Chelsea Robinson presents a workshop on Teamwork & Culture at Live The Dream in Wellington in 2015. This presentation shares tips for organising, culture hacks, and people-centered strategies for building community.

1. Teamwork &
Culture
Chelsea Robinson
Lifehack & Enspiral
Presented at Live The Dream - 2015

2. Stories &
Lessons learnt

3. Just because you have a hammer,
doesn’t mean what’s in front of you is a nail.
I made some mistakes trying to solve hard group issues
like conflicts by using the same social tools as I would in
other situations.
I learnt that this can be very painful and detrimental to
group wellbeing. You need different tools / interventions
for different situations.

4. Sometimes hierarchy is great
I’m normally pretty non-hierarchical in my group work
and sometimes this is fantastic. Other times this can be
the wrong approach.
In Lifehack Labs we were a “flat” team and this proved
disorientating and disempowering.
In high speed, highly logistical environments with many
people, sometimes mandated hierarchy is more
effective.

5. Project based hierarchy can be good
I feel good teams deeply believe that no one person is
more important than anyone else.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t need clear
responsibility and accountability though.
It’s really effective to nominate key people as
coordinators for projects and give them the mandate to
run with their vision without asking for for others’
permission every step of the way

6. Find founders with Shackleton's way
Put the call out for people who want to:
- work on a meaningful problem
- Learn a lot
- be pushed to the edge of
your self & skills
- learn to collaborate and
love others

7. Fill your facilitation belt with diverse tools
Okay so you can sit in a circle and hear each person
speak.
But what do you do in half an hour with 200 people?
Learn by experimenting and ultimately try to reach a point
where given a group, a timeframe and a purpose you can
use a combination of pair work, group work, whole group
work and motivational speaking to get results

8. Recognise & respond to
the needs of your team mates
Money? Time with their babies/family? Quality time with
the team to build context?
It’s inappropriate to exclude team members’ needs when
you’re designing your work flow. I’ve lost so many co-
founders due to them needing money and bailing out to
support themselves.
So what if they don’t reply to a 10 pm email? Check
yourself and change your expectations

9. What do you amplify & constrain?
As a leader (we are all leaders) we amplify some behaviours,
trends, traits, processes and constrain others.
In my work with GenZero I amplified the importance of
consensus and consultation because I thought shared
understanding was the highest priority, and constrained
creativity and autonomy. This lead to a huge lack of creative
volunteers.
Pay attention to what you constrain.

10. Identity, Ritual, CULTure
Organisations, and communities of interest have some
similarities to church communities.
To deepen the connection, use tools like singing songs
together, building symbols together, retreating together to
build culture.
Small rituals like the way you open a meeting by hearing
how everyone feels today can build strongly committed
teams.

11. Tools
wham these in your tool belt

12. Agile
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.
agilemanifesto.org

13. Checking in and out
Kick off any group meeting by asking how people are
really. There is deep value in someone showing up and
saying they’re having a hard time at home. It puts all their
contributions in context.
Try leaving a meeting by going around and asking how
people felt about that meeting space.

14. MIT “Need help circle”
At the end of a meeting, try going around and each person
saying something that they need help with.
Don’t move on until someone else in the group says they
will help with that.

15. Holacracy
holacracy.org
“The system relies on a hierarchy of
circles, each run according to detailed
democratic procedures. However, higher
circles can assign purpose and
responsibilities to lower circles – they
have the power to change or even abolish
lower circles that aren’t performing.
Each circle then, however democratic,
obeys a vertical hierarchy and looks up to
its superior for instructions.”

16. Great thing to read
http://www.makebelieve.me/resources/purpose-driven-campaigning.pdf