Determine Your Team One Thing

Day 8

Welcome to Day 8 of March Forth. Your team benefited from identifying team goals yesterday, which leads into today’s topic of choosing one focus.

Reflection:

Yesterday you and your team determined 3 monthly team goals, as well as looked ahead at longer range goals. Now, it’s time to pick the one BIG goal that will move the needle the most for your team currently.

This goal is going to be your primary focus and your team’s primary focus. By centering the attention of your team on this particular goal with everyone working to that end, you make it much more likely that the team is going to achieve it.

This ensures that your team is getting high-value work done, not just busy work or putting out fires, since this ONE goal has been determined to be a high priority.

There are two approaches to selecting this ONE thing out of the list of 3:

1. You choose the ONE thing to focus on and simply tell the team. Sometimes that’s necessary to avoid long discussions or wasting time.
2. Or, choose the ONE thing along with your team members. It doesn’t have to be unanimous but listen closely if there are dissenting voices. Assure all team members that the other goals will be implemented before long.

Your primary job once the team’s ONE thing is decided, and responsibilities are divided up, is to become the overseer and progress checker - in other words - to ensure the “doing” is happening.

You’ll be checking in regularly, not waiting until the deadline is just around the corner!

Action:

You should have 3 specific goals with clear descriptions that were decided on for this month.

Decide with the team (or on your own if necessary) which out of the 3 is the ONE thing the team will focus on until it is finished.

Identify the role and responsibilities that each team member has to fulfill to meet the overall goal. Discuss with each team member to be sure their assignments are understood. You’ll head off challenges later if you’re a stickler on this step!

Clearly communicate the date each team member needs to have their portion ready.

Tomorrow we’ll identify roadblocks that can derail a team’s focus on their ONE thing. 

Until Tomorrow, 

Kyle Sexton