How can you help your team go faster with less friction?
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Three moves to reduce friction and up the pace
Get totally clear 'what goes where'
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Create a 5-word north star
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Build a rhythm that takes the strain
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1. Codify all your collaboration comms
One of the fastest ways to reduce friction is to agree where things live and how people are expected to respond.
I’d introduce a few simple conventions for tools and messages:
Chat = nudges, quick questions, group updates, early discussions that hear lots of voices
Email = anything longer, sensitive or external
Docs = master docs to create a single source of truth (including where are they and what are they called)
Meetings = only used for decisions, complex conversations or problem-solving
Then I’d go one step further and create some norms around responding to chat messages in your channel (as I want to direct a lot of traffic here, so I need to make it digestible)
👍 = “Read it, on it”
👀 = “Seen it, no action needed”
❗️= “Blocked / help!”
I use this to reduce open loops in everyone's mind.
And I would use AI to create a weekly digest either for the team (10min task) or for other teams to summarise what people might have missed and help people dive into the right places.
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2. Create a 5-word 'north star' and use it everywhere
Most projects are a big old mish-mash of cluttered priorities. It's hard for people to know what the real criteria for success are.
So I’d write a short phrase (three to five words) that captures the picture of success.
For example:
🟢 Live by July
🟢 Break even in 2025
🟢 The fastest [X] on the market
Then I’d put it:
At the top of every doc
On every meeting slide
In every tough conversation
It becomes the filter for decisions and trade-offs. If people start rolling their eyes at how often they’ve heard it - perfect, it's doing its job!
3. Build a rhythm that takes the strain
I don't want to be pushing everything forward myself or for us to be figuring out ways of working as we go along. I want the system and cadence to do the heavy lifting, so we can focus on the content and the delivery. For this, we need a rhythm - a flow of known and normalised, helpful ways of working that help people know what to expect and do. Scaffolding that takes the strain and gives every conversation a home (thank you Elise Keith for this great phrase)
That might mean:
Weekly co-working sessions for real doing time
Fortnightly ‘fix it’ calls to solve cross-functional issues
Monthly milestone reviews, so we know where we are and what’s next
I’d name sessions things like “Week 5 of 12” to help orientate people and start with the same 30-second context recap. I’d use the same check-in ritual each time and keep the pace consistent.
And when we made progress? I’d celebrate it - out loud. Whether that’s a ‘done’ column in Trello or an actual bell, people need to feel it moving.
