Creating a plan for your teams

creating a plan for your teams: a3 model

by Dirk Depré - April 15, 2022

Remember Netflix's 'The last Dance' in which you could see the Chicago Bulls become one of the best teams ever to have played in the NBA. Phil Jackson was the ultimate architect of the success. I came to learn that for every season he coached, he had a theme. Given that this was going to be the last season they were all going to be together at the Bulls, "the last dance' was printed on the cover of the team handbook. The reasoning behind the title was not solely the last season together, but also underlining the importance of really "being together in this last run" that they were going to have. Jackson spoke a lot about the importance of “oneness” of the team and the way he applied the 5 stages of Tribal Leadership. He saw his team moving from a stage 4 team to a stage 5 team, meaning that the only team that could compete against the Bulls, were the Bulls themselves.

Allright, let me translate this to what we do in business. Many of us coaches are thrown in the deep waters at the organisations where we work. The constant cry from the people inside the organisations sound like: "I am busy, because I have so much work to do, so I am really really busy". And then they also have to cope with the information overload. Soon you find out that your team is actually struggling to find any rhythm at all. Your natural way of approaching things is to get stuck in, step up, optimize and help. But read this out loud and let it really sink in: often it's just a quick or small win at the expense of a whole lotta effort from everybody who is involved. And the result is just a sub-optimisation for the better, very well intended but often without a very big impact.

So, how to optimize with big impact? You need a plan, your big plan for the team. You need to have a plan, and the people need to know and understand the plan. So, define your "last dance"-theme for your team and think bold. What is it that you want to achieve with your team?

When I started coaching youth basketball teams when I was 17 years old, I was asked to create a plan for the whole season. Why? Because it is so tempting to just focus on the short term result and constantly adjust. So I was told this: "Don't focus on the results in the games, focus on the progress towards the end-goal, the results will come automatically”. And indeed the results came the next year: the team became champion and was runner up in the cup. Allright, let’s take that learning back to business and the implementation of Agile ways of working: maybe we should reconsider going in and doing our routines sprint by sprint without having a long term plan. Maybe we can think a bit bolder and really challenge the status quo? But we can only do that if we know what that ideal future looks like and when our teams agree with that, right?!

As a coach, you are there to help the team become the best possible version of themselves. For sure, you will already have ideas how a winning team looks like, when it is thriving, when it is constantly achieving flow. Speaking of 'flow', maybe we can pick another idea from lean to help us create a plan for our teams? The A3 process is basically a process and problem solving tool. The A3 process allows groups of people to actively collaborate on the purpose, goals, and strategy. Typically, the A3 process tells you to go through a couple of steps to achieve a more desirable outcome in the future. Some steps to consider going through the A3 process:

• Clarify the problem

• Capture the current state of the situation

• Conduct a root cause analysis

• Devise countermeasures to address root causes

• Define your target state

• Develop a plan for implementation

• Develop a follow-up plan with predicted outcomes

• Get everyone on board

• Implement!

• Evaluate results

Now, let's translate that as a tool you can use for yourself to think how you could further help your teams to improve. Here's a way you could use that A3-model for teams:

• (1) Explore and Observe the current state. If that is totally 100% ok, keep it as it is. If not, think about what the ideal world would look like.

• (2) Define your north star, create your own definition of awesome.

• (3) Create intermediate future target conditions; logical steps to take when you want to achieve awesomeness.

• (4) Invest your time and energy in the right experiment. Those experiments that are actually bringing you closer towards awesomeness.

This model requires thinking. It requires to look critical at what you have and dream about what it can become. As a coach and leader, you do know best, you do know what the perfect world looks like, because basically, you are the coach, right?

So come on, let's create better futures for the teams. 

Creating cultures of amazement in the process.

(*) Inspiration for the model from the A3 problem solving and continuous improvement approach