broad applicability, we will build it into the next version of the online guidance.
Train wreck project
Team seems headed in the wrong direction: Working hard on activities that don’t seem to contribute to the goal. And ignoring advice from technical experts about likely negative impact of their chosen path.
- Bring this up with the team, in the context of options and scenarios: “let’s assume we continue heading down this path, and we achieve our goal
- What would the collateral damage be? Will it be worth the gain we would have made?”
- How would we sustain this?”
- Etc.
- If all attempts to course-correct fail, advise the Mentor to ‘pull the plug’ on the project. That is, if in their judgment the direction is unproductive or counter-productive to the broader goals and aspirations. NOTE: This ‘nuclear option’ should only be used in extreme circumstances.
Elusive results
Team is not seeing results with their current strategy and actions
Help the team to come up with new ideas and plans. Here’s a facilitation technique to help spark fresh ideas.
25/10 Crowd Sourcing enables a large group to rapidly generate and sort the group’s most powerful actionable ideas in 30 minutes or less! It is fun, fast, and casual, yet it is a powerful way to generate an uncensored set of bold ideas and then tap the wisdom of the group to identify the top 10. See the video below on how to facilitate this tool.
The team is floundering
Lots of discussions but no clarity on the way forward.
This is a sign that the Team Leader is not stepping up to the role he or she needs to play. Team members can bring this up when they see it happening at a team meeting, in a respectful way:
- “I feel like we are going around in circles. I suggest that we take a break for 10 minutes. Perhaps a couple of us can huddle with the Team Leader so we can decide on a way to move forward.”
If this is a consistent pattern across several meetings, you can talk with the Team Leader before the next meeting, share your observations, and strategise on how to handle this.
Stuck team
Team is running out of fresh ideas
Use the following questions to brainstorm and loosen up the thinking:
- How have other groups dealt with this problem?
- Are there neighbouring communities or individuals from different regions that have successfully dealt with the problem? If so, what did they do?
- How would a “famous person” solve this problem? If they were in the same situation, how would President Mandela/ Your village chief/Mother Theresa/The Prophet/ Your neighbour/ Mother Nature/David Beckham/ Your Father deal with it?
- What would we do if we wanted to fail? If the team wanted to fail completely and make the problem worse, what would they do? (After the team lists these actions, take the opposite and use it as the basis of determining potential solutions).
- What if there were no budget limitations? How would you solve the problem if there were no resource restrictions? Write down the answers and then discuss how to implement these ideas (or parts of them) with existing resources.
Team losing momentum
The team is losing momentum – you and others are losing confidence that the goal can be achieved.
This is not uncommon. The goal is overambitious by design, and some anxiety about being able to achieve it is normal and expected.
But if this anxiety turns into despair, then this becomes a problem.
If you are sensing this is the case, bring this up with the Team Leader, and strategise on ways to deal with it:
- Help the team agree on accomplishing something small but exciting in the coming 2-3 days without worrying about the bigger picture.
- Invite the Sponsor or someone from outside the team to join the next meeting to bring fresh thinking to the situation.
- Sharpen the focus of the 30-Day goal to make it less overwhelming (please inform the Sponsor about this).
- Take a one-week pause from implementing the plan and use this time to do some “research and probing” that you can bring back to your next meeting to inspire new thinking and ideas. This might include interviewing experts or leaders, reviewing what other 30 or 100-Day Challenge teams working on similar goals did, and so on.
Struggling with resources
Resources (funds and people) or not being mobilised on time and the
team wants to take action but doesn’t have any additional resources. The
team is getting discouraged and feels stuck.
- Build fundraising into the 30-Day plan.
- Split the 30-Day into the ‘get-ready’ phase and the ‘go’ phase. Ensure that the ‘go’ phase starts when funds are secured.
- Press the pause button on the 30 days until funding and people is secured.
