Love Letters
Silo working is a key issue today and Pearlcatchers specialise in helping teams to work across boundaries. One particularly useful activity is the Love Letters Workshop – an interactive team activity, based on the work of Richard Pascale, a practitioner of ‘chaos management’ and author of ‘The Art of Japanese Management’ and ‘Managing on the Edge’.
The Love Letters workshop is an innovative approach to process improvement and breaking down departmental silos. Starting initially in departmental teams, the structure allows interaction between teams to resolve issues that cause productivity problems in different areas of the business.
This highly facilitated session allows teams/departments to identify the major cause of problems in their area, refine these down to specific requests to other areas, which are then ‘posted’ to that area. Each team then investigates the ‘love letters’ they have received and attempt to develop resolution strategies. The teams are then brought back together for a group discussion on a selection of the issues and to agree how they will work together in the future.
Strong facilitation is required, together with training material to guide the teams to a successful conclusion. Love Letters is an excellent tool both for breaking down departmental silos and identifying underlying issues and root causes.
The Strategic Workout for TEAMS
Discover the power & the success that a shared sense of direction
can bring to you and your team
Our facilitator, Peter Lodemore, has been designing and delivering highly successful Leadership Programmes for some of the country’s biggest and most successful organisations. Typically these programmes span a period of 18 months to 2 years, they involve all Senior Managers in a range of development activities, and represent a major investment.
‘I kept getting asked by Senior Managers going through my Leadership Programmes if I could come and do something with their own team. They didn’t expect much, they just wanted me to condense a 2 year programme into one day and pitch it at the right level for everyone including all their front line staff.’
The Strategic Workout for TEAMS, is Peter’s answer. This one day workout, will take you and your team on a journey into the future, a future that is dazzling in terms of the success you will be achieving….
‘I start a workout by going through some of the things I’ve learnt from working with world class performers. Then I present a success scenario to the team – a future scenario where they are receiving the kind of accolades they have always dreamed of. I then invite participants into smaller groups to discuss what is happening and what the team is doing really well for them to be deserving such lavish praise’.
‘The results are really astounding. I’ve found that team members will often have far higher aspirations for the team than their boss’s. The result of this type of exercise on morale is also incredibly uplifting – people get really pumped up’.
Once you have defined what future success looks like for your team, Peter will help you identify the key areas of your business which are critical to your future success.
‘I aim to identify between 3 – 5 key areas of the team’s business based on the success scenario exercise. Getting the team to identify these key areas of their business is critical to the success of the workout - if the team doesn’t originate these business critical factors then they wont own them, i.e. we own what we create!’
Having identified the key areas of your business that will lead to world class performance, Peter will then work with the team to identify short term and medium term targets.
‘Once we agree the key areas of the business, critical to the future success of the team, I invite participants to join a Working Group – a mini project team. I explain that ‘hope is not a method’ and if we are going to make this success happen then we need to start getting very practical’.
Each Working Group is tasked with identifying short term and medium term targets and drawing up associated action plans.
‘I’ve found out that you don’t have to take everyone through a 2 day project management workshop for them to get to grips with an improvement project. People like choosing which Working Group to get involved in and you see plenty of passion in the discussions they have’.
At the end of your day on The Strategic Workout for TEAMS Peter will help you identify the key people you need to champion the different aspects of the strategic agenda which will have emerged during the day.
‘At the end of the workout we need to make sure that we know what’s going to happen next, who is going to do it, by when, and how they will report back. We often decide to appoint someone in the role of overall programme co-ordinator (not the boss), as well as identifying champions to look after each of the Working Group themes. One of the best moments for me is always when someone volunteers to champion a particular theme who is not one of the usual suspects’.
Whether you are part of a service delivery team, a management team, senior team, a Board, cross-functional team or partnership, The Strategic Workout for TEAMS will inspire you and your colleagues to raise your game and your hunger for higher levels of performance. We can’t promise you will become world class but Peter will certainly make a healthy impact on your future success as a team.