?? A Simple Question to Help Your Team Define Success

Welcome to "Selected Hot Topics"! Ready to embark on a delightful journey through the latest trends, innovations, and cultural phenomena? We're thrilled to be your companions on this adventure, offering a warm and friendly exploration of the exciting topics that pique our curiosity. So grab your favorite snack, get cozy, and let's dive into these fascinating subjects with a smile. Together, we'll uncover insights and share laughter along the way. Let the fun begin! ??

By Bob Frisch and Cary Green I January 30, 2024

Despite its critical importance, most executive teams are not in agreement around the foundational question: What does success look like in X years? The challenge lies in developing a clear collective understanding of what winning as a team looks like and then aligning efforts, resources, and strategies toward these common goals. In this article, the authors offer guidance on how to prepare for and lead a success-defining discussion with your team.

With the new year just underway, what better time to engage your team in defining what champagne-popping success looks like this year or the future? Here’s how to prepare for and lead this success-defining discussion with your team.

Before the Conversation

Preparing to discuss what constitutes success requires some pre-work. Here are two steps to take ahead of time:

1. Ask the champagne question individually.

Begin by asking each team member to respond to the champagne question individually, either through an interview or a survey.

2. Analyze the responses.

Before discussing the results with the team, group the individual responses into broad themes like revenue growth, profitability, global expansion, innovation, and culture. This allows for commonalities and misalignments to be more easily identified in advance.

Typically, differences among team members fall into three categories:

• Same goal, diverse targets.
• Same goal, diverse interpretations.
• Different goals.

During the Conversation

Aligning the team requires careful thinking about the process in the meeting, especially if their answers show widely varying perspectives across the team. Consider the following:

1. Level set the group.

Even seasoned executives may not have a consistent understanding of the business’s trajectory. At the conversations’ starting point, make sure everyone is up-to-speed on important data like growth rates, revenue mix by product and geography, and insights from employee surveys. If one person proposed 15% revenue growth and another proposed 3%, understanding how those compare to historical and projected revenue growth is a key input.

2. Review the responses as a team.

Review the champagne question responses together, highlighting similarities and differences within the themes you established earlier. Explore where similar answers have different targets, where responses may have different underlying meanings (e.g., global), and where views diverge. This naturally leads to a discussion of tradeoffs.

3. Develop options for what success looks like.

Divide the group into smaller teams of two to five members. Give them about 20 minutes to discuss and address two key questions:

• What does winning look like for us? These should be 3–5 concise, descriptive, goal-oriented statements.
• What specific measure(s) and target(s) would you suggest?

4. Establish what winning looks like by setting measures and targets.

Reviewing the collective responses from the breakout exercise often reveals a complex and sometimes cluttered picture, highlighting the need for further refinement and prioritization.

5. Agree on next steps.

At the end of this conversation, your team will be better aligned on what constitutes success, although further work will likely be needed to refine the collective answer. A measure or two may still require further investigation, or targets may need to be established and validated. At the end of the meeting, assign individuals to fill these gaps and bring recommendations back to the team for a subsequent discussion to finalize the team’s view of success.

Three Points to Consider as You Work

1. Keep it focused.

2. Take a balanced, portfolio approach.

3. Consider the stretch.

The champagne question helps bring Stephen Covey’s principle of “beginning with the end in mind” to life. Far from being a one-time prompt, we find it sparks a continuous dialogue, integral to unifying around a shared vision of success. Business teams are frequently faced with multiple, sometimes conflicting goals. Asking the champagne question is an ideal start to your team spending time together defining and aligning around a clear and common understanding of what winning looks like.

Let your ears listen, click ??

Join our friendly community as we adapt to the new norm together and receive weekly insights for well-being. Check out the weekly newsletters .

To stay up-to-date with our latest news and updates, you can subscribe to our newsletters here .