Low trust (slow) teams

Slow teams are slow to everything. In contrast to nimble teams, slow teams are slow to share vision, questions, strengths and learning.

People on slow teams do whatever they think is their work and expect everyone else to do the same. When things don't get done, people expect those who usually take care of them to take care of them. Sharing happens when people feel like it, are expected to, or not at all. Trust is low, meaning minimal or worse.

This is in direct contrast to nimble teams where people share everything because they have shared expectations that this is how work gets done. Trust is high. Work is great.

Nimble teams and cultures of trust

Nimble teams grow and flourish in cultures of trust.

Trust is pivotal In three ways:

• Teams move at the speed of trust 
• Trust accelerates collaborative creativity 
• Trust turns uncertainty into an asset

There are many genres of trust that weave the cultural fabric of nimble teams:

• Trust in shared direction & plans
• Trust in shared expectations & decisions
• Trust in shared learning & strengths

The primacy of team culture

The future of work is about the culture of teams. As we radically rethink how organizations can flourish in times of unprecedented uncertainty and complexity, it will be the transformation of culture that will distinguish those that will contribute the greatest beauty to our world.

Culture is how people feel as they interact together. In flourishing team cultures, people feel valued, connected and free to grow. Strategy and structure work when we get culture right.

Growing flourishing team cultures is about how we know and engage our goodness in realizing the good we seek, how we define and celebrate progress, how we stay aligned and agile, how we make growing together the point and path of our work, how our work is a craft we practice from the principles of kindness and beauty.

Every team has what it takes to move steadily toward a more flourishing culture. All it takes is doing business as unusual.

Audio podcast: https://anchor.fm/jack46?at=2298962

Can we change the culture of an organization?

Even though we can talk about the culture of an organization, it is the synergy of each team's culture. As many leaders have discovered, culture change doesn't happen at the organizational level. 

Culture is how people interact together at the team level. Culture only shifts when people experiment with interacting differently in how they communicate, coordinate and grow. It is what must be done at the team level, one team at a time.

A team culture of helping

Teams are more nimble when anyone can ask for and offer help that is completely unconstrained by the assumptions of fixed roles. Velocity occurs when all work is everyone's work. Freedom to do what needs to be done gets things done without delays, postponements, blame and excuses. Alignment happens when we decide together how and when help best occurs.