Five helpful norms I introduce in every organisation and team I work with

Five helpful norms I introduce in every organisation and team I work with (with an example you can copy for your own teams)

 

One of the first things I address in organisations I work with is collaboration norms.

Simple agreed ways of doing things that reduce the amount of processing power people need to use to e.g. figure out what meeting they are in or what they are reading.

No one wants to template the heck out of every meeting and chat message - clearly. 

But 500 interviews about meetings later, one of the things I know for sure is that there is a very wide variation in experience within the same team, let alone the same organisation! 

And this is expensive in 'problem solving spoons' (i.e. the number of puzzles we can think through in one day; not a technical term 🙂). We want those problem solving spoons to be spent on business problems, not problems of orientation.

Signposting norms help provide a map and minimise this orientation work. 

Put another way, norms help us contribute brilliantly straight away, not waste the whole meeting at cross purposes. 

There are absolutely loads of these but here are five I introduce all the time. The last one is particularly popular! 

 

Norm 1: A shortcut to make every meeting purpose instantly clear

Best example: Frame each meeting with a question

Humans are problem-solving, question-answering machines. Give people a question and they will race to answer it!

Posing a question in the meeting name (or at the top of the invitation and agenda) is the single most helpful thing you can do to instantly improve ALL your meetings.

Questions provoke thought and provide a clear direction of travel.

No further explanation needed but my favourite questions start with

How might we... 

*Note to self: I must do a LinkedIn post on my favourite How Might We questions at some point!

 

Norm 2: A baseline that makes every meeting 'good enough'

Best example: Minimum Viable Meeting

I encourage every organisation I work with to create a Minimum Viable Meeting. 

To take up people's time in this organisation, the absolute minimum requirement is these things.

You can pick what makes sense for you but this is my long list:

An invitation with:

- a clear title
- a purpose 
- an outcome
- the roles you want people to play
- links to information people need

A meeting which:

- opens by setting out the purpose and format for the session
- checks in every 15mins: "Are we having the right conversation? What would improve it?"
- captures decisions and actions and shares then straight away

I have worked with organisations who have entirely customised this - one which includes the project code in the meeting title, for easy info retrieval later, and another who invoke the rule 'no one speaks twice until everyone has spoken once'.

Point is, they all figured out what worked for them and made it the minimum standard.

 

Norm 3: An accepted way to reduce direct messaging 'fluff'

Best example: BLUF

I first heard about BLUF from engagement consultant and speaker, Scott Gould. He explains that:

"Normally emails [and direct messages] begin with friendly connection ("how are you?"), then given an explanation ("so I was thinking about X, and because of Y, we need to consider Z"), and then finally we give the conclusion ("We need to ABC")

To make emails a lot clearer, use BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front

This means flipping the order. Begin with the conclusion. Then give the explanation. And then close with the friendly connection."

You can riff on this and soften it a bit - but get the ask in at the very start to orientate people. 

A "hard BLUF” is when you force yourself to write:

“Julio – we need to ABC. Can you XYZ?"

I hope you’re well!” 

Yikes. 

The key here, as always, is to make it an explicit norm in your team. So no one needs to worry that it will be taken the wrong way. To BLUF is to respect their time and energy.

(I also wrote a post on the surprising reason people are uneasy with friendly openers)

 

Norm 4: A standard way to create a pop up team in a meeting

Best example: Meeting opener that taps into schemas

How we open meetings has a huge impact on the course that meeting takes. So often it's "oookay, let's get started" and straight into content.

The problem is, everyone is starting a different meeting in their head.

Psychologist and career coach, Caroline Clark, explains the concept of schemas and how we can activate the right mental model for participants so they can contribute brilliantly from the start.

(And if you think this is interesting, Caroline's weekly newsletter, Lift Off, is full of this kind of evidence based brilliance and well worth the inbox space)

My meeting opening long list includes:

- context / back story (short!)

- big goal this meeting and work contributes towards

- purpose and outcomes

- style and behaviours that are going to help and are expected/allowed.

 

Norm 5: A way to make it easy to parse a group chat post

Best example: Agreed async templates

Using Teams channels (or Slack, or whatever your equivalent is) has transformed how we communicate between meetings - and shifted a lot of traffic out of email (which is great).

But now there are messages everywhere and we're using too much brainpower to figure them out. 

So here's an example of what I introduce to teams I'm working with:

 

I have also used 'flashtagging' which is a hashtag to convey strength of opinion AKA "Hill Dying Status" (i.e. do I feel so strongly about this that it's a hill I'm willing to die on?). Coined by Hubspot originally, the classic flashtags are:

#fyi (Fine to act on it or not. No biggie. No response needed or expected.)

#suggestion (Here's something I would do if I were you. But you own this so your call, just let me know either way)

#recommendation or #strongrecommendation (I've given this a lot of thought. If you go a different route, have a good rationale for it)

#plea (Just trust me on this, ok! Please.)

 

So that's the five most useful norms I use all the time. Let me know what you think...