The Team Thaw

It’s hard to make joint ventures truly “joint”. You’re partners but you have to protect your own company’s interests, too.

Communications are channelled through one, senior person. Nobody takes decisions. Everybody watches out for their respective “side”, and nobody tells the truth.

In one such situation I got agreement from both bosses to hold a workshop, to be called “Moving Forward With Confidence”.

Sixty people from the two sides were keen, but the bosses were reluctant. The dates kept changing, then it was called off, and then put back on again, until, finally, an email came through from on high.

It was hilarious.

“Moving Forward With Confidence has been permanently cancelled,” it said.

What I was going to do with them is an exercise called The Team Thaw, which I find really works.

1. Get the team in a room.

2. Have everyone voice their concerns, and write them on a white board.

3. Underline in red the ones you can’t influence.

4. Green underline the ones you can influence.

5. Pick the top five ‘greens’ and identify the first action you can take for each.

6. Note: Don’t try and “solve” these issues, just come up with the first step.

7. Assign responsibility for each action, set a deadline and a report-by date.