Adopt Practices that Create a Predictable Process

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Define tension in the context of cross-disciplinary team projects.
• Understand how harnessing tension is essential to creating predictability.
• Explore practices to harness tension and strengthen predictability.

Harness Tension; Drive New Ideas

An essential practice for creating a predictable process is harnessing tension. Tension is the inherent mental or emotional strain on a project in cross-disciplinary teams. It occurs when teams create and make choices, and there’s a diversity of perspectives. However, teams can harness this tension. It’s often in these moments of friction that new ideas emerge. 

You can prevent unproductive tensions when you: 

• Create rituals.
• Track and reflect on key moments.
• Develop a habit of critique.
• Strengthen stakeholder buy-in.

Create Rituals

Rituals help teams live out their values and be less stressed because they bring a degree of predictability to an uncertain future. They convince our brains of constancy and buffer against uncertainty and anxiety. When project goals shift, rituals can keep a team focused on the people and how the work gets done, so together, they can pivot with clarity. Establish rituals during pre-project kickoff and refine them once the project gets going. They don’t need to be perfect, but they should allow teams to create learning cycles and grow together. 

There are two types of rituals—those that create focus and those that honor and strengthen team relationships.

Create Focus

Use daily, weekly, and 1:1 rituals to create focus. 

• Daily stand-ups are full team checks—30 minutes or less—with daily goals. Use them to establish work modes for the day, including heads down, collaborative problem solving, executing on coordination, or prepping for alignment with stakeholders. You can use the Kanban method to visualize workflows, limit work in progress (WIP), and track incremental change and key performance metrics.
• Weekly status meetings are longer than a daily stand-up, approximately 60-minute meetings. These allow team members to ask questions, seek help, reflect on progress, set objectives for the week, and prioritize team time.
• 1:1 meetings usually happen in 30 minutes or less and are a time for team leaders and team members to check in, ask questions, get feedback, and reflect together.

Honor and Strengthen Team Relationships

Use these interstitial practices to build trust while boosting team creativity, collaboration, and energy. 

• Ice breakers are 5- to 20-minute creative energy boosts to shift thinking and gather focus at the start of meetings or collaborative work. You can incorporate them into weekly status meetings and daily stand-ups; each time, a different team member can take responsibility for choosing and leading the activity.
• Walk and talks are 30- to 60-minute informal opportunities to listen and be heard. These are often good for sharing new ideas, giving feedback, or seeking advice. In a digital world, you can use both technology and physical activity, getting some steps in while you walk and talk during a phone call.
• Gratitude celebrations are moments to spotlight team members and great work. This can include dedicated shout-outs in meetings or more in-depth experiences like grabbing food and drinks or hosting a digital game night.

Track and Reflect on Key Moments

Every project has moments of intense inspiration and excitement and moments of anxiety, confusion, discomfort, and even fear. You can track these feelings using a mood meter to chart the emotional journey team members experience during a project. Then, create space to talk about these highs and lows to foster group reflection while building trust among teammates. 

You can also predict and prepare for key moments in a project where tensions naturally arise. The first time you respond to those moments sets a precedent for future collaboration and overcoming inevitable failures. It’s in that response and recovery that good collaboration happens. The key moments that matter in cross-disciplinary collaboration are the first time teams meet, adapt or pivot, disagree, or make a decision.

Meet 

This is the honeymoon phase when the project begins. There’s a feeling of hope and excitement because there’s clarity on what you’re doing and why. Build on that hope and strengthen team bonds. Set agreements and values to help guide the team when tensions arise. This can happen during the pre-project kickoff or during early weekly status meetings. 

Adapt or Pivot

This is that moment early in a project when the team realizes that initial assumptions and solutions may not be right. Uncertainty begins to creep in because there’s the feeling that the project is not as clear-cut as imagined. Notice the change in feeling as a team, reflect on the new learning and understanding, and incorporate those changes into the project plan. This can happen during weekly status meetings, daily stand-ups, or setting up specific team meetings to navigate together. 

Disagree

This can happen throughout the project, and it’s the moment when you realize there are differences of opinion on how to work together and what a solution might be. There could also be additional stress due to the ambiguity of the work and trying to keep to timelines. Doubt in each other and the work can result if team members don’t resolve disagreements—check in with agreements and values.

Then, listen, let team members know what they share matters, and be vulnerable enough to forgive or apologize. If the disagreement is at the team level, use the mid-project check-in or weekly status meetings to hold a discussion. However, if it is between two people, a walk and talk is a great way to break interpersonal tension.  

Make a Decision 

This happens in the middle of the project and toward the end. It’s when you have to trust what you’ve learned, your team, and your gut instincts to determine how to take action. If you don’t act, that is also a decision-making moment. There’s a thin line between fear and excitement, and both can happen when making a decision. If fear is stronger, the response is to trust your instincts, act, and be okay that you may need to course correct along the way.

Develop a Habit of Critique

Every project should have a critique once a month. Critique only works if your team dedicates time to building a culture of trust. Reviewing work together and with user and stakeholder feedback improves it, creates a productive environment, and lets the whole team participate. When it happens on a regular cadence, it ensures repeatable results. Also, the feedback during reviews is not personal when it’s a habit. It’s about doing great work together.

Strengthen Stakeholder Buy-In

Stakeholders and their decisions can often send a project off course. Strengthening their buy-in helps you and your team turn skeptics and detractors into advocates. As a result, your work is more successful. Your innovations come to life and get to market when you effectively engage internal stakeholders and turn them into advocates or sponsors.  

Cloud Kicks and a Predictable Process

To create predictability and harness their anxiety around balancing user needs with stakeholder interests/needs, the core project team at Cloud Kicks uses their weekly status meeting to ask questions and explore their concerns. After some discussion, they realize that they’re specifically concerned about balancing user needs with the strategic interests of the customer success team, a key group with whom they need project buy-in. 

Next, learn about key tools to use for creating a predictable process.