How Teams Can Find Bold Ideas Fast With Relationship Action Plans

The volatility and performance pressure in the world around us call for collaboration to be fully inclusive of those who should be involved to get to the boldest ideas fastest. We should have no time for frozen routines, ossified protocols and organizational hierarchies that hinder growth. The aim is a working culture of agile and bold innovation and broader co-creation that happens in an accelerated way. We work in broad global networks inside and outside even the walls of our own companies, so we need to redefine how we think of “teams” and collaborate liberally outside the limited org chart. It’s now 20 years since I first raised the vital importance of building networks for opportunity in my book Never Eat Alone. And today’s world-class teams have shifted to a bolder and more inclusive approach to collaboration that leads to a greater diversity of thinking and more innovative ideas from a broader network of stakeholders. But our research shows these are only the top 15% of organizations. Too few businesses are asking “Who’s your team?” and figuring out with intention what expertise and insight they need to solve the challenges they face. Too many are leaving the search for the right ideas to chance. Too few teams are building Relationship Action Plans.

How to build a Relationship Action Plan

Most of us think of our teams as the people who report to us. But the reality is that is an old way of thinking about work. Who do we need to get the job done and the recognition that the broader your reach out the more innovative and bolder your answers might be? It doesn’t matter if people are inside or outside the organization. You can talk about what you have to do and where you're going, but you need to start introducing who makes up your team and who are the people you need to build relationships with to achieve your goals. And that's Teaming Out. To Team Out you need to build a Relationship Action Plan (RAP). The RAP requires you to:

1. Identify the most critical relationships to your success, your team's success. Also recognize these are not those you need to get buy in from, they are your team. Full stop. You need to co-create with them and serve, share and care and have a social contract with them.
2. Measure it. Use a scale of negative one to five. -1=it's a strained relationship. 0=they don't know about or care about our work. 1= they are aware but not really engaged. 2= they are engaged lightly, not really collaborating deeply. 3= they are collaborating and engaging regularly. 4= they are advocates and offering innovation and really stepping forward to offer risks and challenges. 5= they are true ambassadors, totally under the tent with us and driving the recruitment of other important teammates.

It’s then important to prioritize who are your most important teammates with an ABC.

A=the core day to day constant working team.

B=those you will gain the most from and who can hold the progress back the most. And we want to co-create with them and really engage in the team but may not be in day to day stand ups but will be the regular sprint reviews.

C=influencers that we need to be engaged at some level. May only be involved for Stress Testing at the key project milestones.

So now you've got two metrics Relationship Quality (RQ) and Priority. It’s critical that you move all the As to RQ 4 and 5. Most of the Bs need to be at least RQ 3,4,5. One key is not to spend too much time trying to convert the -1s but instead get real traction and results and that will help convert those -1. We call that the Saul to Paul conversion when you get the naysayer swayed but trying too early can just waste time and prevent you from ever getting traction.

You can allocate individuals on the team targets to build relationships with. These could be contractors. They could be clients. They should be customers. Expand the list over time and monitor progress regularly, at least at the end of every month with the day-to-day team. Co-elevate with both customers and suppliers.

Why the future of teams is broader inclusion

We cannot cling to old working habits and processes, we need to ratchet up our way of working and build systems to be more inclusive because we need more perspectives, more insight, more expertise, more ideas not less because of the pressure of constant change. In a world of constant disruption, we need bolder solutions. Rather than leave things to chance, we need a structured, purposeful approach to building the network of relationships we need to help us win.