The "Toy" Story
We were in trouble! Several years ago, I was developing a complex, innovative new product with a cross-functional team of 15 people (with zero new product launch experience among them). Our customer was demanding additional product improvements be implemented prior to launch. The team was cracking under the stress. There was infighting and chaos, exacerbated by product and process deficiencies. The different functional groups were blaming each other for the problems. A seasoned Project Manager was assigned, and, as if by magic, everything changed.
At her very first team meeting, she placed a small toy car in front of each person, saying nothing. After about 5 minutes (which seemed like an eternity), she asked “What do you all have in front of you?”. Everyone said, “a car” or “a toy”. She said, “Right! It’s a toy. From now on you are all going to remember one thing – T. O. Y.: Team, Others, Yourself. When you prioritize actions, you will set Team first, followed by Others, and then Yourself. You are no longer going to worry about your individual metrics; this is a team and we will fight through this difficult launch together. You are going to behave with ‘TOY’ in mind in all of your actions and talk from here on out.”
Immediately, the team started to gel. We made tremendous progress with the product development and launched on schedule. Individual concerns dropped by the wayside as the team fought hard to be successful. The small action of placing a TOY in front of us made such a huge impact! That simple gesture dramatically re-set everyone’s thinking. It was suddenly so obvious that if the team failed in its mission, it would not reflect well on anyone – the team’s internal finger-pointing was profoundly counterproductive. The presence of a physical toy on each colleague’s desk was a constant reminder to keep egos in check and work the issues. Twenty-five years later, I still have the toy. What symbolic action could you take with your team to drive team unity and accelerate progress?
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Each approach relies on an underlying logical flow that goes like this: [a] make sure the problem is clearly defined; [b] be open to all sources of information; [c] vet the information for relevance and accuracy; [d] use the process of elimination to narrow down all possible causes to the most likely few; [e] prove which of the suspects is really the cause of the issue; [f] generate a number of potential solutions; [g] evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and risk of the potential solutions; [h] implement the winning solution(s); and [i] take steps to make sure your solution(s) don’t unravel in the future.
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