How To Reset Your Team To Achieve More Together

Summary

Squiggly Careers: "How To Reset Your Team To Achieve More Together"

Hosts: Sarah Ellis (B), Helen Tupper (A)
Date: January 6, 2026

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Sarah and Helen dive into "team resets:" intentional pauses and refreshes that help teams achieve more together, drawing on insights from Colin Fisher's new book, Collective Edge. Using research, practical examples, and their own experiences, the hosts explore why periodic resets around trust, structure, and clarity can supercharge team performance, and offer actionable steps to implement these in any team—whether you're in a small startup or a larger organization.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Collective Edge: Teams vs. Individuals ([00:35]–[03:09])

• Inspiration from Colin Fisher and jazz ensembles: Sarah introduces Colin Fisher’s work, noting his background as a jazz musician, and how it informs his approach to team synergy.
  • “His definition of collective edge is that as a group, you are achieving outcomes, so you basically are achieving more than you would if you just added up, like, individual capabilities.” – B ([01:13])
• Synergy isn’t incidental—it’s intentional: Teams don’t outperform by accident. Deliberate conditions must be created to unlock collaborative advantages, beyond simply assembling smart individuals.
  • “If, like, you're smart and I'm smart and the rest of the team is smart, you've got lots of smart people. That doesn't necessarily mean that you've got a super smart team.” – A ([02:11])

2. Reset ≠ Radical Overhaul ([03:09]–[05:17])

• Most teams can’t hit ‘restart from scratch,’ but anyone can benefit from regular “resets”—opportunities to reflect, refresh, and re-align.
  • “It’s not radical team redo, it’s just regular team reset.” – A ([05:12])

3. Three Big Team Shifts for Better Collaboration ([05:31]–[13:41])

a. Trust: Task-Based Over Relationship-Based

• Move focus from purely relational trust (“do we get along?”) to task-based trust (“will you do what you say, to the right quality?”).
  • “Relational trust…actually, what we need to focus more on is task-based trust.” – B ([05:32])
  • “Accountability maybe was the other word…” – B ([06:28])

b. Structure: More Important Than Coaching

• Structure (clear roles, systems, processes) is the backbone of high performance.
• Good team structure amplifies, but is not replaced by, coaching.
  • “Structure is typically way more important than coaching to help a team to get even better.” – B ([06:56])
  • “If you get a team that is badly structured…but they have brilliant coaching, they don’t get better.” – B ([09:22])

c. Clarity: Agreement Over Assumptions

• Avoid ambiguity; make sure everyone is explicitly aligned on goals, norms, and ways of working.
  • “Within teams, there’s a lot that is implied and that goes unsaid.” – B ([09:46])
  • Exercise: Have each team member write down what they believe the number one team goal is—often there’s surprising variance. ([11:36]–[12:17])

4. Practical Actions for Resetting Your Team ([13:43]–[32:08])

Action 1: The Clarity Creator ([13:43]–[16:32])

• A tool to define “what matters most,” top priorities (just three!), supporting metrics, and a “not for now” list to prevent distraction.
  • “My favourite bit of the Clarity Creator, actually, is the not for now section.” – A ([15:01])
  • “If it’s on the not for now list, I think there’s a sense of clarity…we’re still recognizing that it’s important, but … that is not being worked on right now.” – A ([15:05])
• Transparent sharing of Clarity Creators across the team encourages accountability and highlights gaps or duplication.

Action 2: Structure Your Communication ([16:32]–[20:57])

• Teams should regularly review and reset communication structures—tools, habits, and volume—to prevent “collaboration overload.”
  • “Bad habits creep in with communication…the issue is that you actually end up spending more time, like, responding to messages or searching for things.” – A ([18:09])
  • “Every message is something that someone needs to read.” – A ([18:09])
• Employers are increasingly adopting “collaboration resets” every three months or so to keep team workflow healthy.

Action 3: Make the Implicit Explicit ([20:57]–[27:54])

• Codify assumptions, unspoken norms, and expectations into clear, agreed statements.
  • “How many things am I assuming…if it isn’t written down somewhere…It’s basically in our heads.” – B ([20:57])
  • “When it doesn’t… when these things don’t happen, that’s when it becomes an issue.” – A ([22:29])

Example: “We’re on the Same Page” Statements ([25:46]–[28:23])

Sarah shares five draft team norms as a live example:

1. “We don’t see each other often, so when we do, we take it seriously.”

2. “Spot what works, what doesn’t, and do something about it.”

3. “Mistake moments, Win of the week, Squiggly shout outs are how we learn, grow and celebrate success together.”

4. “We don’t stay in our lane. We all support each other.”

5. “Flexibility works both ways, so we can all do our best work when the work needs to get done.”

   • “I do think five is a good number because also these have to be things where, you know, you don’t compromise on these things.” – B ([27:34])

5. Reset Rhythm: How Often Should Teams Reset? ([30:12]–[31:33])

• Frequency depends on team change: stable teams might refresh every six months; fast-evolving/project-based teams should do it for every project.
  • “Probably the more the team changes, the more regularly you need to do a reset…For us…every six months.” – B ([30:29])

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You need to create the right conditions and then you can outperform.”—Colin Fisher (as paraphrased by B, [01:13])
• “Structure is way more important than coaching.” — B ([06:56])
• “If it’s on the not for now list, that’s a very conscious decision for us to be aware of.” — A ([15:05])
• “Every message is something that someone needs to read…Did we need to send that message?” — A ([18:09])
• “How many things am I assuming…if it isn’t written down somewhere?” — B ([20:57])
• “These have to be things where, you know, you don’t compromise on these things.” — B ([27:34])
• “Team performance might almost…worsen over time just because of…bad habits creeping in. And actually regular resets are quite useful.” — A ([29:58])

---

Additional Resources Mentioned

• Colin Fisher’s Book: Collective Edge
• McKinsey Article: Interview with Colin Fisher
• Podcast: Colin Fisher on Bruce Daisley’s Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat

---

Suggested Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:13] – What is “Collective Edge”?
• [05:32] – Moving from relationship-based to task-based trust
• [06:56] – Structure vs. coaching
• [09:22] – Research: Bad structure + good coaching ≠ performance
• [13:43] – Practical actions for team reset
• [15:01] – The value of “not for now” priorities
• [18:09] – Communication habits and overload
• [25:46] – Sample “on the same page” statements
• [30:29] – How often should you reset?

---

Conclusion

Through research-backed insights and real-world examples, Sarah and Helen demystify the process of resetting a team for better outcomes. By prioritizing task-based trust, structured ways of working, and clear, explicit agreements, any team can “borrow brilliance” and edge closer to collective success. Regular resets—customized to the rhythms and needs of your team—ensure you’re not just smart together, but smarter together.

Transcript

[A]

We're really excited that we are back again with another Squiggly Careers Skill Sprint. Over 25,000 people have learned with us on our sprint, and we'd love you to come and learn with us in January. We are going to be learning like lobsters. And the reason this matters is because learning has never been more important at work, but it's also never felt harder to do. And we think that lobsters are the role models that we've all been missing. So sign up for the [e-mail] and you'll join a community of people who all get to learn like a lobster and overcome those barriers that are getting in the way of their growth. Hi, I'm Helen.

[B]

And I'm Sarah.

[A]

And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where each week we borrow some brilliance and turn that curiosity into action, which we think will help your career. And today we're going to talk a little bit about teams, but we're going to talk about how you can reset your team so that you can achieve more together.

[B]

And we are borrowing brilliance from Colin Fisher and his book. So if you are watching now, I'm sort of holding up the book which is called Collective Edge. Now, if you can see me holding it, the book, it hasn't even got its wrap on it. I read books in the bath and then I clearly ruin them. So I was like, I got it really wet. It went all crinkly. But at least it proves I've read it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's quite nice.

[A]

It looks nice.

[B]

And Colin actually is. He's interesting to do some research on because he's naturally very squiggly because before becoming a professor and a researcher, he was a jazz musician. So some of his work on kind of groups and teams was, like, very much inspired by, you know, and was like, how do you get the synergy of what it's like to play in a jazz band where it sort of looks spontaneous? But he's like, actually, no, it's very intentional and very, like, thoughtful and, well, I guess sort of like how you bring together the right people so that then, like, the brilliant spontaneity just happens, you know, as in, like, you don't plan a jazz set. I guess I don't know loads about jazz. This is where we're gonna get each other. But equally, he's like. But his point, actually, the words he uses is you need to create the right conditions and then you can outperform. So his definition of collective edge is that as A group, you are achieving outcomes, so you basically are achieving more than you would if you just added up, like, individual capabilities.

[A]

Okay. So if, like, you're smart and I'm smart and the rest of the team is smart, you've got lots of smart people. That doesn't necessarily mean that you've got a super smart team. You have to do something different with that group of people for it to be better together.

[B]

Yeah. So I suppose you could. If everybody's smart, you'd still have a smart team. Yeah, but I suppose, I think what he's really saying is it's almost like there's an edge to be found if you can achieve this synergy. He uses this word, synergy quite a lot from being very intentional about creating some of these conditions. And his argument is that most teams don't. So probably what most teams have is just lots of smart people, essentially. But you don't quite get the synergy or the edge because of things like coordination, losses, free riding. I was like, ooh, Helen, you're doing a bit of free riding or process breakdowns. And actually when you start to get into it, it's some surprising things, I think, sometimes that give you the edge that weren't always what I was imagining or perhaps what I was expecting.

[A]

So I haven't read this book and I'm not familiar with his work, so I'm going to be learning and questioning and sort of thinking, I guess, to you. But one of the things when we were talking about this beforehand, it was this idea of sort of a regular res, that this is something that it's not a one and done. There are things that we need to regularly improve in teams to get the collective edge.

[B]

So what's interesting. So he's done quite a lot of work on what you would do if you were setting up a team from scratch. So how do you create, like, brilliant conditions, like, what would you do? In what order? But then as you get into it, my observation certainly is most of us are not in that position. That's quite a privileged position. Right. To be like, oh, I'm setting it.

[A]

Up from scratch, I've done it, we've done it.

[B]

Yeah, we both do it, I suppose, but not very often.

[A]

No.

[B]

And so then you can take the principles of kind of what works, like kind of to create these really good teams and then you can apply it to your own team by doing these resets or refreshes. And actually, I chatted to him and we were both talking about Katie Milkman's work on the Fresh start effect. And he was like, you sort of need to apply that to your team. You don't just want to keep doing what you've always done. I suppose, you know, like every team you fall into bad habits. Perhaps some of the things that we're going to talk about today you might think oh we have not really focused on that or we've perhaps done some things in the wrong order and rather than just feeling helpless like oh we've, we've got this wrong and we can't really reform. You know, you can't probably start from scratch but you can reset. It's also interesting in the context of, in a squiggly career I think you also join lots of different teams. So what you might do more regularly is join a cross functional team or a project team and say like that would even be true in our company. Maybe I would start a new piece of work and then suddenly be working with two people in the team who I don't work with as much. And so you could apply lots of what we're going to talk about today in sort of smaller team ways. I think this works sort of more informally as well as more like well we're a team of 10 and we're really going to do a very thoughtful and intentional reset.

[A]

So it's not radical team redo, it's just regular team reset. That's what we're doing. Okay.

[B]

I would say albeit some of the actions that we get onto might feel quite radical if you've not done them before. So shall I talk about some of the resets in terms of what we're trying to go from and to cause you and I always find that helpful. We're like yes, that's how we're, this.

[A]

Will make sense to me.

[B]

This will make sense. And I've picked out three things that have just really kind of stuck with me from my conversation with Colin, from reading the book. The first one is around trust. So unsurprisingly collective edge teams, high performing teams and he refers to Amy Edmondson's work, obviously they've got high trust but he talks about actually there's a lot of focus put on relational trust like do you and I trust each other like as people like do we get on and those kind of things. And actually what we need to focus more on is task based trust. So kind of tasks over relationships and task based trust would be do I believe you're going to do what you say you're going to do?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And do I believe you're going to do it to the quality that we need. And if you're not going to do it do I think you'll tell me. Okay, so that's task based trust.

[A]

Sort of trying to think. It's like having competence in your competence. But it's more than just competence. It's that it's the that you're and your commitment to it.

[B]

Accountability maybe was the other word I was like we often hear actually from companies like how do we help people with accountability? And actually what's really clear on the emphasis for everything we're going to talk about today is this is definitely a group endeavor. This is not a leader's job or like one person. It's like it needs to be very much we based. So this is not like me telling you how to do this. It's like you almost need to agree it together. So that's the first one.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The second kind of from and to. And this one may be controversial for like you and I given we wrote a book called you coach you is structure is typically way more important than coaching to help a team to get even better.

[A]

Okay. So a coaching team might be saying.

[B]

What do we do?

[A]

Well what could be even better if how do we build. Build more bonds, bring out the best in each other which I'm not taking.

[B]

Coaching approach as a leader and for each other for your peer to peer conversations taking a coaching approach. And it's not that he says coaching is bad, it's just that structure is much more important. So it's definitely an and not an or. And he's kind of really clear about that.

[A]

But.

[B]

But he just talks about how most teams miss out on lots of the upside that come from very clear structure.

[A]

Question.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

What do you think is the most well structured team you have been in and what are your reflections on the performance of that team?

[B]

Interesting. So I think probably the best structured team I was in was one of the leadership teams I was in at Sainsbury's. And I think that's because a lot of effort was put into, you know, like how are we going to work together? How am I going to work together with my manager? Took that very seriously. How are we going to work together as a leadership team? But not as much around like we talked about like coaching relationships. It was much more like well who does what and how does this bit work with your bit and how do those bits work together? And I think probably the leader that we worked for kind of cared about making, making it all work. And it was a very, was a Very good team still. I don't think I've ever been in a team where I felt the structure was incredible. I don't think you know where like all the systems and the structures were also clear and well defined. I'm not sure I've had. I'm not sure I've had that experience.

[A]

Yeah, I'd agree. I don't think we really talk about like team structure. We hold it as a. Like a thing to value and improve and invest in. So yeah, it's quite interesting. I was thinking probably when I was at Aeon, I. I felt that there was a lot of clarity over who owned what and. And then that team had. Was quite a new team as well. So maybe it had put. Had that put in place and it hadn't kind of gone rogue. Hadn't gone rogue yet. But yeah, I don't think I've been in a brilliantly, brilliantly thought through in terms of the structure. There's obviously a structure but I don't think it's been intentionally thought through to optimize performance.

[B]

Well, when you look at the research, I was like, oh, this is really interesting if you've got a well structured team. So the structures are really good structures and systems and then they have coaching that's good, quality coaching. They do get even better. Take that same team and they have like rubbish coaching. It's not very good coaching. They still perform. They still perform really well. If you get a team that is badly structured so not good kind of systems and those sorts of things and they have brilliant coaching, they don't get better. Okay, so you're like, there's just. It's just interesting to think about, I suppose. Where might you start? And we'll reflect on when we've been building a team at amazing if where we've started. But knowing this now, whether you do some things differently, big questions. And yeah, the last one is agreed over assumed. So this idea of within teams, there's a lot that is implied and that goes unsaid. And you couldn't point to something that sort of tells somebody maybe who is new to a team how things get done around here or the processes that matter or even as a team, sort of what we stand for. I have worked in a few teams that have had team charters. Yeah, that was quite fashionable for a while, wasn't it?

[A]

On project teams as well. I've had that.

[B]

Yeah. And those, I think those. It's kind of a version of that. And it's also sort of moving away from relying on everybody Having a shared understanding. And so one of the things actually that really stands out for me from Colin's research is that a mistake that lots of teams make is they assume that everybody understands the team goals. You know, that everybody understands exactly what we're here to do and how it happens. And if you, maybe if you spoke to a leader, they'd be like, yeah, we've all got shared understanding, we're all on the same page. But then if you individually go and talk to people, everyone has, like, different interpretations of what should be exactly the same. So, you know, when you think about what needs to be consistent in a team and where can you have lots of freedom? I suppose it's like, where do you have the freedom within the framework? What you don't want is inconsistency around the goals. Oh, well, I thought we were here to do this. Oh, I understood something like slightly different because then you're not all kind of pulling in the same direction.

[A]

I've done a fun exercise on that before where you get everyone to write down on a bit of paper. So I think it probably works better in person, to be honest, with the impact of it, than virtually you maybe could do it. But everyone wrote down on a bit of paper, like, what they thought the most important goal the team was working together was. And you kind of put it on a bit of paper, you fold it up in the middle, and then the moment of truth was when you, like, you looked at all the papers and you realized that everybody had like, no, not everybody, but largely there was a. There was a lot of variance in the goals that the team thought were most important to go after. And it sort of makes the point that, well, how. How can we all be working together to achieve important things if actually we're all thinking we're working towards different ones?

[B]

I wonder what our team would say if we did that. I think we have a. Well, my assumption. But this is the whole thing. You shouldn't assume. My assumption is that everybody would say the same thing around. If we said, well, why are we here as a company? Like, what's our ambition as a company? People would say, make squiggly careers. Make careers better for everyone. Or make squiggly careers better for everyone. I think everyone would say one of those two things. I think if you then said, what's the goal that matters most? I reckon we would get 10 different answers. I'm not sure even you and I would say the same thing.

[A]

Yeah, no, we probably wouldn't.

[B]

No. So you're like, okay, you know, like, if you want. I suppose if you want that collective edge, that's important, I'll put you on the spot. Now, I would probably say to make squiggly synonymous with careers first.

[A]

So dissimilar. What would you say to increase the influence and impact of squiggly careers across the world?

[B]

Yeah, so. But you still got two different versions. The different versions. And also if you're then going, I've got to translate that goal into action. You talked about, like, around the world. So, like, oh, should I be focusing more on global opportunities? Whereas that wasn't even in mine. You talked about influence and impact. So differentiate. You'd want to dive into. Well, what's the difference between. So whereas I was just like, make squiggly careers. You could argue that's also a bit vague as a goal. You're like, well, what. What does that mean? How will you know when you've got there?

[A]

Okay, so we've got some work, we've got some issues.

[B]

So what we've done is come up with three actions that you could take together with your team if you wanted to do one of these resets. And we've tried to make them specific and useful, whether you're a team of two or whether you're a team of 22. And each one of them is linked to one of those from and tos. So the first one is about moving from kind of relationship trust, which obviously you still do need. I should. I should say to this thing about task trust. And our idea here is something that actually we have been testing out and we are still very much experimenting with kind of work in progress on, which is something called a Clarity creator. Because I think we recognized actually that people's roles have changed, which is true, I think, in everybody's jobs in their squiggly careers. And if we want people to be good at prioritizing, to figure out what matters most, people need to know, like, what their job is, like, what tasks matter most. Do you want to talk a bit about the Clarity Creators? Because I feel like you've had some really good conversations with the team.

[A]

I really enjoyed the conversation with it. So. And we're going to share a template so that people can try it out for themselves and you can try out your teams so you have what matters most. And then really that's like three things. So, like, really, really focused. And then we have the metrics that people are measured on. My favorite bit of the Clarity Creator, actually is the not for now section.

[B]

That was a bit of a kind of aha moment for you and I when we came up with that section. I think.

[A]

I think it's really important with the task thing because the not for now is, I think, where some of the messiness occurs. So these are the things that we might quite like to be worked on. Like, particularly for me and Sarah, we're like, well, we want that to be better and that should be worked on. But in reality, there's only so much that can do, and that might not be the priority right now. And so if it's on the not for now list, I think there's a sense of clarity, of we're still recognizing that it's important, but we are also being clear that that is not being worked on right now. And so there's a. You kind of get rid of that confusion and even frustration when we don't see something being moved forward. If it's on the not enough and out list. That's a very conscious decision for us to be aware of. And so I'm. I'm really enjoying the conversations, the discussion. Also the team seeing each other's Clarity Creators, I think that's the next step for us. We're putting them in place, we're discussing them. So it feels like, you know, it's not being done to the team, but we're doing it with the team. And then I think the next thing is for the team to talk about them together.

[B]

Yeah. So we are. We have chosen to be transparent with our Clarity creator. So we've put them all in the same place. And I know for some companies that can feel quite hard to make happen. But. But I do think it is really helpful because nobody works by themselves. Like, we all kind of need to know. And if you've got the same task as somebody else, you're like, well, that's duplication already. You can see that's kind of inefficient or if there is something missing. Oh, but I thought that was in your job and it's not in your job either.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think really helpful for everyone to know what's on everyone else's not for now list. So you can. We can all sort of hold each other to account. The other thing that we're trying out in the Clarity Creators is we have kind of behaviors as a company which are a bit newer than our values. We've had our values for a long time, and we've tried to, for everybody's role, go, what do those behaviors mean to me? So rather than just saying, like, one of them is like, responsiveness or care. You could just go, well, I care. I care about my job. That's not that useful. It's like, well, what does care look like in the context of the job that you do? And again, I think that's helping the team to connect to those behaviors and also for us to figure out, like, are they the right behaviors? Because I feel we're kind of holding those lightly for now to see whether they. They are the right things or is there something we might have missed or that we want to change or we've not quite got the word right. So the second area is about structure over coaching, which I was like, this is a really interesting one. So with this, when you dive into it, you could go in loads of different directions with structure. This could be about how you structure your time as a team, how you structure your energy as a team, meetings, moments. So you could delve into it in lots of different ways. So we were trying to pick out one thing that we thought would be universal for most teams and decided that communication might be a good place to start because I think that inevitably slips over. Time goes in different directions. We were observing that it's a tricky one sometimes because everyone sort of has their own preferences around how they like to communicate, the tools they like to use.

[A]

Bad habits creep in with communication. So you end up. Yeah, some people are messaging on one platform and then some messenger on another. And messages happen at different times of the day. And when you're thinking about achieving more, the issue is that you actually end up spending more time, like responding to messages or searching for things or. Actually, that's another thing. That's the volume of messages. Does it need to be a message? Feel like sometimes we kind of go, does it need to be a meeting? But we don't often say, did we need to send that message? Because every message is something that someone needs to read. Even if they don't respond to it, it's something they need to read. It's time spent. So I do sometimes wonder whether it's lazy. Like, we just message. If I think about me, sometimes I message maybe more than I need. And that's a message that takes a minute for someone else.

[B]

Yeah, I don't think I send that many messages. So I don't.

[A]

You send long voice notes.

[B]

Oh, yeah. To you. I mean, like, that's different. But you're the only one who gets those.

[A]

I actually.

[B]

What's weird is I think my communication structures to you are very different to my communication structures to everyone else. I mean, that's probably something for me to think about. One of the things that really stuck with me, actually, we have an expert insight in Learn like a Lobster about collaboration overload. And I think if this feels like you, this is where this would be a really good reset to do. And that's where companies looked at people's diaries and they can often see that things like meetings are double booked. So I see that sometimes, like I look in my diary, I'm like, well, I can't, I can't be in both of those places. So what's happening there? So are you double booked or sometimes even triple booked? And then like things like the number of unread messages because the volume is just so high, you're like, well, I just, there's no way you could keep up with that amount of like emails and tea messages and those kind of things. And they were saying now that some of the really big companies almost every three months do a collab. They call it collaboration, rather communication, but a collaboration reset. Because they were finding that almost like loads of time was going into collaboration versus they're like doing the work.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And you're like, I say, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when you like. It's a really, I think it's just a really interesting one to like challenge yourself on, isn't it? You like? Yeah. If a team with collective edge has better outcomes, you know, like an outcome is not collaborating. An outcome needs to be, you'll like achieve, you need to be achieving the thing.

[A]

I do wonder.

[B]

You're giving a very knowing smile over.

[A]

It's just, it's just. I think it's interesting that we used to spend a lot of time in the office together and, and I think now as lots of teams, you know, some people work from home for a couple of days a week, so tools like teams or whatever people are using are becoming a much bigger part of the day. And I think if you, when you start adding up, well, I've got emails here and I've got teams messages there and they've actually got meetings. I'm not sure it is always more productive. I think having a team reset around communication is actually a really valuable thing to do.

[B]

And then the last one, which is this idea of how do you make things that are implicit, explicit And I think what's a helpful kind of question to ask yourself here is how many things am I assuming now? Initially you think, oh, you know, not that many. Everybody knows these things. But if it isn't written down somewhere. So if it's going unsaid and it's not really on the same page. So you and I were talking about, like, we just then started to say about some things like in our company and we were like, oh, actually it would be quite unfair for us to say, oh, these are definitely agreed norms in our team. These are things that we all 100% sign up to. Because where would you point to that says that that's true? It's basically in our heads. And you and I agree, like often these are areas that you and I have quite strong agreement on and we might have said out loud, like sometimes I think that's happened, we've said it and so then I assume, well, that's it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Everybody is as committed to it as I am, will remember it because I care about it. So everyone else cares about it as much as I do. And I think especially when, and probably not only like smaller companies and smaller teams, but when things are changing fast and everyone's very focused on, like getting work done, this is definitely something that gets missed because it probably does feel like a bit of a nice to do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, something we'll maybe try and get round to at some point. Like, we've never done this, we've never written this down because you would always think, oh, well, it doesn't feel as important as.

[A]

But then you get frustrated, don't you? So when it doesn't, when these things don't happen, that's when it becomes an issue. You're like, well, why hasn't that person sent that summary on a Friday? And. But it's because to your point where we've assumed that everyone knew how important that was, but it's never really stated and signed up to, like it might be stated once and forgotten, but it's not, it's not agreed by the team.

[B]

And this also goes back to the kind of the I versus the we. So if you don't do this, I guess to your point, you get. Everybody gets quite individualistic and then that means you get more like frustration but you also get more blame.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Why they're not doing it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's almost not then anyone's fault. It's that, actually. Yes. But there was never, there's never anything that you could point to where you go, well, this is what we are all kind of here to do. That's never been made as explicit as you need to make it. I think the point here, and actually with kind of all of these, the thing that I kept coming back to was obviously you have to be really careful not to do team overload with this stuff. And you don't want 4 million different documents and, you know, like some sort of massive handbook that no one can make their way around. But I sort of wonder whether you do need, you know, something that is, like, it's all in one place, it's no more than three pages. But you, you keep coming back to it. I don't think this is. I think anything that we're talking about today can be a one and done.

[A]

Also what's going through my mind is, you know, like, sometimes you can say, oh, AI can help with that. AI can help with that. I think this is, this is not something I think that AI can help with. This is a team conversation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

About what is important to how this team works. Are we all clear and are we all agreed? Like, that's. I feel like this is a very human conversation that we have to have and we can't just outsource.

[B]

Yeah. I guess you could use it for ideas. So if one of the things you wanted to do around structure was we want to be very clear about decision making. So that's apparently one of the things that you could do as a team. We've chosen communication today. But you could do decision making. I think you could put into GPT and Claude. There are some companies that share openly how they make decisions in their company. So you could be like, we'll use that to find those things. Borrow a bit of brilliance. How have they laid those out? I've. I've looked at those before, but ultimately it's very much a. Then it's an ownership thing, isn't it? Like a shared ownership.

[A]

We agreed that this is how we will work.

[B]

Make decisions or what do we do? Like a good. You probably want some like, good questions to like, help you guide these through these conversations. Like, so what do you do if you know you're going to miss a deadline? Like in our company, if you said to people, what do you do if you know you're going to miss a deadline? We don't have anything that's. I would say, oh, you do a fast flag. But would everyone say that? And probably not. And it just definitely doesn't happen consistently. And that's probably not words people would always use. And so again, you're like, that's a gap. You can't expect people to do that just because you, like, you know, like, I just assume that everything in my brain is in everybody else's brain the whole time. So we had a go at this. So we were like, right, if this feels important and we don't have this today, how do you also not make this unwieldy and you also don't want it to take ages? So we came up with for our company, five statements. So we're on the same page. We like that as a kind of a title. So we're going to talk those through. To be clear, we haven't talked to our team about these, so we think.

[A]

That that is a very important thing to do and they may be listening to this at some point. So we will have that conversation. But it's just a. I think it's just to share our thinking so it's more real for people now.

[B]

Yeah. So I think ideally you'd either create these together or I often do observe people find it much easier to have something to critique. So maybe if you are the leader of a team, you might do these five statements, but you're very clear, these are five work in progress statements so that we can make sure we're on the same page. Then you do challenge and build. You ask people, what have we missed? What would you take away? What would you replace it with? Are there any words that don't feel like hers? Like, which one of these do you love? Which one's the best one? So again, asking some really good. I mean, they're quite coaching questions, which.

[A]

But as long as we've got some.

[B]

Structure rather than an all. Yeah, I'm like, oh, well, I've defaulted back to something I've just said. It's not as important as structure. So I'll read our five statements again just to bring to life for people what these could sound like. So, one, we don't see each other often, so when we do, we take it seriously. Two, spot what works, what doesn't and do something about it. Three, mistake moments. Win of the week. Squiggly shout outs are how we learn, grow and celebrate success together. Four, we don't stay in our lane. We all support each other. Five, flexibility works both ways, so we can all do our best work when the work needs to get done. And again, we were like, we didn't think these were perfect. We don't think we've got these exactly right. But we were trying to reflect on, I think, the things that felt like they were part of our DNA, that amazing if kind of in our company, the things that were most important. So we were sort of trying to. I wanted to have 10 initially and actually, unusually, Helen talked me down. I was like, 10 statements that were on the same page. And Helen was like, no, I am.

[A]

Normally like, how many ideas can we.

[B]

Cram into five minutes?

[A]

And this one was like, no, this.

[B]

Is, I do think five is a good number because also these have to be things where, you know, you don't compromise on these things. And there has to be a lot of things that you do compromise on or things change or you make choices. And I think these things can be fluid, but I guess you wouldn't want them to change too often because then it's just quite confusing. As a team, I think, as well.

[A]

As statements that show we're on the same page, I also think it's sort of sticky statements. So you kind of want these to be repeated. So your point, earlier around, if someone new joins a team, how do they know how we work here? I think if these statements are easily shared and memorable, that is much more likely likely to happen. Whereas if you've got this like, I don't know, a paragraph on, on something, it's probably not, then people aren't really probably going to connect with each other. And it's not, it's harder for people to share and work out what actually means.

[B]

And I think for each of those statements, like the more I think about it, probably you need an example to bring it to life. So when we say, you know, we don't see each other often, so when we do, we take it seriously, you might just be like, oh, what does that, what does that mean? Because essentially what we are trying to say there is everyone, our team works in different places and spaces. And so actually when we are together as a team, we like really, we're really thoughtful about that time. We really design it. We want people to learn, but we also want to challenge. We also want people to have fun. And I think we put, we kind of over emphasize and put a lot of effort and energy into that time. And also we expect other people to kind of to do the same. So I do wonder whether with some of them you've then got to come up with short, almost like this looks like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think then especially if you were new, because I think if I read that first one, I would be like, oh, do I need to show up being very serious at a team day? And I'm like, well, no, that's not what that looks like. It looks like we put energy into that time and we kind of want people to turn up with their own, with their own energy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think I see that from our team kind of already. And that second One when we're talking about spotting what works, what doesn't, and do something about it is like, don't wait for permission. It's about initiative. So you've probably got to talk to teams about them and also go, well, what feels right, what words feel right, what words feel memorable? Also, be interesting to see what people could remember. You know, the whole have five, and then after three months, how many of the five can you remember? Because if you can't, you probably don't need to remember the exact sentence, but you probably would need to remember a bit of a shortcut or, like one word or something.

[A]

I think my general reflection on this conversation and Colin's work that you shared is. Is the acceptance that team performance might almost, like, worsen over time just because of, like, bad habits creeping in.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And actually regular resets are quite useful, but having this specific set of things to look at, it helps you make that reset happen. How often when we say regular reset, as a kind of final point on this, how regular do you think teams should look at the points we've talked about?

[B]

I would probably say for a team like ours where, you know, it's not changing loads, it's not, you know, some companies, they're like, wow, those teams are doubling in size every three months or something. Probably the more the team changes, the more regularly you need to do a reset. Is like a hypothesis. I think I would have. Our team doesn't change dramatically. It's not like we suddenly have a massive influx of people. So my instinct for us would be like, every six months. Every six months, you'd very intentionally, you'd know the. When you'd have time to do it and, you know, you'd kind of really invest in looking at these things. And also it might not be the same every time. So when you're looking at structure, we might start with communications, but then we might feel, oh, actually that's not really changed. We want to look at decision making or we want to look at a different part of the structure. Or we might want to look at. We've not talked about it today, but one of the other areas is around, like, conflict. So putting structure around saying the hard thing or conflict. I think probably if you're moving from team to team quite a lot, you know, maybe lots of, like, project roles, you'd basically want to do it every time you were starting a new project.

[A]

Yeah, I like it. Thank you for sharing it. I feel like. Feel like I want to do some of this stuff with the team, which is, you know, I really want to review those statements with people and see what they think.

[B]

So if you want to dive a bit deeper, you can have a read of the McKinsey article where McKinsey actually interviewed Colin. That's a good kind of shortcut to some of the different ideas and also a few things that we've not talked about that just didn't quite fit into kind of the team reset, which was our frame for today. You can also listen to Colin on Bruce's podcast, Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat. So they had a great conversation together. And we'll put all the links to his book in all the show notes as well.

[A]

So thank you so much for listening today. And we're back with another episode next week.

[B]

Bye, everybody. Thank you for listening.

[A]

Sa.