[00:00:00] Dan: Your team is giving its all in terms of effort. You're not quite hitting your targets. Or perhaps you just wanna reach a bit higher and do more. You need your team to perform, but where do you start? What does research tell us will make the most difference? This week on We Not Me, we're talking to Juliet Hammond, business analysts at Squadify who will tap into Squadifys million plus data points on teamwork so that we can find out what drives performance.

[00:00:31] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We Not Me, the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.

[00:00:38] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. Dan Hammond. Um, there's been some big news out of my old hometown, Liverpool, and, uh, and this will be news that will be making my nephews feeling very sad. I would imagine. So Jurgen Klopp, the Liverpool FC manager, has decided to step down. And there's been quite a lot of video footage. Actually a really lovely interview which turned up on my Instagram feed. And his level of authenticity. I mean, essentially you need a, a hundred percent and he's recognized at mid fifties. He doesn't have the energy that's gonna to, to drive him to the level that he would like, like to.

[00:01:21] But he made a real we not me statement when he actually in, in this video reached out to the fans and said I just need to remind you that Liverpool and the football club is not about me. So it is about the players. He said, we will grieve, we will talk about this. We will do this, but we'll do this after I've left in May. And what we've gotta do now. Is support this team as much as we can to have the best outcome. It was, I mean, if you didn't, if you didn't like football or didn't like Liverpool, you would do after that.

[00:01:56] Dan: Well, yes. Yeah. And um, yeah, it's great to see those. That idea of stewardship, isn't it? In a, in a team where you know, you, you are there for a while and then you're gone and what can you do to improve things along the way? He's done an amazing job at, yeah, reminding the fans that it's not, it's not about him, however much they love him.

[00:02:14] Pia: And a real turnaround. I mean, a great segue into our conversation with Juliet about performance, because Liverpool, um, before he came along, were not doing particularly well. And you know, he's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of trophies sitting in the cabinet now after, after his pretty long spell with them. But they have, they have learnt performance and they have been able to give that performance to the whole community of Liverpool, particularly at a time when it really, really needed it. So it's been, it's been a very selfless, and a pretty amazing journey. So we wish him well, but I let, let's let's go and talk to Juliet. 

[00:02:55] Dan: And see how, uh, teams everywhere can, can, uh, stock their silverware cabinet as, uh, as he helped liver before to do so. Let's go and hear Juliet now. 

[00:03:08] Pia: And a big return. Welcome to Juliet. So lovely to have you at the beginning of this season again.

[00:03:13] Juliet: Thank you so much. It's great to be here again.

[00:03:15] Pia: And, we are going to be in big discussions about performance. So this is gonna be a really great topic, looking at the outcome of, of ev all the work that we do in Squadify and what the, what all this database is here to do is to help improve performance. So I think there's some very juicy insights that we're gonna be looking at together.

[00:03:34] Juliet: Excellent. I'm, I'm excited to get into the, into the data.

[00:03:37] Pia: But back, back to, it always seems a bit weird that it's your husband actually doing this.

[00:03:43] Dan: Yeah, this is

[00:03:44] Pia: bit weird.

[00:03:45] We we're all, we're on this podcast and we seem to allow it. You never once asked me if I'd like to do the cards, Dan. You hold those card.

[00:03:54] Dan: I've got them here and I'm not letting them go. They're in my You. You have to

[00:03:58] Pia: Clutches.

[00:03:59] Dan: You. Yeah. You have to take them outta my cold. Lifeless hands. Yeah. So, um, yeah. So here's a question for you, the lovely Mrs. Hammond, um. The job I would be terrible at is what would you be, I, I can't wait to hear this.

[00:04:15] Juliet: Now that I think about it, there's probably a couple. Um, but I think I would be fairly terrible at sales. Pia, I'm entirely in awe of you that you get up every day and sell and, and find energy in that because it would just absolutely terrify me to, to go out there. And I suppose it's the, it's, it's the fact that you are doing this for the entire organization. And so we we're all saying, you know, what you sell enables me to do my bit and Dan to do his bit and you know, everybody else in the team to, to be able to carry on doing what they do. Um, and I understand that obviously what we do supports your sales, so it's a circular thing, but I couldn't go out there and, and sell to clients.

[00:04:55] Pia: It is a crazy thing, isn't it? I mean, I think sales is a bit like public speaking and people sort of like, oh God, have a visceral reaction to it. But I then I think, you know, I do have to put one bit here, that the level of detail that you do in the data analysis actually makes my stomach hurt. It's just like, I love when you come out with the gold, which is what we're about to do now, but when we start looking at all the patterns of numbers, I'm just like, oh my God, that's, that's terrifying. So that, deep digs into my deep insecurity around mathematics. I think

[00:05:25] Dan: Oh, we've all got them on my word

[00:05:27] Pia: We certainly do. So, um, just give us a quick brief on who you are because there could be some new people joining and listening and cannot understand why the three of us are having the most ridiculous banter, and you two seem to know each other rather well. So quick, lowdown.

[00:05:42] Juliet: Yes, I am Juliet Hammond. I am indeed the wife of Dan Hammond, who is our product owner at Squadify Um, and I have known New Pierre for probably 20 years as we've worked together through LIW in our previous working in partnership and now in Squadify. So my background is essentially, uh, I started out as an economist and then spent some time in strategy consulting. I'm essentially most comfortable in analytical situations, I guess, and that's where, that's where I enjoy, enjoy spending my time, is working in research. 

[00:06:16] Pia: You now are the custodian of, of one and a half million data points in the global database, which is again, makes my stomach slightly churn. And that's what we're gonna talk about today 'cause it's pulling out of these insights and getting real learning out of it that, that is becoming. Such a valuable thing. So let's kick it off. I mean, when we talk about performance, what are we actually talking about?

[00:06:40] Juliet: That, that's such a great question, and it's really wonderful to have this data set that enables us to go beyond the individual teams, right? So individual teams use Squadify to learn about themselves and how they can, um, work differently to improve their individual performance. But what we can do is look across all of those teams and start to see patterns and really understand what the key drivers are, and help teams to understand what's going on out there.

[00:07:05] And so really when we talk about performance, we built Squadify really in the early days by standing on the shoulders of giants. And we've, you know, within our question set, um, is the research of around, of, of well over 20, uh, sources. So that's everything from self-determination theory, agile, teams of teams, as well as more commercial things like Gallup's work and, and Project Aristotle. So we've really amassed all of the current and some historical thinking around teams, so that really what we've got in that question set is all of the conditions that are required within a team to really achieve the highest level of performance.

[00:07:47] And what we found when we did that was that the smallest number of conditions we could get that down to was 40. And that's what we have now in the Squadify data set. And we use our three Cs, clarity, climate, and competence to categorize them in some way. But essentially that's what we are looking at. It's a very complex thing, teamwork. 

[00:08:07] Pia: it's multifaceted. So I mean, you could easily spend hours completing, a survey about performance because it's got so many different elements to it. But, uh, it took a lot of work. And I know that because the three of us were intricately involved in honing that down to 40 in every single word in those questions was, was put under a microscope. 

[00:08:29] Juliet: To align to the research and really leverage what these people have done, in order to bring that value to to teams. And so that's really the basis of Squadify And then on the performance side, what we've done is defined three different measures of performance, that teams self rate, um, in order to help us to really sort of get into the detail of which conditions are driving which performance measures.

[00:08:54] And so just to, just to start us off and, and clarify those, the three measures that we have is this term Consi team consistently delivers, uh, high quality work, this team consistently responds to customer needs, and this team consistently meets targets and deadlines. And so there's kind of three dimensions that teams are able to score themselves against, uh, in order to help them to see which areas they perhaps need to target more carefully and where they feel they're doing better or worse. 

[00:09:25] Dan: Yeah, it's, so, it's so interesting about this complexity piece. You know, I, I think with, with teams, I often say to the people I'm working with, you know, even a person is complex. You imagine if you add them together, you've got all these interdependencies and it's a very complex situation. So it's not surprising that teams are, um, hard, actually quite hard to lead, and that, um, this data can really help them.

[00:09:49] And yes, it doesn't, it's, you know, when you think about it, you have a minute of. 40 pieces. You know, people sometimes say on LinkedIn, ah, the one thing about teams is this. If you read that, you should be very skeptical. You know, the one thing a team needs or this makes a team. Actually we couldn't get it below 40. And um, so yeah, I think that that sort of says a lot.

[00:10:09] So how do you take these strange little groups and get performance outta them? What's the data telling us that about performance in these teams?

[00:10:19] Juliet: Well, it's really interesting. So I ran regressions against each of those three performance measures. 

[00:10:25] Pia: Hold on. I'm gonna stop you there for a second. What's a regression? Because I, there's gonna be people, there's gonna. She's, she's at it again. I'm sorry. We, there's just, I, I had to step in there. 

[00:10:37] Juliet: so we did some statistical analysis to identify the, of the 40 conditions in the dataset, which are the ones that are the strongest drivers of each of those dimensions of performance. So for each of the three separate performance measures, we, we did that analysis. And what was really interesting is that of the top four factors driving performance across each of those dimensions, three of them are consistent across all three measures of performance. So three factors are really coming out here as powerfully strong.

[00:11:12] Dan: This is good news. What are they?

[00:11:15] Pia: Yeah. What are they? We like threes. What?

[00:11:17] Juliet: We do, we do. And by complete chance, in fact, because this was just a, a statistical analysis, we have one in clarity, one in climate, and one in competence, uh, which are our three dimensions. So the, the clarity one is this team understands how to work together. So pretty fundamental. And interestingly, one of our newer questions in the updated question set where we really reviewed the current thinking and reflected on the fact that teamwork as a science, teamwork in itself is really important, and teams really have to understand that interdependency. And what we see a lot is groups of people working together towards a common goal, but individually. And actually this is the, the, the really clever glue that holds people together and makes the whole bigger than the sum of the parts. So that's why this is a really juicy, juicy condition, I think for teams to be thinking very hard about. 

[00:12:13] Pia: And I think that interdependency, I, I often think of this sort of image of, it's the difference between the runners running round individually on a, on a track and then, and then running as a relay race. The, and the relay race is the interdependencies and we just. We miss that. We miss that, and we, um, because of the nature of the pressure that we're under, often having, you know, individualistic OKRs, we, we don't, we don't see where those gold touch points are and where we can, um, share or collaborate or work together to, to achieve that outcome.

[00:12:48] Dan: it's, it's one of the key, um, tests that, that, uh, professor Michael West has for a real team, isn't it? This interdependency. Came that research from the King's Fund that says, actually you can boost, you know, from going to be a pseudo team that doesn't have it to a real team is a 20% uplift on the whole. So, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a fascinating one and often missed.

[00:13:09] Juliet: Well, and ironically, often when people get busy, the bit they stop doing is the engaging with others, and they just get their head down and keep doing their own thing when in, in fact, the opposite is what they should be doing and they really should be drawing on each other at that point to try to provide support that's gonna help 'em get through it. So yes, and that 20% uplift for teams that really work effectively together is a phenomenal outcome. So we, I think there's a real opportunity for teams to flip that understanding that working together is gonna save you time as opposed to take your time.

[00:13:42] So the second one is this team proactively collaborates with others. So this is about teams actually looking outside and seeing what they can do to get support or to support others. And we've all had situations where we've worked with clients who say, God, I was so fed up, I've been working on this for six months.

[00:14:01] And then discovered another team's working on it too. And you know, nobody had told me. And I think probably Daniel are reading teams of teams, aren't you? And this is very much, uh, around teams understanding how they engage with others to, to leverage that strength beyond their own. It's that next level of, of teamwork.

[00:14:18] Dan: It was really good to see this popping up because we are often working now in environments, as you said, Juliet, of where there are, it's a, it is a team of teams and when we talk to a lot of teams, they're one of, when they're struggling, one of their problems is their relationships that outside that team. So, um, it's, it's really interesting to see that sort of more proactive one that the high performing teams actually take, make the effort to collaborate with others and, uh, they, they're going out to reach out and sort of making that network the ecosystem function, so it has the impact not only on the team team performance, but also on the organizational performance. So that's a really good one to, to be popping its head up there, I think.

[00:15:00] Juliet: And the third will reassure us all. So the third factor that came up, um, was deliver against commitments. So, you know, in the end, you gotta do what you said when you said you'd do it. 

[00:15:11] Pia: That's an interesting one that raises around accountability. And then this new elements coming up around psychological safety, which they tend to go hand in hand. I mean, you know, if we, if we're delivering, we've, we've got to I guess be open enough, authentic enough if we're. If we're not on the pathway to delivery, rather than actually making it somebody else's fault or resources. And that's an interesting one, Juliet. 'Cause we had used to have resources as a big, what are these big gaps? And I think something's changed there too?

[00:15:44] Juliet: Yes, yes. Resources has dropped to fourth in, in terms of gap. So if we look at the gap between importance and presence, which really gives us an insight into what it is that teams want more of, you know, what they really feel, they're lacking. Resources used to be the number one. And we almost got to the point of saying, yeah, yeah, we know that. Now tell me what else is going wrong. Uh, but that's dropped down to fourth. And in fact the, the number one, uh, gap now is, uh, understand how to work together. So that. That test of teams understanding how to work together is the, is the biggest gap. And the second is challenger safety, which is all around psych safety. So really teams finding that they need more, more ability to challenge one another than they're being given right now. And, and I think that that's increasingly becoming a focus for a lot of organizations.

[00:16:34] Pia: I am finding this a fascinating, it's almost like a 180. Because when we started Squadify and those biggest gaps were enough resources to get the job done, it was a little bit like, it was that, not, not an excuse, but it was a good reason why things weren't working. Well, of course we'd all like more money, time and, and, uh, and you know, resources and people. But I find now that this is particularly, you know, this is, the data is looking at the teams who've done, who are actually doing multiple retests, and there is a real authenticity that the source of their awesomeness lies not externally, but within themselves.

[00:17:15] So that understanding how to work together is, um, is a really authentic sort of revelation. I mean, you know, it is, it's the point where teams are going, Oh gosh, right? Because we have control over this. We don't have control if there's a restructure or resources are taken, but we do have that control and ability to influence it. I, I think that's really. Powerful. It feels like the, the control is coming back in-house into, into, into the team's heartland of what they can do.

[00:17:46] Dan: it's a wonderful thing to see that, isn't it? Where that, that is owned. And I must say on the other side, people do sometimes take this for a trot around the yard and realize that if they had more resources, they would also have bigger targets. So you sort of realize that, yeah, actually no, let's sort this, there's, let's unlock the power of the team to, to let's sort our own issues out here. Um, that's a, so it's, it's a slightly, it's another thing, but absolutely it comes back to how we can, how we can resolve this, which is, which is heartening.

[00:18:16] Juliet: And maybe says something around. Teams emerging more as a driver of output and you know, achievement in organizations. Everything's been so individualistic that it was, it was easier to blame someone else. But as teams become more talked about in organizations and we're seeing that, that organizations are thinking in a team's mindset, teams feel that accountability to deliver, and to, to ask for things, you know, and to change things within the team without waiting. We were always waiting for the engagement survey that was gonna tell us that, you know, this was wrong and that the senior management would fix it for us. And I, I feel like this might be reflecting some sense of teams taking on control, as you were saying, Dan just owning it a bit more.

[00:19:04] Dan: Now, Juliet, you mentioned that there were. You said top four you'd looked at, and that three were common. So that was very nice and neat, but let's look, look at those exceptions. What's the, um, what, what, what are the, what are the sort of outliers of those four, if you like?

[00:19:18] Juliet: Yeah, it's interesting. So for each of the performance measures, there's one more condition. I mean, we've got, we've got research evidence to show that all of the conditions in Squadify drive performance. So I'm not suggesting that any of them aren't relevant. But in terms of which are the most powerful, uh, there's one each for each of those performance measures that's worth, uh, looking at because it also came in the top four.

[00:19:41] So in terms of the performance measure, this team consistently, diviv, delivers high quality work. The condition that came up there was this team reflects together to learn. Another one of our new questions, so I think that's That's interesting.

[00:19:54] Pia: Well, you know, the teams that are on the mouse wheel and are too busy, too busy to even sort of first step off the wheel and actually see how they're doing will be too busy to have a conversation about how they're doing and too busy to make changes. And so that, you know, that is the definition of insanity. 'cause we just keep doing the same thing. But that reflect, I think, I think maybe there's, there's a, there's a, a myth that, that that reflection is sort of like a waste of time or not useful. I, I think you've really gotta get clear about the questions you ask in that reflection. It's not just how does everyone feel and it's kind of left out there. You, you can have much better guided questions that actually really then get the team to see what's working, what's not working, what are the one or two changes that we can make? And let's see, let's, let's experiment, see what happens.

[00:20:46] Dan: Yeah, exactly. I think that word experiment is the crucial one. In, in these times of complexity, most teams are doing things they've never done before. They don't really know the reaction to, of the system to what they're doing. You know, so you, you in a way have to see everything you're doing as an experiment and if, the sort of review, the reflection, the retro is when you actually take the measurements, you know, sort of say, well how did that go? And you, and um, and of course you do need a healthy team for people to be able to speak up in that, but, but the basic act of, of reflecting together is so powerful. And that drives, that's a quality driver, um, in terms of output performance. Is that right? Juliet? 

[00:21:25] Juliet: That's right. That's right. So it's, it's reflecting together to learn, and that learning then drives quality outcomes. So yes, that's really, yeah, that, that's, that makes a lot of sense to me.

[00:21:37] The second one is this team consistently, responds to customer needs. And unsurprisingly, the condition in Squadify that drives that is the customer voice, um, is reflected in squad plans. So reassuring for all of us to know that that's there. But that, that makes a lot of sense, right? That, that, that teams, that, that listen to customers and reflect them in their plans are the ones that respond well to customer needs.

[00:22:02] Dan: Good to hear. And the final one, I think, was achieving targets, and deadlines.

[00:22:06] Juliet: Targets and deadlines. So that's our other measure of performance that this tar, this team consistently meets targets and deadlines. And the condition in Squadify that drove that was effective squad execution. So we come back to that working together to get stuff done. This is not about individuals, uh, doing their bit. It's about the team working together to deliver against the team goals. 

[00:22:28] Pia: and actually that's not as simple as it looks. You know, I, I think some, some teams, you know that they have financial targets or they have product targets, and that becomes an easy, an easy one. But I find that often in a multifunctional complex organization, trying to distill simple targets is actually harder. And then sometimes your individual KPIs don't translate together as a collective, as a team. So at that team level, that's actually hard. It does take, I think, real effort. It does take effort and focus to do it. Get you get a real payoff, huge payoff in terms of performance when you do dedicate that time. But again, it's one of those ones we can say, I'm too busy and you skim over the top.

[00:23:19] Juliet: It's interesting that so many of these metrics are about the working together. You know, we often talk about clarity, and of course teams need to have clarity in a really clear plan and ways of working to get together. But it's interesting that at the moment the, the drivers that are really come through coming through are those interconnections.

[00:23:37] Pia: Which is teamwork. It's the science behind the teamwork. I mean, you know, call me a, a bit, a bit dim here, but you know, it really is. It's that, that is, that that interconnection, that's what teamwork is. Teamwork is not the sum of the parts. It's more than the sum of the parts, and that's where that interconnection happens. That's the bit.

[00:23:56] And I think what, what I find really exciting is this is a quite a scientific, specific way, a granular way to give people what, what lies within that. So yes, they all interconnect, but what are the specific things that that create execution. So we're getting, I think, more granular, clearer. So actually we're giving everybody the chance to really have a red hot go at at performing. Because you know what it is that you should be working towards rather than something sort of mystical.

[00:24:29] Dan: And I think the, the thing I would note, and actually Pia, we've, we've been working on some of these factors in our own team as we are expanding. You know, these new things pop up and oh, gotta shift how we do things. And these are tricky things. They're, they're not obvious how to, you can sort of see why teams avoid it or fail to do it. These are things that require time and work and thinking and, and in this case and data ideally. So I think it's, but, but these are the ones that are gonna deliver performance. So it's, it's in a way, there's no just about this. Oh, if you are a team, you wanna perform, just do this. No, there's no just here. You've gotta work for it, but you will get the outcome. Um, but you've gotta put time aside to do that.

[00:25:12] So that's what the data says, Juliet. And I think that we, you know, there's so powerful and so much to take away there. I, I could imagine a listener sort of listening in and thinking well, that's great, but I've, my working environment is a complete nightmare. Or worse, you know, or put it more, more, um, more professionally sort of, we got, we got headwinds, we have change, we have, um, restructures, our resources are being stripped out. There are, there's a lot of challenges here in terms of time and, and, and, and trying to perform. It's not as if they're performing in a, in a vacuum. So what did you think teams should place their attention to try to break through these issues that they've, that many have to really, you know, get a really good start on performance?

[00:26:01] Juliet: Well, I think, you know, these four factors are really key, but the, the primary one for me is that one of our understanding how to work together. It's the biggest gap revealed in the Squadify data. So it's the, it's the area that teams are really. Feeling the pain and feeling that they need to have more attention paid there. And it's really the heart of teamwork. And as we said earlier, it, it's the piece that people tend to drop when things get busy and when they get strained or they're under challenge, when actually it's the time that they need to double down on the teamwork and really leverage what they've got together, uh, rather than sort of digging themselves deeper into their own personal hole.

[00:26:41] Pia: And that takes trust, doesn't it? I mean, that takes trust and psych safety, kind of, sort of kindred spirits, those two. Similar and differEnt. 

[00:26:50] Juliet: And fact the second biggest gap is challenge a safety, and so you're so right. We, you know, that's the other piece that these people need to work together, but they need to have a climate in which they feel confident to do that effectively.

[00:27:03] Pia: Which says a lot around connection, which we've mentioned many, many times. You know, not, not, not as a sort of softy, softy, let's like the joss sticks, but actually much more around, you know, hu how do we work as humans? How do we work as professionals? Just like we talked about before, you know, you and I, Juliette and the same team and we have completely different skill sets, and we can have a complete understanding of the correlation and the overlap and the way that, that, that how that, that relay race works. You and I do that on a daily basis. And yet we see the coin of like, of our market from two completely different sides. So we have to work through the tensions of that. You know, what might look good from a product development side, but may not necessarily be what's needed or the way the clients would be, would be wanting it. You know, so we've gotta work it. We've gotta work a little harder at this. We can't just sort of go, I'm okay, but we may not be okay.

[00:27:59] Juliet: Yeah, yeah. And I think too often it's just allowed to be, do we get along? And people will often cover up disagreements and just go along rather than actually addressing issues to prop, and properly being feeling they can challenge because, because their intent is good. as opposed to, you know, so as long as that's in the context of I'm doing this because I want the team to perform better, that's what real challenges safety is, and that's what psychological safety is. And quite often it's just left as niceness and that leaves a lot of people frustrated and not really having the opportunity to say the thing they wanna say. 

[00:28:36] Dan: Um, Juliet, look, that's a brilliant point of te you know, the data's just really speaking to us here and I think that's going to give any, um, team just a very clear guide on what they can do to raise their performance. And if they want to get that data, they can just email us at wenotmepod@gmail.com and we'll send that to them. 

[00:28:58] Juliet, we're gonna do one final thing with you, and this is a new feature on the show. We need a bit of theme music here. Um, what book have you read recently that you would recommend, or, um, let's expand it. If you've watched a, you know, some sort of Netflix series or something that brought you into the team world or anything else, what, what have you got to share with your, with our listener?

[00:29:19] Juliet: Well, that's a really interesting question and I think I'm going to go towards my current, um, work, which has been really exciting working in AI. So we are about to launch an an AI report on Squadify and so I've been doing a lot of work, learning about prompt engineering and learning more about AI more generally and more broadly.

[00:29:38] And, uh, I read a great book by Henry Kissinger and a bunch of others, about the impact of AI on, on people, on society, on everything. And I think there's been a lot of big voices either, you know, being incredibly positive or incredibly negative. There's been quite a bit of scaremongering, which I think hasn't been tremendously helpful. And this was just a very balanced analysis of how AI is going to impact our lives across everything from sort of scientific discovery to politics, to economics, to creativity, and try and balance the positives and negatives and put together some thoughts around how we can create a framework that makes the world a safer and better place by leveraging the benefits of AI. 

[00:30:24] Pia: Book reco of the month, that is. 

[00:30:26] Dan: Yes, very much. And that's written with Eric Schmidt, right? I think, um, yes. So I think that's the one you're talking about. So we'll put a, um, a reference to that in the, uh, in the show notes.

[00:30:37] Juliet: I will just add, I've also started, but haven't finished yet, the book that Reid Hoffman wrote in partnership with Chat GPT. It's called Impromptu, and he writes some questions and comments and then Chat GPT responds. And it's all about improvisation and how AI interacts with the individuality and humanity of us all, and so I can report back another time, but that's going to be a really interesting read, I think. 

[00:31:02] Pia: I'll be, I'll be next season. 

[00:31:03] Juliet: Yeah.

[00:31:03] Dan: Fantastic. It's a laugh a minute here at Hammond Towers, Pia, as you can imagine. Um, uh. Juliet, thank you so much for sharing the data with us and being a regular listener. I have to say, as we've been talking, I've been thinking about guest from last week, Chris Ertel who enjoys these shows 'cause he's a like us and a team's geek and he'll be out walking his dog listening to this. So, uh, hello Chris, and I hope you've enjoyed this show with Juliet, which I know you particularly do. So thank you Juliet, and

[00:31:32] Juliet: Pleasure.

[00:31:32] Dan: for being with us.

[00:31:33] Juliet: Thanks for having me. 

[00:31:37] Dan: When I boil all that down, the one that's standing out for me is that question in clarity about understanding how we work together. And, um, you know, it, it came up in all three of those performance measures. It is the biggest gap in teams now that we're seeing. And that really ref is reflected in the work I'm doing with teams.

[00:31:56] That quite often the other role clarity question is, you know, I know what my role is, yep, pretty good. But when you get to that, you know, do I understand how to work together? That's mentioned a couple of things there, one is sometimes the importance is low, so people aren't rating that as highly as we might like. I dunno if you've seen that. But that's sort of, that's a little red light for people to say, ah, are people really seeing this as a team or are they just saying, I've got a job here, um, myself. Um, but the other thing is, yeah, the presence of that. In teams is low. And, um, seeing how teams can really engage with that and start edging that up has been really refreshing.

[00:32:32] Pia: And I think you hit a good point because I think that it's naive to think that there's a one hit wonder and you do a Squadify and then you're suddenly a high performing team. It doesn't work like that. You have to actually go through a period of evolution, a period of reflection. There's a point often, you know, six months along on a, on a 12 month journey where you suddenly look back and go, oh my god, we've come a long way. We are different. And often it is that understanding how to work together.

[00:32:57] Because you sometimes can come into a team and play nicely on the surface, but you're either quite competitive with your teammates or a little defensive. Certainly not looking at how to, you know, where are those interdependencies? How are we gonna, it's a lot more give and take. A bit more hard work. But the outcome, as I say, six months down, you're going, oh, well why would I go back this? I get it. And actually this is much easier to set up in a new team because it makes a difference. It's one of the biggest factors.

[00:33:26] Dan: No, absolutely. And I, I, as a, as a tiv I was working with a team this week and their, um, HR lead is an ex-lawyer. It's very, very bright guy and, um, really good at leading this stuff. And he's actually implemented a sort of little, a matrix with all the names on the top and all the names of the team members want along the side. And it's, each box for each quarter has to be completed with a one-to-one. So they are saying, right, everyone has to meet each other one-to-one, and we have a little format for that, and that's changing each quarter. But it is about the job and how they work together. So really, a very organized way, but it actually demonstrated the, the gravity of that, the sort of weight of that. Demonstrated how important it was. and I think he's really put his finger on this as a, as an issue that. can solve many of their, their issues. And they, a lot of their scores are just shooting up as A result of this. So, um, yeah, there's a little tip for anyone, if anyone wants to really get organized about, about this piece, yeah.

[00:34:27] Pia: So, and I think that, a sign of that evolution is, are those important scores increasing? We, you know, on this scale of one to five, um, sometimes when they're between three and four, there's a sign of, well, well, it's not that it doesn't, it doesn't matter, you know, does this. But at as the process of the team looking at the results, really actively working together, try and think about the ways that they can adjust. Then that naturally goes up. You wanna put that somewhere between four and five. And I think that's an another indicative, indicative score. 

[00:35:02] Dan: Yeah, so teams are really absolutely under pressure. I think we feel it, but there are ways out of this, that there is this, this data is showing us that there are things they can do to really, as you said, tap into the synergy of the team. it's not just the sum of their parts. There's, there's some magic sitting in the white space there that you can really extract. And I think Juliet's really helped us to, um, to sort of walk through that and give people some pointers.

[00:35:28] So, um, but that is the end of the show. That's it for this episode. You can find show notes where you are listening. and at squadify.net. If you've enjoyed listening to the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends. And if you'd like to contribute to the show or if you'd like the data that Juliet talked through, just email us at wenotmepod@gmail.com. We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.

[00:35:54] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.