How to Organize a Team
In life, there will be countless opportunities for you to make a positive impact on others.
That impact could take the form of a service, a product, an organization, or a creative project.
Creating and managing a team is one of the best ways to create that impact. No matter how great your personal skills are, collaborating with others is the best way to scale your efficacy.
But starting and working with a team alone is not enough. Teams that succeed at building the positive future they envision are effective.
In this post, you’ll learn how effective teams operate. You'll learn how they set goals, how they define work, and how they get it all done. By the end, you'll have everything you need to get your team in action toward making that positive impact.
Define Your Values, Objectives, Key Results, and Tasks
Before a team can be effective at anything, it first must decide what to work on.
An effective team always begins its collaborative efforts by defining the following:
Values - What are your team’s most fundamental reasons for existing?
Objectives - What are the things your team is currently trying to achieve?
Key Results - What are the specific and measurable goals you can reach to get there?
Tasks - What are the specific tasks you'll need to complete along the way?
Values: Start with Why
Think of values like your team’s operating system. Values are phrases or words that define your team's collective vision and purpose.
Every person and organization has a set of values that are either implicit or explicit. Our values guide our decision-making. They help us identify what is most important in a situation. They give dignity and meaning to our work when the times get rough. Values define the why behind our team's work. Without values, any goals you set will be arbitrary.
A defined set of values is a mandatory first step before picking the right objectives and key results to work toward.
There is no correct way to define your team’s values. To begin, schedule an open conversation with the members of your current team. Ask questions about why members wanted to be part of the team. Probe what the individual members of the group hope to achieve at a high level.
To help you get started, here are some guiding questions to use when defining your team's values:
What important truths does your team believe that few agree with you on?
What aspect of the future is your team building that no one else will build?
What does your team hope to have/be/do in the future?
Why does your team want to come together?
Why is your group's work important?
What similar teams or organizations do your team members aspire to be like? What specific aspects of these teams do they hope to model in their own work?
Throughout your discussion, capture any specific phrases that resonate with the team. These phrases are your team's values. Continue until your team feels satisfied they have defined their values as a whole. By the end, you should have a specific list of value phrases that define your team's purpose.
The next step is to decide how to turn those values into objectives.
Objectives: What You're Currently Trying to Do
Once you know the why behind your team’s work, you next need to figure out what you’ll work on.
Depending on where you’re at in your growth cycle, you might be focusing on broader current goals like increasing users, gaining sponsors, increasing revenues, or improving programming. These are your objectives.
While each team might have a singular, overarching product, service, or initiative, that singular focus can break down into 1-3 objectives. Your objectives are the broad, aspirational things you're trying to achieve within your singular focus. They’re usually easy to remember and easy to articulate.
Each objective functions like a compass guiding the work of your team.
Key Results: Define the Targets
The only way to know if your team is succeeding at manifesting its objectives is to achieve key results.
Key results define your team’s values as specific, measurable targets to achieve. They determine how your team will measure its success. They also guide the identification of tasks you’ll work on to get there. If values are the why behind your team’s work, your key results are the what.
To create a key result, turn each one of your objectives into a specific, measurable outcome to work toward. When you turn objectives into key results, ensure that your key results are:
Specific: Key results should define the exact thing you want to do or achieve. When writing your key results, start with an action word (reach, earn, generate, collect, obtain, write, create, etc.). Action words help clarify the nature of the key result you’re after.
Measurable: Key results should always be measurable. To make a key result measurable, choose a metric you can measure your team with. Your key result may be a certain number of dollars, sign-ups, page views, etc. In any case, always include a specific metric for every key result you create.
Time-bound: A key result should always include a realistic date that you intend to achieve it by. We'll cover specific strategies for setting deadlines later in this post.
Public: Everyone on your team should know your key results and see how their individual work contributes to them. The team's progress towards your key results should also be public. Teams should always be able to view their real-time progress towards your key results.
Prioritized: Rank your key results in order from most urgent to least urgent. If one key result is necessary to achieve another, it should come first on your prioritized list. We'll also discuss this in more detail later.
Tasks: Clarify and Increase Action
What’s the one thing you could do, such that by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary, and what would it look like if it were easy? - A combination of quotes by Gary Keller and Tim Ferriss
After you’ve defined your team’s key results, the next step is to define the tasks required to reach them.
Tasks are specific actions the members of your team will take responsibility for. All the tasks, when completed, should result in the achievement of your key result(s). Identifying the highest-value tasks is essential for achieving your key results.
To find the highest value tasks, think of your team and its pursuit of your key results from a high level. If you watched your team achieve its key results over time, what tasks would they complete?
Put another way: What is the “hero’s journey” of your team’s accomplishment of its key results? What would happen first, then second, then third, and so on to achieve your key results?
Identifying High-Value Tasks
In a perfect world, teams could achieve key results with a few completed tasks. But in the real world, we fall into thinking traps that prevent this from happening. Without realizing it, teams often value being busy more than actual progress. This is simple: being busy feels like you're making progress.
One common mistake teams make is focusing on tasks that don’t contribute to reaching key results. It's far too easy to create a long checklist of imagined tasks that need to get done. But more often than not, many of those tasks aren't critical or even necessary to achieve key results.
One trait of effective teams is their ability to identify and focus on high-value tasks. Another trait is their ability to ignore and avoid time-wasting tasks at all costs. Being busy isn't a consideration of effective teams. Instead, working on high-value tasks is the utmost priority at all times.
Unfortunately, identifying high-value tasks isn't an easy task in itself. Many consultants and project managers get paid lots of money for this one ability alone. Luckily, there are simple strategies that can help you separate out high-value tasks.
To help you with identifying high-value tasks, here are a few framing examples:
Drucker’s Guiding Question
In his book The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker uses this guiding question to decide what tasks work on:
“What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?”
Drucker’s quote uses the words "significantly affect the performance and the results." The key word is "significantly."
Teams often get bogged down by putting out fires, reacting, and falling into busy traps. Drucker’s framing question challenges us to do the opposite. Consider the one or two tasks that would most significantly affect the performance and the results that matter most (i.e., your key results). This could be as few as 2-3 specific tasks, so long as they significantly move the team closer to the key result.
Keller’s “ONE Thing”
In his book The One Thing, Gary Keller uses a “Focusing Question” to identify high-value tasks:
"What's the ONE Thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
Keller uses the words "such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary." That means your task should add so much value to a key result that doing anything else is unnecessary.
Finding an answer to this question might not always be the most pragmatic approach. In reality, there is no single task that will achieve your key result. But when used as a simple thought exercise, it can help you to narrow down a list of high-value tasks worth pursuing.
Tim Ferriss’ “Easy” Frame
In his book, The Four-Hour Work Week, Timothy Ferriss suggests another question for finding high-value tasks:
“What would this look like if it were easy?”
Most often, teams make the mistake of overcomplicating their tasks. A task that could take a few hours to complete can take several days or weeks. This usually happens because of knowledge gaps and skill deficiencies. But more often than not, it happens because of false assumptions.
Our online culture often signals the values of “hard work” and “hustling.” It’s easy to assume that all goals and tasks should be difficult, complicated, and complex. But great teams avoid these "traps" and, as a result, get even more done. Hard work for the sake of hard work isn't effective. Efficiency begins with finding the easiest way to get a task done.
Tim Ferriss’ guiding question, “What would this look like if it were easy?” is also a great way to identify only those actions necessary to complete the task. Once you've identified a task you think is worth doing, find a way to make it as easy as possible.
Managing Your Team’s Work and Knowledge
Once you’ve identified the specific tasks that need to get done, it’s time to get your team into action.
As with projects, tasks should also be:
Public
Well-defined
Assigned to a specific person or sub-team
Time-bound
Prioritized
Make Your Tasks Public
Your tasks should be public. This means that every team member should be able to see their own and everyone else’s tasks.
One of the best ways to define and track your team’s tasks is using a KanBan Board. A KanBan board breaks up your tasks into three categories:
To-do
In Progress
Complete
The to-do column should include all the tasks that still need to get done but have not yet started. The in progress column should include all the tasks you're currently working on. The complete column should include all the tasks that have already been completed. Organizing your tasks in this way makes it easy for all team members to get an update on the project at any time.
Make Your Tasks Action-Based
When you create your KanBan board, start by adding all your high-value tasks to the to-do column.
Each task should state exactly what the team member needs to do. One simple method for writing clear tasks is to use action words, for example:
Produce a visual timeline for the marketing plan
Write press release
Create landing page
Call John to get a quote for the product
Send prototype to Jane
Every task should begin with a verb and include a specific object/noun. When written, tasks should define exactly what the team member needs to do. When a task is well-defined, it should be binary, meaning you can either do it or not. Tasks shouldn't leave any gray area; you can either do it or not.
Very often, tasks will also need certain sub-tasks. Think of sub-tasks as smaller tasks required to complete the primary task. The task example "Produce a visual timeline for marketing plan" may also have sub-tasks:
Download spec sheet
Verify the end date for product testing with Jane
Contact John to determine the remaining production time
Defining sub-tasks is essential for avoiding unnecessary work and delays. If the main task seems too complex, it can be further broken into more manageable sub-tasks. If necessary, the person responsible for the task can meet one-on-one with another team member to get help breaking it down.
Assign Each Task to a Specific Person
Tasks that don't have at least one person in charge of completing them don't get done. It's critical that every task gets assigned to a specific person.
Assigning tasks to a specific team member also activates commitment and consistency bias. When team members declare publicly to the team that they'll complete a task, they're more likely to follow through.
One effective way to achieve this is through the RACI Method. The RACI method requires that each task get the following roles:
Responsible — Who is actually responsible for doing this task?
Accountable — Who will ensure the task gets done by the responsible person?
Consulted — Who on the team is smart on the task’s requirements and can be consulted in case of unforeseen problems or obstacles?
Informed — Who needs to be kept up to date on the task, either because they’re awaiting its completion or because they are a team leader?
Make Tasks Time-Bound
When you define tasks, you'll also need to estimate the time required to complete them.
When you estimate timelines, be aware of two natural human biases/tendencies:
Parkinson’s Law - Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” We tend to put taking action on tasks off until a deadline nears. Shorter (but attainable) timelines are usually the most effective strategy to oppose this.
Planning Fallacy - The Planning Fallacy is our tendency to underestimate the amount of time and resources it will actually take to complete a task. Generally, we tend to underestimate how hard something will be. Adding more time to our assumed timelines is usually the best way to counteract this.
These two forces operate on us at different times and in different circumstances. Most often, they occur without us knowing. Luckily, if we help our team work together to apply the right strategies, we can work around them.
One method is to pay attention to the task's perceived difficulty. When you assign a task to someone, ask: “Does this task seem more or less easy or more or less difficult to complete?” Based on the response, you can use one of two strategies to create the optimal timeline:
If a task seems more or less difficult, use the 80% Rule. Have the team member estimate how long the task will likely take. Then, reduce the anticipated timeline to 80% of the estimated deadline. We tend to procrastinate on tasks that we perceive as more or less difficult to complete. Shorter timelines for difficult tasks prevent work expansion get into action sooner.
If a task seems more of less easy, use the 150% Rule. Have a team member estimate how long the task will likely take. Then, increase the anticipated timeline to 150% of the estimated deadline. We tend to underestimate tasks that seem more or less easy. Longer timelines for easier tasks allow for unexpected complexity will likely arise.
It may seem counterintuitive to adjust timelines in this way. The key insight is that perceived difficulty is what affects us. Our behavior depends partly on how difficult we perceive a task to be.
Of course, some tasks will have natural deadlines. Natural deadlines are those that get defined by external forces. For example, a client may need a deliverable by a certain deadline. When working with natural deadlines, there may not be much work flexibility. In either case, focus on breaking down tasks into their most manageable parts and creating realistic timelines using the strategies above.
Prioritize Your Tasks
After you assign tasks and create timelines, the team should prioritize them individually. One strategy for doing this is to use an Eisenhower Matrix. An Eisenhower Matrix prioritizes tasks based on two binary spectrums:
Important/not important - Does the task require my unique skillset to achieve a key result?
Urgent/not urgent - Does this task have an upcoming deadline? Is someone else waiting on me to complete this task before they can start on an important task of their own?
After scoring, team members should complete tasks in this order:
Urgent and important
Urgent and not important
Not urgent and important
Not urgent and not important
Managing Team Knowledge
As much as possible, teams should have standards for completing tasks and operations. Core processes and operations that are always changing increase the project's complexity. Standards should be in place to ensure consistency and efficiency across the team. One way of achieving this is through transparent Standard Operation Procedures.
Depending on your project, your team will use different processes for completing tasks. These processes could involve operations, marketing, communication, onboarding, and more.
Standardizing your processes begins by creating an SOP (Standard Operating Procedures). An SOP defines all the operational processes of your team. It also details the steps for completing those processes. An SOP should read like a manual on running or working inside your team.
An efficient SOP should include all the following:
A title page
A table of contents
Each of your operational processes (broken down into an action list)
Start by making a list of your core operations and procedures that often repeat in your team. Then, turn each into a specific, action-based task list that someone else could follow. The steps should be clear enough to get a new team member up to speed with operations in a few days.
Your SOP should also be a live document, meaning you're always updating and optimizing it. If a team member finds a **more effective way of completing a task or process, make it part of your SOP.
Your live SOP should always be immediately available to all team members. Everyone should be able to reference your SOP with a few clicks. This ensures they are utilizing the correct processes for all their operations.
Fostering Team Communication
Maintaining clear communication within your team is essential for getting work done.
Team members will encounter issues and problems that need the input of others. Certain actions may need approval from leadership. Unforeseen issues may arise that need the expertise of another team member. In any case, team members need collaborative input from the rest of the team to complete their tasks.
One essential part of effective communication is avoiding over-communication. Here are some very common examples of how over-communication arises in teams:
Meetings - Meetings often dominate team members’ weekly schedules. Time spent in meetings takes time away from completing tasks and key results.
Emails - Email overload also takes valuable time away from team members. Email can also add unnecessary complexity to a project or task.
Approvals - Team members sometimes bombard leadership for approval on tasks or decisions. In most cases, these approvals are unnecessary and drag out timelines.
Communication like the types above is necessary for achieving key results. But always strive to keep communication to its minimally effective amount.
All the examples above take time away from team members’ schedules. For team members to do great work, the most important resource they need to protect is their time.
Below are a few strategies for avoiding common communication traps:
Reducing Meetings
Time spent in meetings is not time spent completing tasks for achieving key results. While meetings are necessary for every team, they sometimes dominate our work schedules. Often, communication in meetings can happen through a more direct communication method. For this reason, avoid meetings at all costs, except for a few exceptions.
Here are a few guidelines to follow for your team meetings:
Only call a meeting as a last resort. Most team communications can happen through email, direct messages, or phone calls. These should be the preferred forms of communication. Phone calls and email should be the least preferred. Quick, direct messages through a project management app should be the most preferred.
Have an agenda. Every meeting should always have an agenda prepared by the person who called the meeting. Once an agenda is set, don't discuss other topics during the meeting. This is difficult to adhere to but is essential for keeping meetings brief and "to the point."
Only include the roles needed. Only the roles that are necessary for the meeting should be in attendance. Having people “sit in” on meetings is a huge time waster and will inhibit members’ ability to get work done.
Meetings should generally only happen for the following reasons:
Setting initial values, key results, and initiatives. In the creation of a team, it’s important for everyone to understand the team's values, key results, and tasks. This meetings should generally at the formation of the team.
You achieved a key result. When your team reaches a key result, schedule a meeting to celebrate and plan the sprint of work. Teams often need to demo or present completed key results for everyone else. These meetings are a great way to show everyone the results of their efforts.
Daily 15-minute stand-up meetings. One practice popular in Scrum is the daily stand-up meeting. These are brief meetings held at the same time daily with all team members. During the a daily 15-minute stand-up meeting, each member shares:
What they worked on yesterday
What they’re working on today
What challenges/obstacles are inhibiting their progress
Optimizing Team Communications
Team communications are an essential part of getting tasks done. As discussed above, meetings should only be used as a last resort for one of the reasons mentioned; all other communications should be carried out in the quickest, most direct channel available.
In general, when your team is communicating:
Communicate directly on the task that is being discussed. Since all communications will likely be related to a current or upcoming task, it’s best to open your Kanban board and begin the communication directly on the page/card for the task. This ensures that all relevant information related to the task is available for everyone to see, and will help to streamline communication.
Use emails only for private communications. Emails should always be kept to a minimum and are typically only appropriate when there is private communications between two or more people who need to be informed about a specific update. Always keep emails to five lines or less when possible, and avoid academic language. Emails should be written at a 5th grade reading level to ensure clear, direct communication.
Get Your Team Started Today
Download the LearnChangeDo All-in-One Agency Workspace for Notion and start applying what you’ve learned in this post right away. In a few clicks, you can get started with setting objectives and key results, identifying critical tasks, assigning roles, and getting into action.
Share Your Team Success Stories
If you’ve had success with any of the strategies or principles mentioned above, send me an email at gabe@learnchangedo.org to tell me about — I’d love to feature you in a future post.