Turning Your Team Around: Step 5

Now it's time to develop the plan to close the gaps. You have identified 3-6 key root causes, you are ready for your team to take on the next step, a solutions session. 

Hold a “solutions session”

It's time for team members to recommend activities to that reduce or eliminate the root causes of the gaps between where you are and where you are going - your future state. 

 They can start by agreeing on which 2-3 the team will collectively pursue at first. By giving your team some control over the process, you significantly enhance their engagement.

For each of the key gaps, pursue an "If we, then we" analysis. If the work you've done in the prior step, especially "asking 'why' five times", the solution session may be fairly easy. If the root cause of the problem you are addressing is not so clear cut, this step can be a challenge. 

As described in my last post, the problem could be that you don't have a key supply because the supplier isn't prepared, which could be due to a lack of communication between your team and the supplier, which could be due to a lack of a standard process for communicating. 

In that case, the solutions approach states, "If we develop a standard process for communicating, the supplier will be prepared and have the supplies we need."  

Once the team repeats this process for each root cause, the next step is either to implement the solution, if it's easy and obvious, or to test the solution with a rapid experiment. We'll discuss this in the next post. 

If you’d like to learn more specifics about such a process, or have started and run into a road block, feel free to reach out to me. Schedule a free discovery call during which we can discuss your specific challenges.