Variant on the “Purpose” exercise

[Dominiek Plancke]

My experience with management teams, especially at the highest levels in the organization, is that there often seems to be a great lack of alignment. Which seems in first instance to be strange. These teams are responsible for setting the direction, with a powerful purpose, mission and vision. They also are accountable for developing the company strategy and ensuring its deployment through (annual operating) plans and the like.
And when you ask them how much time they are putting in the development and deployment of all these plans, it’s clear there is no lack of effort.

However, when you talk to the individual team members about team alignment, there seems to be a general feeling of dissatisfaction. It comes even more apparent when you listen to their personal interpretations on what the purpose, mission, vision and strategy is or should be.
This lack of alignment translates itself equally to what the purpose of the team itself is: what this team should achieve and maybe more importantly what this team should not engage into.
In other words, what is for the company mission critical that requires this team to be the best performing team it can be for the company to succeed.

So, incorporating the “purpose” exercise at the start of the team coaching journey I have found to be paramount for the team to grow.
However, I think it can be made more powerful when the connection with what is mission critical from a business perspective is strengthened.
I therefore use an adapted version to the “purpose” exercise as it’s posted in the TCI library.

The set-up for the exercise remains the same, but you need to allow for 30 mins more time.
Before starting the exercise, I ask each team member to write down on a piece of paper the answer to the following question:
“Reflecting on the company’s purpose (mission/vision) and strategy, what are the 3 business priorities for which this team’s performance is mission critical”.
Important to remind them to write it down in a readable way. Afterwards, you ask them to hand the paper over to the person sitting at their right-hand side.
Then you ask one person at a time to read out loud what is on the piece of paper. Each item is been noted on the flip chart.
Then the team is been asked to come to a commonly agreed upon set of 3 business priorities.
With this framework in mind, the actual “purpose” exercise is started.
I have found that in this way the purpose exercise is build on a better aligned perspective of the team’s contribution to the business needs.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

[John Rea]

I think this is an excellent and very necessary “calibration” Dominiek.

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