Team History Exercise

I did a great exercise with a team last week and wanted to share. Essentially, I introduced the concept of a team as a system and the idea that teams have a past, present and future. Then, we had the team co-create a team timeline sharing the history of the team starting with the member who has been on the team the longest. We looked at 4 system elements: The team context (economy, political landscape, CEO in power), the team purpose (how clear it was), relationships (specifically around membership clarity and dynamics) and process (clarity on accountability, feedback loops, decision making and resources). Great exercise with lots of a-has. People didn’t know the history of the team or some of the contextual elements that really impact the team.