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[00:00:00] In today's audio blog, we are going to talk about something that I personally feel is essential to team success. A Liftoff. How do you start a new project or product? Do you have a kickoff? Is it powerful and useful, or just a way to roll out the PowerPoint and tick a box that you started the work.

[00:00:18] Here's the power of that liftoff in the client's own words. "I was skeptical that all of this soft stuff was going to do anything. Wow. Was my mind changed!" Two months ago, we finished hiring a new all remote team and the team was due to start at the end of the month.

[00:00:38] I scheduled a liftoff for the new client team following the model of the book by the same name. Lift off is a system to create purpose, alignment and context around the work to be done. And in my opinion, as I said is essential to starting new work. We scheduled a full week to go through the liftoff.

[00:00:57] When I conduct a liftoff, we also ensure there's plenty of time for collaboration beyond the actual liftoff exercises. We encourage coffee meetups, even virtual ones, walk and talks, and we do a lot of icebreakers that are warm ups to the exercise at hand.. We also have daily homework that includes reflection activities and learning assignments.

[00:01:18] This particular team had never worked together. And they were also going to be developing a new model for how potentially the entire company would work. Understanding their purpose, alignment and context was critical.

[00:01:34] And two weeks after the liftoff, the inevitable happened. A new team member who hadn't been able to join the first week. So the team leader decided she would have everyone share what they liked about the liftoff. And out came the comment about being skeptical.

[00:01:50] I thanked the commenter for her honesty and said at the time, I could see on her face that every time I introduced an activity such as who am I, she stopped short of rolling her eyes but persisted in participating anyway. I thanked her for going along with something that was unfamiliar and a very foreign way of working for her.

[00:02:11] But the results were seen on a daily basis. Here's what happened.. One. The team realized that their shared value system was not only in line with each other, but a powerful tool for their success. Two. Having a working agreement, mitigated some of the awkwardness of how to communicate and collaborate effectively and gave them a mechanism of what to do when it wasn't working.

[00:02:37] Three. Doing the who am I exercise, which included a section of what you need to know to work with me, opened the team up to different ways of working and communicating and at the same time took into account how they were going to work together.

[00:02:55] Four. Digging into their purpose, alignment and context meant that when they got to process redesign in week two, they finished the exercise three weeks ahead of schedule.

[00:03:07] And, five. They got to a point of self-organization much faster because they understood what they needed. By week seven, they were designing their own internal training program to ensure that everyone on the team had the same opportunity to skill up.

[00:03:26] So I leave you with this. If you haven't read the book, Liftoff go buy it and read it now.

[00:03:32] If you think that starting a new project or product is as simple as assigning people to a team, think again.

[00:03:41] And the next time you want to recharge how you work, check out our programs, including our new one, coming soon, The Power of Liftoff for Teams. We cannot emphasize enough how important collaboration and communication are to team success. We hope you find this useful and look forward to you listening to our next episode.

To learn more about The Power of Liftoff, check out our new corporate offerings available as group coaching, masterclasses, or 1-week intensive offsites.

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INDRA A. BOOKS

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