Challenges and complexities of work processes and establishing effective decision-making within teams

“What we find is that teams that have a process mindset, and what we mean by that is they're explicitly and deliberately focusing on building and refining lean processes, these teams tend to be more effective.” - Peter Axelson

In this episode, Winnie and Peter discuss the importance of creating robust work processes for teams to enhance their effectiveness. They emphasize how this topic is interconnected with previous episodes, where they discussed business objectives and joint work. This episode focuses on how teams can efficiently work together to achieve their business objectives by developing lean and robust work processes.

Episode Highlights:

Definition of Team Processes

Peter begins by distinguishing between "content" (WHAT a team does) and "process" (HOW a team does its work). He highlights that teams with a "process mindset" that explicitly focus on refining their processes tend to be more effective. Process is a key differentiator in team effectiveness.

Types of Team Processes

• Work Processes: Focused on accomplishing the tasks of the team, including setting goals, planning meetings, making decisions, and measuring progress.
• Interpersonal Processes: Focused on building collaborative relationships, developing team norms, offering and receiving feedback, and addressing conflicts.

Business Case for Attention to Process

Winnie discusses the business case for paying attention to team processes. Teams with many talented individuals can underperform if they neglect the importance of HOW they work together. "Process loss" is the term for this phenomenon. Content expertise is often valued and rewarded more than process skills in organizations, which contributes to the lack of investment in team processes.

Approach to Building Robust Work Processes

Peter explains that the approach to improving work processes varies from team to team, depending on their specific needs. An initial assessment helps identify process strengths and weaknesses. They address several common areas where teams may have gaps in their processes - setting priorities, meetings, making decisions, and managing interfaces with stakeholders.

Setting Priorities

Winnie emphasizes the importance of teams developing a process for setting and regularly updating priorities. Teams must understand what's truly important and communicate this to avoid unnecessary stress and inefficiencies.

Effective Meetings

Peter highlights the widespread problem of ineffective meetings and discusses what "good" meeting processes look like. He emphasizes the need for detailed agendas, clear outcomes, realistic time allocation, skilled facilitation, and active involvement from all participants.

• Decision Making: Winnie explains the challenges of decision making in teams and how unclear decision processes can lead to frustration and wasted time. She suggests providing a common language for different decision-making options and making the chosen method clear in each situation.
• Managing Interfaces with Stakeholders: Winnie discusses the need for teams to proactively define processes for working with key stakeholders. She uses the example of a newly formed team she was working with at a pharmaceutical company. As a result of major restructuring at the enterprise level, this team was heavily reliant on other teams in the company for their own team to be successful. They needed to identify clear processes for transparent collaboration with various stakeholders.

The Importance of Lean Processes

Peter emphasizes the need to keep processes as lean as possible and avoid unnecessary administrative work. Striking a balance between "tight" and "loose" processes that suit the team's needs is vital.



Resources

Winnie da Silva on LinkedIn 

Get the whole season and the companion guide at Winniedasilva.com