Cross-team collaboration check
For teams that share work: how the asks and handoffs between you feel from your side of the line.
Worth a look
- Build a tower, build a teamTom Wujec, TEDThe marshmallow challenge: why kindergartners beat business-school graduates at building something together. (opens in a new tab)
- Forget the pecking order at workMargaret Heffernan, TEDThe superchicken experiment, and why a team of stars loses to a team that helps each other. (opens in a new tab)
- How Google builds the perfect teamInsider TechCharles Duhigg on what Google found when it studied its own teams: who's on the team mattered less than how they treat each other. (opens in a new tab)
- How to turn a group of strangers into a teamAmy Edmondson, TEDHow the Chilean mine rescue worked with people who had never worked together, and what any new project team can borrow from it. (opens in a new tab)
- How to build a company where the best ideas winRay Dalio, TEDRadical transparency at Bridgewater: recorded meetings and everyone rating everyone's thinking in real time. Fascinating whether or not you'd want it. (opens in a new tab)
More (2)
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick LencioniPatrick LencioniThe author walks through his pyramid, from no trust to nobody owning results. You'll know which layer your team is stuck on. (opens in a new tab)
- Postmortem Culture: Learning from FailureGoogle SRE bookHow Google writes up what went wrong without hunting for someone to blame, so people tell the truth next time. (opens in a new tab)
The conviction read: each team tends to see itself as easy to work with. Sent to both sides, the spread on 'understands our constraints' shows where the two views part, which a joint status meeting usually papers over.
What's in the template
- It is clear who owns what between our teams. puck
- Requests between our teams get answered in good time. puck
- We agree on what the shared work is meant to achieve. puck
- Work passes between our teams without things getting lost. puck
- The other team understands our constraints. puck
- I would choose to work with them again on the next project. puck
Questions about this template
How do I see each team's view separately?
Make one copy per team: use the template, then Duplicate your copy from your survey list. Each copy has its own link and its own results, so you can put the two side by side and see where they agree and where they part.
Who should run it, one of the teams or someone neutral?
Someone both teams trust to share the results with everyone. If one side runs it alone, the other side may read the questions as a complaint, so agree the wording together before it goes out.