How To Identify & Fix Project Team Dysfuntion Using Teamangle

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Galen Low: Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with The Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you want to hear more about that, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership.

Okay, today is a simple topic. We are talking about team dysfunction — how it can be a silent killer for many agencies and what you can do about it as a team leader. 

With me today are Greg Storey and Brett Harned, the co-founders of Same Team Partners and creators of the team performance platform, Teamangle.

Greg, Brett — thanks for being here with me today. 

Brett Harned: Hey, Galen. Thanks for having us.

Greg Storey: Yeah. Good to see you. 

Galen Low: This is great to be on the other side. I was on Greg and Brett's podcast, Sprints and Milestones, back in the day. Was it last year? Was it two years ago? 

Greg Storey: I think it was two years ago. 

Galen Low: Anyways, I love that series. I love the series on failure and just accepting it and talking about it. So for my listeners, if you haven't checked it out, check it out. It's a great season. It's a great season, not just my episode. But that's not why we're here today. 

Today, we are talking about team dysfunction. And I thought maybe just for framing, I'd just start with the big question, which for me is this — why is team performance so important in this day and age, maybe more than it already was?

Greg Storey: I think it's because teams are being asked to do more with less. So especially in the last, what, couple of years, with a lot of companies reducing headcount, severely reducing headcount. And I don't see any evidence of that bouncing back or coming back, certainly to the levels that they were, but headcount has always been precious.

It's never necessarily been a commodity. And I think even so, it's now, headcount is a precious rare mineral that, stone that people just don't get. And so at the same time, the requirements of people to do more with less, to get more done, there's only so much what's the thing, only so much blood you can get from a stone, right?

And in my experience, in Brett's experience, and even from hands on, but also from what we've observed, there's still quite a bit of dysfunction that happens on teams that have nothing to do with the actual work that they do, the tools to use or the process, whether it's, agile or something else.

It's in these fundamentals that are rarely taught, rarely done that are keeping teams from being the best versions of themselves. 

Galen Low: I love that. And I love the mineral thing, I'm gonna twist it a little bit. In my head I'm like, maybe also diamond because there are so many forces of pressure that are squeezing the sort of human worker in this day and age.

And to your point, this is someone listening might be like, Oh yeah, AI - it's new. And whatever, the economy sucks. But to your point, it's not just like this year and it's not just the past couple of months, it's, many years running of the sort of leaning out and trying to do more with less.

And I love that what you said about, there's so much about it's not about the work that is impacting sort of team performance. There's this other stuff and it's stuff that we're not always paying attention to when we're thinking about things like AI and economic turmoil and like layoffs and things like that.

And it's not all just Oh, best practices for team performance. There is this sort of other layer within that.

Brett Harned: I agree. I also think that in this day and age of doing more with less, we see teams that are downsized teams that are reorg and then essentially teams that are just told, okay, carry on the way that things were. Obviously that doesn't work, especially if you're trying to be efficient, like just removing people doesn't create efficiency, right?

People need to understand how to approach teams and the way that they work together in those times. And I think what Greg is saying is, it's not all about the process. It's about what prevents people from rolling out a good process. And it's alignment around how they're communicating and working together, how they're collaborating and how that impacts the culture and the way that everyone kind of behaves and relates to one another.

It's funny because I think you opened and said something like, this is a simple topic and I'm like, Galen, this one's actually quite complicated, sir. But yeah, I think there's a lot in that, 

Greg Storey: but that's just it. The assumption is right, we all walk around the world just assuming Hey, I communication, collaboration, yep, I do those things. Culture, yep, we got it. But these words, number one, these words mean different things to different people. Especially culture, what a loaded word. But this idea that, yeah, I'm good, I'm whatever, I'm 24, I know how to communicate, I know how to collaborate. And our view of what those things are, like, what does good mean?

These are things that are taught, practiced, rehearsed, whatever, in sports teams. Our sports team, vibe and feel is not by accident. If you take a look at any professional sports team or professional athlete, I mean, those guys are still, they're drilling, right? They're not just assuming yeah, I got this.

There's repetition, there's new techniques, there's new things to learn all of the time. And so, that's no different from those of us who are in, say, white collar work, right? It, no, it just because you thought you were communicating before doesn't mean that, one, you're actually doing what is considered good communication. And two, we always have new things to learn, right? Like to Brett's point of, especially now, when you pull people off of the org chart, smash groups together and just say carry on. In my experience, there's always that, okay, we'll give them a couple of weeks to figure each other out.

But there's rarely is there anything to say, how do we onboard everybody? How do we off board? How do we onboard, how do we get people to start thinking like a new team? And there's rarely, I've never seen it where a leader comes in and says, this week, here's the playbook for what we're going to do to develop a common language, to take a look at how we're all uniquely used to doing work, how we're going to come together as a team and do that now together, this new configuration, and how this can have an impact on our team culture, right?

Like to Brett's point of this sounds simple because it's Hey, I can walk up, right? I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I know how to do this stuff. And from what we have seen, the evidence is overwhelmingly, nope, you don't got this. 

Galen Low: I like that whole taken for granted thing. 

Brett Harned: Yeah. Even when you think you do, there's something underlying. The way that I put it is, it's not problems really. It's more about opportunities. And if a leader thinks about this as opportunities to be better rather than challenges to overcome, they look at the team angle differently. So to me, it's really about finding ways to optimize the team, not finding ways to figure out where your team sucks, because that's really not what it's about.

That's not what we're trying to do. 

Galen Low: Really good introduction, and I hadn't realized the sort of context of team angle. 

But I wondered if we can zoom out a bit and if you can just tell our listeners a bit about Teamangle and what it is, what made you create it and like how it's different than other frameworks, things like EOS and other things like that?

Brett Harned: Teamangle started as a concept with Greg, actually, Greg was thinking about antifragility and how can we create antifragile teams and then at the same time, I think you were like researching and found this like triangle structure.

I remember the blog post that you sent me and I can't remember it now, but it was like these ideas just started to converge, right? And we mapped out what were the three sides of the triangle; communication, collaboration and culture, the things that make up a really good team. And then we were breaking those areas down.

What does communication mean? What does collaboration mean? What does culture mean? And then we came up with what we think are the baseline standards of a high performing team in those three areas. So essentially, that is the team angle. The team angle is the structure that you can measure your team against in those areas.

Greg, do you have anything to add to that? 

Greg Storey: I want to say going back to, this is not like a coffee shop hypothesis moment of Hey, what about this? It's funny. We have stories to tell about this that we just have not gotten around to, but Brett and I have been working together on and off since 2012. 

Brett Harned: Or before, yeah.

Greg Storey: Yeah. And even back then, like when we worked in the same company, but two offices there was extreme cultural differences, problems with getting them to collaborate and communicate, right? Like these problems that we're trying to help teams solve for, to find the opportunities to improve. These go back a long way.

And then as Brett and I, our paths diverged at some point, I went into big corporate world, Brett was working for smaller teams, like product teams and agency teams, that type of thing. But coming back, we're like, man, actually Brett and I did this huge whiteboarding session where we put down like, what's all the stuff that we're capable of doing?

Just name it. I can design, I can make websites. We can do this. We can do that. And then we also put what are the problems that we have encountered? And then we basically, dot voted what our preference would be to like, what do we actually want to go work on for the next decade or so?

It had everything to do with getting teams to function better, for people to be better versions themselves. And so that's where our focus has been on. And looking back, it's like those are the problems that people don't really pay attention to. Because they don't have the data, they don't have any way to come up with tangible numbers or evidence that they can work from, right?

Because all these things are also heavily grounded in soft skills. And so, working from a framework that I was tangentially a part of at InVision, where we were talking about design maturity for teams. It's hey, there could be a framework to map out, I don't care about maturity so much as just where are the problem areas?

Where can we go put the proverbial canary in a coal mine and give people like a map? Brett calls it a heat map and I like that description. A heat map of, hey, you're good here. You're fine. You don't have to do anything here. But here? There's something there, and as a team, as a culture, you need to dig in and see what's going on.

Because just like a vehicle if your tire's misaligned just a little bit, it has a huge impact on that vehicle's performance and efficiency. And it's the same thing with teams. This is no different, and that's what we're trying to do is bring to bear all of our experience, all of the things that we've observed, working with scores of teams, hundreds and hundreds of designers, developers, product people, business people, and how can we do that to create tools, create a system, create a platform that anybody can step into at any kind of level, and they will find areas where they can improve their performance. 

Galen Low: I like it as a sort of diagnostic for something that you said earlier, which is that these are words that we either take for granted or they're loaded, right?

Collaboration, communication, like we think we've got it, but this is a way to sort of uncover opportunities to be less fragile as a team. And then Brett, I really like what you said about because a lot of the things that are causing bigger problems is this butterfly effect from something small that lies beneath.

It's underlying. It's not just sitting out there going, I'm a big problem. Please fix me. It's like, why can't we get this right? Like the story you told, I think it's just incredible. You work for the same company. You're in two different offices and the culture is wildly different. And that can create, a) you just assume that you've got culture. You're like, okay my organization, we all have the same values and we're all working towards the same mission. The culture must be the same everywhere we go in any office, but like just a couple cities apart, it's just like wildly different. 

Greg Storey: Not even like team to team.

In that case, this was at HappyCog and Brett was in Philadelphia. I was in Austin. And we had teams that were, we considered teams to be it, like where they were, button C type of thing. So Philadelphia had teams, I had teams, and man, it was getting bad. Whereas like a year before, we had done an offsite in Chicago, we were all getting along, we had so much fun.

And here we are like just about a year later, and it was not pleasant, right? There was tangible tension every time there was some kind of company meeting. 

Galen Low: Interesting.

Greg Storey: What was interesting about that is when we were talking about how do we fix this? And we first tried fixing it, honestly, by regrouping all of our project management in Philadelphia, underneath Brett's leadership. That did improve some things, right? We had finally now like a unified vision for how we work, the quality of work, like all this kind of stuff. And that helped out a lot, but still there was lingering tension that persisted. And Brett and I sitting at a bar on Rainey Street in Austin, Texas, this is when it was quiet, you might see a car, an hour, we were just talking through what if what if we did this?

What if we did that? And we came up with a plan for what if we actually virtualized the entire company? So what happens if the teams are not made from where you sit, but the teams are actually made for how we can get the best out of everybody. And what I mean by that is how can we pair the designer and some developers where they're working off each other's strengths.

There may be more to their strengths than just their vocation. So we came up with a plan, came up with here's who we think the team should be, and we went back to the leadership, my business partner and our other VPs and said, Hey, we need to do this. And we did. And all of that tension just went, it was gone.

And instead, this to me is like the miracle of listening, observing what's happening and coming up with a solution independent of what the tradition is. But when we did this, the energy went from like a negative number to like a hundred plus. People were just so happy to be working with one another, independent of location.

And they gave their teams names. Some of them ordered t-shirts. I mean, and they did this stuff without our involvement. 

Brett Harned: And to me, that was proof that people make the culture, not leadership. Leadership can set the tone and create a space, but the people who work on a team in an organization truly build on that culture. And that's what we saw happen there. 

Greg Storey: And they built it themselves, right? So the culture from team to team was different. Everybody was still a part of HappyCog. That didn't get lost. 

Brett Harned: So it's practice. 

Greg Storey: Yeah. But even like how they got things done. And so this is where you build into antifragility is what is required to give people the autonomy that ignites them, where they feel like they have agency over their career, their work, their team, the delivery, the quality. You do these things and your job changes as a leader. It starts to become more of okay, what other blockers can I remove as opposed to what more do I need to tell you how to do your job? 

And it's at the heart of it, like that's some of the lessons we learned working at HappyCog and have just built on, more stories from that. It all points to if you can find where you're not finely tuned in these three areas, and if you can fix those things in however makes sense for your culture, for your people, according to them, or with their involvement, then get ready to rock.

Brett Harned: So can I bring it back to Teamangle for a second because I think we're not doing the best job of explaining what it is. Really, Teamangle is this platform that we've created, right? Our ideas for expectations are like baseline performance in communication, collaboration, and culture are in the playbook that we created called Your Teamwork Reimagined.

So that gives strategies for Teamangle. It also has a practice Teamangle diagnostic in it to help people understand how we're benchmarking your team. Or it's not really benchmarking your team, we have a diagnostic, right? So there is a Teamangle diagnostic. It is a survey that goes out to teams, goes out to the full team, and we're able to find misalignment.

So where is your team misaligned in the areas of communication, collaboration, and culture using the principles that we have in the playbook, right? Then we provide basically a structured assessment that tells you, like Greg said, a heat map, where your team is aligned, where you're misaligned, what some of those problems could be, and here are some actionable solutions to start changing those.

We also are adding in recommended questions to ask your team by using our Teamangle conversation cards. So we created this deck of cards that lists questions categorized in those three categories that you ask a team, your full team. They're designed to be yes or no questions. You ask the question, your team answers yes or no, there are then follow up questions to dig further into what's going on with that topic to help you arrive at solutions faster.

So we're doing that, we're doing those in workshops with teams, like we're using the cards in workshops. We're also going to be selling the cards online very soon. But we also have a whole other set of Teamangle workshops where we help teams create playbooks. So how do we communicate? How do we collaborate?

Those things where we're doing workshops where you walk away with a playbook for the team. And then we've got a bunch of other smaller workshops that we're calling Power Plays that just help teams to level up in shorter amounts of time. That's the package or why we're calling it a platform, because yes, it's a diagnostic.

It's also a physical product. It's also some webinars and paid online workshops. It's a lot of different things that you could, as a leader, jump in at any point. Like sure, there is like a logical kind of like journey through Teamangle, and we would love for teams to sign on, do the diagnostic, do our workshops and then do the diagnostic a year later to see where they are because it is a continuous cycle and it's flexible.

It's not like EOS or agile or something that you have to follow strictly. This is about understanding where the cracks are in the foundation so that you can get some actionable insight and advice on how to address those things and move on and just be better. 

Galen Low: Honestly, good on you guys for tackling the beast.

Like you said up top, right? This is like simple on the surface, maybe, right? Or maybe tongue in cheek simple. It's actually a very complex thing that I think is underserved. We always talk about high performing teams that are empowered to do stuff. But that's pretty abstract. And Greg, you've really painted a picture of how you did it at HappyCog to get these teams feeling so much ownership that they made their own t-shirts and gave their team a name without anyone asking them to like, not because it was in the standard operating procedure, please like print a t-shirt. It was like, that's how much they felt like they were aligned and working together 

I wanted to come back to something, though, because we've been talking about this tension, right, between cultures. And I know that you both have, deep working history, you've worked in different types of organizations, and even as Same Team Partners, you've worked with a lot of different organizations.

What are some of the tell-tale signs the butterfly starting to flap its wings? What are some of those early warning signs that you've got a dysfunctional team or will have a dysfunctional team?

Greg Storey: To me that's when, especially in a team setting, when you're asking for everybody to participate or, you're throwing out an open question and there's always going to be one or two people, there's always somebody who just doesn't talk. 

And if you can, if you're looking at them, you can just see it in their eyes. They're just looking at this thing, what a waste of time, or I have so much to say, but I don't know how to say it without pissing everybody off. There's something there. There's a lot to silence.

Brett Harned: I agree with that. Absolutely. Silence tells me right away that something is not happening, that people are not even checking in and communicating with one another. It's strange. 

Greg Storey: I took leadership of a small company of about 15 people, and I was floored. Now this isn't a new company, this is a company that's been around for 15 years.

I was floored when I found out that they did not meet as a team, ever. Nothing, all hands and I'm like, how do you get anything done? And as I dug into that, found out that all of their processes, everything that they had been doing, they'd been doing the same way as they'd done it for basically 10 years.

And it was like what happened 10 years ago? We were a different company with a different CEO or a different president. The company had changed so much since that time. And by being by changed so much, everybody just fell into a silo, continued their work as like a factory worker, and they were still able to deliver, but I mean, not anywhere close to what current standards or best practices are.

And somehow they were able to still make money. So that thing of if they're not like tell-tale signs, nobody's talking, a huge red flag huge. Whether that's the individual or the team or even the company, if that's not happening, then I guarantee you there's problems. 

Brett Harned: Here's another one. The team doesn't value or even use project management.

That's a telltale sign, for sure, of dysfunction. I've gone into teams in large organizations and even small agencies where the vision or kind of values surrounding project management haven't been defined. Nobody's discussed it. People don't understand the role and the value that it can bring to an organization.

And we all know that a project manager can really be the backbone of any effort. So if there's no value in what that person does, then nothing's going to work as well as it could.

Greg Storey: Or even value to add to that, value for the standards. 

Brett Harned: Exactly. 

Greg Storey: I did some work about a year or so ago for a very small, tiny agency, but they still had two project managers.

So on one hand, good on them that they indexed on the importance of that role. But those two project managers did not see eye to eye, right? So it was almost like I'm a designer, so I'll use the designer perspective. It'd be almost like you have to design, but on one project you're using Photoshop and the other project you're using a Sigma. No standards whatsoever.

But we have the role, and that was the importance they placed on that role is, yep, we got them. Box, checked, but no standard playbook for how the company delivers. Crazy. 

Galen Low: It's like the silos that you mentioned, right? In all of these examples, you can see how the silos got deeper. We stopped getting together as a team, we weren't sort of agreeing to aligning on standards. And Brett, if I'm picking up what you're putting down, the collaboration side of the Teamangle, that's like project management is managing collaboration.

And communication. 

Brett Harned: They contribute to the culture.

Yeah, I mean, project management has a big piece in this, but at the same time, part of the team, everyone has equal accountability. It's just that project management can take the opportunity to set the tone in some ways. Or to establish more process or agreement around the way things are done within a project team.

Things like communication, how we collaborate when those collaborative sessions happen, how we collect feedback, all of those things are part of what we're talking about, for sure. 

Greg Storey: There's 2 more I could think of. It's probably going to be more. But one is when people don't understand the need for additional perspective.

So when I tell a designer and more importantly, when I tell a designer engineer, have you talked to the designers? Have you talked to customer service? Have you talked to these other people about the thing that you're building? And I'm not shocked when I hear the answer is no. That's pretty common is to hear no, like, why would I do that?

If I'm this, if I'm oil, you're vinegar, why would I need you? But it's more of a tell-tale sign is when they don't understand, even after they're told why a different perspective might be useful, right? They still don't get it. That is a red flag to me. Not that everything has to be a collaborative effort, but in today's world, it is table stakes to get those perspectives.

I may be a designer, but I do know enough about, I've been around enough to have some ideas and some thoughts about engineering and development. And so I might have a good idea, or I might get you to make your idea even better. You should want that. The other one is culture. When you walk into a culture and people don't know what other people do, right?

That's huge for what is that person's job? And it's not so much what's their title? What is the work that they're doing? What are they being held accountable for? And when people can't answer that question, I guarantee you the culture's bad. And I don't mean to say it's toxic and everybody's, throwing around racial slurs because that's what we, I feel like, equate bad culture to be.

Toxic. I'm talking about a culture that's not supporting teams being best versions of themselves. Everybody on a team should know what the other person does, what their role in the team is, the work that they're capable of doing, even beyond the work that they're responsible for. And how are they being held accountable?

What are your goals? Here's my goals so that I know the work I do, how that might impact your goals and how you're being held accountable. You have to have this connective tissue in a culture. If you don't have it, then you don't have a culture. 

Galen Low: As you're saying this, like, all I'm picturing in my head is I don't know how else to say this, but like defensive people, defensive leadership, defensive team members. You come in, you do a Teamangle diagnostic. A) it's saying, okay listen, you're scoring this in this aspect of the Teamangle, there's opportunities to become less fragile for you guys to perform better.

And these are sort of symptoms that we can address. Some people are going to be like, that's really micro. I don't think we need to fix that. I don't get it. And then the other one is no we're totally aligned. How dare you say that we don't have culture and that we're not aligned and that we don't communicate and that we don't collaborate well.

How do you deal with the defensiveness that might come about when you're like digging into some of these really sensitive bits of like humans working together?

Brett Harned: I would say we don't, I mean, honestly, a delusional leader isn't going to come and want to do a Teamangle diagnostic or dig into this stuff.

Good leaders who are interested in investing in their people, understanding their teams being more efficient and creating a better work environment want to do Teamangle. I think what we deal with are nervous leaders who are already busy, already stressed out and see a wall of problems that they have to address, but don't have the time to do it, are nervous about Teamangle because they think it's going to create more problems, right?

And it doesn't. It creates conversations that you can have to help engage your team in solving those problems. I think what I'm seeing more than anything with the diagnostic findings and the follow up conversations, whether they happen through us facilitating the card game or teams facilitating the card game on their own or doing workshops, what I see is potentially a higher level of engagement and accountability on the team to actually do these things and be curious about things that may be the diagnostic shows they were misaligned on. I think that misalignment might be, hey, we're just not educated or we're not speaking the same language.

So it uncovers a lot of those kinds of things that are easily cleared up. But otherwise, you're going to find them otherwise, you stumble on them because somebody says what's that? In a pissy tone, right? Because it's why didn't anyone ever tell me that I could have been doing this thing differently or better?

And it's every once in a while, you should stop and have these conversations regardless. 

Greg Storey: This isn't trying to point out the problems per se, and it is the opportunities. Galen, you said that it's like the opportunities. The thing about this as well, building on what Brett said is, I feel like leaders should not look at this as, now it's up to me.

That right there is also indicative of a bad culture of, I alone can fix this problem. Because we've seen the evidence, like Brett was saying, of when you show people and you reflect back, when you play back, this is who you are, right? If you answer truthfully, this is what kind of what you look like.

That gives people data to then go, Okay, now I know how to, what we need to do. Again, from my experience, people aren't necessarily looking for ways they can improve their workplace, right? I mean, they've got enough on their hands, but a lot of it has to do with, they don't feel like they have permission.

They don't feel like they know enough. They don't have data. You take and give people permission, give them the data and give them permission, teach them what the data says, and then give them permission how they can be a part of it. Step back, right? Guarantee you if you do these things, and if you heed all of this advice and move into action with your team, the leader will actually probably work the least to fix these things.

And if they don't, if that's not their experience, then I'm available for coaching. Because they're looking at this wrong. And I say that because I've done this time and time again, this isn't just a theory I woke up with one day of and this isn't based off reading a bunch of senseless business books that come out year after year.

This is from hands-on practice of these things. 

Galen Low: That's what I really like about the platform bit of it. I think I called it a framework earlier, but like the platform is really resonating with me now because I see it as I do scroll LinkedIn, right? All the images that say culture is created by the employees, not the leaders and blah, blah, blah.

And you're like, they're fine and good. But how do we then flip it around? How do we sort of empower our people to make change and give them permission. And what I like is that this is like a tangible framework for people to use the triangle to create improvements themselves as a team, right? Whether it's culture or communication or collaboration, like asking the questions and doing the exercises and activities, having the cards.

Literally, they have the cards in their hands that they are playing to build the team the way that it's going to work rather than waiting for, the tablets to come down the mountain and say, this is how your team must perform. Okay, let's do it. It's a mechanism for that. 

Greg Storey: It's incredible how much the team members, how much they actually think about this.

The solutions come from them. They don't have to come from one person. And if you use like a tool, the conversation cards, and we have a lot more tools coming. I think I've got on my backlog, like 40 tools to help take the insights that Teamangle provides and turn them into action. I don't want this to get lost either is this isn't just about pointing out here is where you should go work, but we do get into the 'how'. Everything that we do leads to a 'how' to do the next thing.

It drives me nuts, especially workshops. You get people together in a workshop, you come up with all these good ideas, how to fix things. There's like a what's next steps. And it's usually, okay when we get back to work, we're going to have the project manager put together a roadmap. And it's Nope.

Let's do that right here, right now. And so it's the same thing of no, let's not talk about what we're going to do. Let's actually schedule and do it. That's how you're going to get it done. And it just works better that way. Anyway, going back to the agency that people get from this and the thoughts now that they know like I can express myself without retaliation in a safe space. Again, be prepared to be a little bit surprised in a good way of wow, these people actually, they're smart, they're intelligent, they have good ideas. 

They have thoughtful opinions, thoughtful perspectives. Brett and I saw that firsthand in a workshop we just did for a Teamangle group. We facilitated a conversation based off the areas that they need to work. And it was incredible, the insights, not just like ideas of how to improve, but even things like holes, even more holes in like where employees didn't actually know what the mission statement was. What do we stand for? What are our principles? You mentioned like we had a leader one time, this score came back indicating that people didn't feel like they were as collaborative as they should be.

And man, that guy took it personal. Because one of the company's principles is specifically on collaboration, but you talk to the employees about collaboration and none of them had a really good answer for what that even means. 

Brett Harned: What it came down to was they had no real principles or guidelines for how they collaborate.

It wasn't being done consistently by any strength across the entire company. So again, like the types of simple things that you feel like you maybe have these like verbal or social contracts with people on that aren't documented, you end up finding out like, okay maybe we're not doing as great of a job in this as we could because we're not aligned on how we do it and we've never written it down or discussed it.

We just continue to rinse and repeat on the project level, so it's that kind of stuff that really comes up that sure, it creates a little bit of work, but it's not hard work when you're doing everything already. 

Greg Storey: And I just want to add, maybe it's like a final thought here, is that when you do these things, when you create the space to be able to have these conversations, and you can show them tangible data, tangible views of here's what's going on, you give them the permission and the space to talk about these things and improve them. 

And now all of a sudden, you're going to find that these gaps of information, these things that people felt like, yeah, we should have that, but we don't. You're building a better sandbox for them that the morale is going to shoot up because now when they come to work, there are things that are well defined. And I don't know what it is about our work culture in particular, but there's so much lack of definition of so many things.

That I don't think we have a remote look into how much that drives anxiety in the workplace. So many unknowns, so many things that are undocumented, as Brett was saying, those are driving so much anxiety in employees. Where they're creating eggshells that I guarantee leaders don't know exist because they feel like, Hey, I'm a pretty chill person.

That's cool. I don't care if you did that. But because it's not documented in that very specific way, there's a lot of people who are like, Oh my God, I'm so scared of that. And even getting rid of that, like helping to improve that goes a long way and Teamangle can get rid of all of it.

Galen Low: I was wondering if I could put you on the spot a little bit. 

I was wondering if maybe we could like, take your spiciest card from the deck of cards and can you give our listeners just an example question and the conversation that could spark and the sort of how the sort of next steps that could get revealed from that?

Greg Storey: I can tell you a story that came from one of our first testing teams. Funny enough, it was a bunch of engineers, like they're not creative at all. And I can tell you what the theme was, I'm trying to go through these cards very quickly. Basically, the question was, is there anything that we're not talking about that is driving stress in the team?

And the way that this team facilitated this, we just gave them the cards, and then we asked them, how did you use this? But they put the cards out on the table and people were able to pick a card. And the insight that I got from that is that because it was in the deck and the person was able to select the question it, in some way removed ownership of the question.

So now it wasn't me coming to the group chat with an agenda, right? With this was, Oh, this is in here? Yeah. I think this would be useful. And for them, it took all the anxiety away from asking a question that was related to the elephant, in the room that was pissing everybody off. But it found out that nobody wanted to be the one to bring up the subject.

So now they could look at this and say the card said it. 

Galen Low: And it's phrased masterfully, you know what I mean? I don't know if a lot of people appreciate that about facilitation and just asking the right questions, but so much of the nuance is in just how these have been crafted to drive a dialogue that is meaningful and not defensive.

Greg Storey: So again, going back to everything is about action. This isn't just about the prompt. And again, we really encourage people to look at this as yes or no. In fact, in early versions, we had a baby card. And we had teams that were taking the maybe card out because it wasn't producing better conversations.

It was just kicking the can down the road. And so they took it out to get a binary, yes or no, so that then they could use the response cards and the response cards are in there so that the person facilitating the conversation, whether it's one on ones or if it's in group chat, now they have a way to respond.

And this comes from knowing that people, leaders especially, are rarely trained on how to facilitate a meaningful conversation. That's not just from experience, we actually did research on this. And most leaders will facilitate one on ones or group conversations according to the last person that they reported up to, and how they did it.

This is like, how we do one on ones, is awful. Our average one on ones are awful, and it's passed through almost like tradition, from one bad leader to the next, because no one ever took a step back and said, hey, here's how to develop listening skills, as opposed to just asking these, again, like, how's work?

What are problems you are having? Okay, I'll talk to you in a couple weeks, right? Now we can actually have meaningful responses. If the problem is yes or no, how would you like to see this change? How do you think the team feels about this? Driving empathy in the team. Why is this an issue? These are all direct responses to lead to more meaningful conversations.

And some of the tools that we're developing right now are ways to capture those insights and then to be able to turn those into action items, right? Instead of just writing it down as like an action item is let's actually bring the insights back to the team so that as a team, we can think about what the actions are.

Galen Low: I like that. It's like training as well, like to your point, not passing down through oral tradition, bad habits, but actually giving people some training that's actually interactive and fun. And isn't I'm watching a video on whatever Udemy or something like that. 

Greg Storey: No, that's interesting. You say that we got to work that in our marketing copy, because like I said, we're not here just to point out where people can improve, but we really do get to here are next steps.

If you want to go do something else, that's fine. Just make sure you've got a bias for action. And then we provide that framework, like I said, of how do you do the next thing? 

Brett Harned: One of my favorite cards is a culture card, and it's, Are you experiencing any barriers working here? I like this one because it's open ended, and to ask this in a team setting is really interesting because I think it, given some of the follow up conversation cards can you provide an example or reason why you responded that way?

How would you like to see it change? Why is it an issue? Is it an indicator of a different issue? All really good follow ups, I think. I could see that question in a team opening up a variety of topics that you can discuss and solve together. So I really like that. I also, in collaboration, we have this, do you feel our process documentation is easy, accessible and up to date?

And I think the reason I like this one is because every team that I work with as a consultant doesn't have updated documentation. And it's another reminder to talk about, hey, how often should we do this? Who's responsible for it? Again, driving at action. The cool thing about these cards when we tested them is that we were told that the cards really do provide a framework to have conversations about things that you typically just don't have conversations about.

There are meaningful topics to your overall working relationships and the way that you deliver work. That's what I like about these cards. 

Galen Low: I think those are awesome. I'm excited about the cards. I'm excited about you mentioned you will be selling them. I think folks can do a test Teamangle, at least a diagnostic bit.

Greg Storey: Yep. If you get the playbook, go to our home page, there's a link to download the playbook. In the playbook is a practice Teamangle. But we are also doing a webinar on December 12th. Tuesday, December 12th at 12 p.m. Eastern Time. We're going to be going through that playbook. And specifically to do a session with that practice Teamangle.

So that you come to the webinar, it's not just a brochure. We're actually going to do some work together so that you can get some high level insights to take into your thinking and your strategy for 2025. 

Galen Low: Boom. Love that. I will link that in the notes. I thought I'd land out with one question that might be a loaded bigger question than I think.

Just to zoom out and take it a bit away from Teamangle, but still on this topic. We're talking about some of these little imperfections in the road that can make a big impact to performance. They're not necessarily toxic environments, they're just maybe some gaps, like some holes. 

If you are a people leader or you're just on a team, if you're any kind of manager, maybe you're a project manager what's something impactful but like low effort that you can do to just start tweaking and optimizing your team's performance and sort of taking away some of that fragility?

Brett Harned: For me, it's putting some definition to things. How and where do we communicate, when, yeah, what frequency all of the some kind of communications plan, right? That is to me fundamental, particularly for remote teams to make sure that everyone is really following the same playbook because communication is everything when it comes to delivery.

So that's my one thing. 

Greg Storey: Mine would be to make sure everybody has a revised job description. Those are communicated like everybody in the team should know what everybody else's job description is. Where do my responsibilities begin and end? What am I in the hook for? What am I accountable for, responsible for?

And who are my partners? Just make all that stuff crystal clear. 

Galen Low: Love that. Gosh, I love both of those. 

Amazing. Brett, Greg - thank you again so much for coming on the show. I'll link the webinar in the notes, December 12th, looking forward to that. And honestly, I think this is such a cool mission that you're on because it's complex.

I know I opened it with it as simple, but it sounds simple and then you lift the lid and it's complex. 

Greg Storey: See what you did, Galen? See what you did? 

Brett Harned: Yep. 

Galen Low: Yep, I did that entirely on purpose. But honestly, so many big problems can be solved through better collaboration, better communication, better culture that comes from within. It's amazing. 

Greg Storey: Thanks for having us. 

Brett Harned: Thank you so much for having us. 

Galen Low: All right folks, there you have it. As always, if you'd like to join the conversation with over a thousand like-minded project management champions, come join our collective. Head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership to learn more. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.