Welcome back to the liberating teams podcast. My name is Holly and I am a team effectiveness consultant and the one who runs this show around here. Um, today we are talking about. We're really expanding on last week's episode. So last week was like straight from the heart, y'all. That was the message I wish I had been told early in leadership, which is that you cannot fix your team.
And we talked about the reason why being that your team is this system comprised of constantly changing elements. It is not a machine where you can come in and isolate what is wrong and simply switch out a part or put in a quick fix and it suddenly is going to operate. You truly have to think about it in a systemic way.
And today I want to dive deeper into this concept of an operating system, what it means, what are the different parts and just really dive in there. Why it's so important. So in order to have this conversation, we need to start back at the very, very beginning, which is how we as leaders were conditioned to that work gets done.
So when you first stepped up into your first leadership role, And you were given a group of diverse individuals, individuals with different levels of experience, different skill sets, different backgrounds, you know, tenured folks, new folks, different personalities, different, um, emotions, all of the things.
And you were told you need to take this group of people. And you need for them to align them and get them all in the same path to achieve X result. And that could have been a performance metric, um, delivering on something, a product, delivering a service, whatever it may be. That's really the goal, right, is to take this group of people and get this result.
So how have we been conditioned that that happens? How the heck do you make a bunch of people move towards a common goal? Well, a lot of us were conditioned it happens through work structures, right? You give everyone a specific job description, and you put them in some sort of hierarchical structure that is supposed to tell them who is doing what, and who reports to who, and that is what miraculously makes people get results.
So, we, we do the things. We make the job descriptions, we put the people in the org structure, and then it doesn't really work. We, we know that for a fact. Um, just looking at I mean, just think about you right now. How many times have a lot of you guys have the pretty work structure, you have the job description, yet you are still experiencing these symptoms of, you know, teams not stepping up and taking ownership over their work, people stepping all over each other, the constantly changing priorities, um, just the chaos of constant change.
And so what happens is we're like, okay. Well, then, I mean, there must be something wrong with the structure. So we start fiddling with the job descriptions, with the roles, with the levels, with maybe we need more management. Maybe we need higher level roles, more strategic roles, higher skill sets. Maybe we need more people.
We need better span of control, more layers, less layers. And we just hyper fixate. on our structure and fiddling with it, thinking that maybe if we just get it, quote unquote, right, everything will fall into place. And then if that doesn't work, you know, we've done the fiddling with the structure and we're still not seeing the results we want.
Well, then if it's not the structure, it must be the people. What's wrong with my people? Is it their inability to step up? Is it, you know, their skill set? Is it something about, um, their behavior or is it me? Am I the problem? Am I, am I the one who's causing this not to work? Because we have the pretty structure.
We have the role descriptions, like what, what else could it be? But in the story, What we are missing is how work actually gets done. I truly believe that leaders have been done an incredible disservice in how we prepare leaders for leadership. A lot of us receive zero training whatsoever. And if we do receive training, it is very surface level.
It doesn't actually teach us how you bring together this diverse group of individuals to achieve a goal. And there's a lot of reasons, I think, why we don't have that. And one of the major ones is I don't think we know. As an industry, we're still relying on outdated ways of thinking. Because, here's the thing, I don't think structures are, like, The enemy.
I just think they're an outdated way of thinking. I think org structures and really good job descriptions probably worked really really well quite a few years back when the world of work wasn't changing as often. When you truly could put somebody in a job description and their job would stay the same for a year, for two years.
But that's not the world we live in anymore. The world of work that we live in is constantly changing. And so, by shoving people into this static org structure and thinking that that's going to dictate how work gets done, it's just not possible. Work actually gets done in between the lines of the org structure.
I want you to picture your org structure right now and I just want you to draw spaghetti lines all over it from one box to another, to another, to another. That's how work actually gets done because people don't They don't look at an org structure and be like, okay, I just need to work with the people in my chain of command.
If I have an issue, I'm just going to go up to my leader and that's that. No, the people in the individual teams, they're working cross functionally with people on other teams. They're going up and down the org chart. They're going to talk to that person over there and then move work over there. And then they, they do a piece of the work and then hand it off to that team over there.
And it's in that. It's in that unspoken system of how work moves across your org structure. It's in that unspoken system of how decisions get made, of how work gets prioritized, of how we decide where our team's time, talent, and energy goes. It's in the unspoken rules of our culture and our beliefs about how we feel we need to behave and how we feel we need to show up and how we feel we need to get work done.
It's in all of that unspoken, um, that unspoken web, that invisible web between your org structure that work actually gets done. So by shifting the structure, by shifting the people in the structure, You're not actually changing that system, that unspoken system. And because that system is what drives how work actually gets done, you're not seeing any change.
Sure, you might temporarily see something, but more often than not, the system is going to drive team results and team behavior, and therefore they're going to fall right back to the level of the system they're operating in. And I can say this firsthand because I spent over a decade working as an org designer.
So I helped stand up the org design functions at both Southwest and Delta airlines. And my job was the org design expert. Like I was the one with the deep knowledge and background in how to design successful teams. Like that is my background. I have a master's in business psychology. Like that's That's what I've studied.
Um, and so my job was to develop this practice to where we could go into any department and help understand how to best structure this team to get better results and to alleviate whatever they were feeling. And a lot of the times it's the same exact things you were feeling right now. It's the constantly changing priorities.
Everyone's stepping over each other. No one's stepping up and owning their work. You know, there's tons of bottlenecks slowing us down, all those things. And so over a decade, I learned a lot. You know, we started with the traditional, uh, org structure shifts and then we got deeper and deeper and. Um, this wasn't just me sitting with a bunch of leaders in a room, like this was This was us bringing in the people closest to the work, really talking about what's working, what's not, them helping develop the roles, designing the roles around the work, not the people.
Like we did it all quote unquote, right. But even with our best intentions, we would roll out these beautiful structures that everyone had a part in, developing and still see the same problems. We'd sure have a little bit more role clarity, but we'd still see them revert slowly back to the status quo. And that is when we realized the structure is only one tiny, tiny piece of how work gets done.
You can put a new structure in place, but if you don't do what we call operationalizing the structure, Accounting for that unspoken system for how work gets done, the structure will never be successful because a pretty structure doesn't change the ever changing priorities. It doesn't tell you or your team what work should get prioritized over others.
A pretty structure, while it may improve roles and role clarity, it doesn't truly impact how work flows from one team to another and where those bottlenecks and friction points exist. A pretty structure doesn't solve how teams work together and how they hand off work and the trust or lack thereof.
Between teams. It doesn't solve your team's ability to come together and work as a cross functional, but like one team, not a bunch of silos. You can design to eliminate silos, but silos are more than just structure. It's a culture. It's a way of thinking. So there is more beneath the structure that's required for a structure to work.
And I can say that because I've done structure work with I've seen every function out there, and I've seen the results, and it wasn't until we started thinking about how these teams truly get work done that we started seeing things shift. We started seeing behaviors in the team shift, and when we shift teams behaviors, we therefore can shift teams results.
So let's talk about your operating system, that invisible system that helps truly define how work gets done on your team, that helps operationalize your structure. So over the years, I have defined out five elements. That I believe are the biggest drivers of team's behavior and therefore how work gets done on teams.
And so I want to break these down for you guys so you can start to understand. This invisible system driving your team's behavior, because here's the thing, whether intentional or not, your team has an operating system. Even if you don't recognize it, it's there. It's in the unspoken, the unspoken rules, the unspoken beliefs, the unspoken rhythms.
That your team has adopted a lot of you guys inherited your operating system It's something that was developed and honed over years and years and years and the leader before you and before Them slowly developed or for some of you guys who just started your function from scratch It just simply happened organically and we often don't recognize it Until our team starts to grow and scale, because you don't really need an operating system when you have a small team of like two or three that are pretty consistent because your operating system is just organic and it's very easy to manage a smaller team like that.
But as your team grows and scales, that's when things you start to feel a lot of the symptoms of the chaos. of the struggles of keeping all of these teams aligned and moving in the right direction because we haven't brought structure and clarity to the system. Okay, so let's get into the five parts. So the first part of your operating system is strategy.
Strategy, strategy, strategy. We love to talk about strategy. So strategy, we have to actually have a clear direction, a clear purpose for why this team exists. What do we exist to do? What is the impact we are looking to make? And how are we going to prioritize our team's time, talent, and resources to get there?
This is the most important thing. Everything flows down from your strategy. Your structure should be, um, tied to your strategy. All the other elements that we're about to talk about in your operating system. Um, are designed to best support your strategy because your operating system as it, at its core is simply a way for you to execute on your strategy.
Your operating system is the means to bridge the gap between your strategy and execution. It's how work gets done. So if we don't have a strong strategy, a strong direction, well then the, the operating system, your structure, any of that, it doesn't matter. Because we're not designing for anything. There's not a purpose or an impact.
We're simply existing. So it has to have a strong strategy. Now, some of the biggest issues that I see with strategy are one, it just doesn't exist, or it, we have a person, a like fake strategy. It is like super fluffy, it is goals that don't really prioritize anything. It's kind of like, we're going to do everything, um, or it's super unclear, like we've overloaded it with so much.
Buzzwords and different statements and stuff like that, that when you read it, you're like, I have no idea what that just said. Like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here. Like, it sounds good, but like it gives the team truly no direction as to where we're going, what we're trying to achieve and what we're prioritizing to get there.
Like a good strategy has to make trade offs. So, um, one is we just don't have one or it's, it's not a. directional strategy. The other one is it's not clearly communicated or there's a lack of alignment around it. No one's bought in and therefore everyone on the team is just still going after their own thing.
I can not tell you how many times I've heard people be like, okay, here's our strategy for the department. And it's like, yeah, but like don't worry about that. We're doing our thing and here's what we're doing. And so if there's no buy in or alignment around it, then it's not actually doing its job. Um, The other thing that I see happen a lot with strategy is we don't know how to defend it.
It's really great to have a beautiful strategy on paper, but if you don't know how to defend it and actually prioritize your team's time, talent, and resources against it, well, then it's not going to be effective. You actually have to be able to defend your strategy in order to drive. Forward and execute it.
So like, just thinking about strategy right there. Let's go back to what we were talking about, about like, org structures and how work actually gets done. An org structure will not help you achieve any of that. You can make the best org structure, you can make the best job descriptions that say you're in charge of defining the strategy, but at the end of the day it's not going to help you achieve any of that.
You actually have to be intentional about driving your strategy. And strategy dictates how work gets done. If you have a good strategy, it tells me where I am going and what I need to prioritize to get there. It's directing how work gets done. And if we can better do that, then we can improve team results.
So you're starting to see the connection. What are those elements that drive how work gets done? Because if we can improve those, we can improve results. Okay. So the next element besides strategy is our workflow. Workflow is truly how work flows and gets achieved within your team. Workflow is your team's roles.
Understanding who owns what. Understanding how we divide up and tackle work. Understanding how work gets handed off from one team to another. And how those handoffs happen. Workflow is understanding how decisions get made around the work, who has what decision right, who has final say. That is workflow.
It's truly how work gets achieved within your team. And again, structure doesn't define this. It may show at the highest level role clarity, who's supposed to get work done. What team is supposed to own what, but that's where it stops. It doesn't actually show how work flows through your structure, from one team to another.
It doesn't show who makes what decisions. That is your team's workflow. So the biggest workflow is, one, our processes are getting in the way of us actually getting work done. We are actively having to work against our processes. Whether that be because they're overly complex, whether that be because there's a ton of red tape or approvals, whether that be that our tools and systems are super cumbersome.
Whatever it may be is our processes are actively slowing our team down. The other one is the lack of role clarity or I don't even want to say lack of role clarity. It's like lack of role empowerment. And a piece of that is lack of role clarity. We just don't understand truly who is on the hook for what.
We think role clarity means a job description. It doesn't. Role clarity means everyone understands how they contribute to that strategy we outlined and they truly understand. Who is on the hook for what at the end of the day, if we're looking at one person about why something didn't get done, who is that person and how do they have full accountability for that full decision rights, full ownership.
We don't give ownership to anyone. Like we have gotten so caught up in everyone needs to be a part of everything. So therefore, no one owns anything. So a lot of the times when I ask that question, like, at the end of the day, who owns this? It's like, well, like, Susie owns like a tiny piece, and then Mike owns a little piece, and then, like, it just goes on and on.
And then I, as the leader, have like final say, and so, so no one owns anything. No wonder people aren't stepping up and owning their work. No wonder. They don't truly own anything. And if they do truly own anything, have we fully empowered them with the decision rights? The ability to like, have a seat at the table.
The ability to actually make the calls without us coming back around and saying, Well, I think we need to do this.
And then the last piece is all about decision making. Do we understand how decisions gets made in our team? Like, to the deepest level, actually looking across what are the major decisions that happen on our team, and for each one, who gets to decide, and have we pushed decision rights to those closest to the work?
Because we know those closest to the work have the best insight. And us as leaders, the more we move up, the further we get from the work. So we're not necessarily the best ones to make those calls. So actually defining how decisions get done, so we're not spending endless, endless amounts of time in meetings, debating about who gets to decide.
So our third element in our operating system is what's called teaming. This is how our team comes together and works together to execute on that workflow and therefore achieve our strategy. So we can have a clear direction, we can have a workflow for how that work gets done, but if we don't actually have the ability to come together and collaborate as a team to execute on that workflow and strategy, it's not going to get done.
Um, if we are stepping all over each other, if we're in silos, refusing to work with each other, if, um, we spend more time coordinating around the work than actually executing, if we're unwilling to have the uncomfortable conversations, it's not going to get done. And that's what teaming is about. I feel like teaming is one of the least talked about elements.
When it comes to running an effective team, yet it's one of the most powerful. We do not talk enough about how do we bring a diverse group of people together. To achieve a shared outcome. We just don't, we expect for it to happen. And there actually is ways that we can make it easier, better, faster for your team to do that.
And that's teaming. So with teaming, some of the biggest gaps that I see, I feel like with teaming, you're either on one side of the spectrum, you are either heavily siloed. So that everyone's just doing their own thing. In fact, we're not just doing our own thing. Sometimes we're actively working against each other or you're in over collaboration mode.
Like everyone needs to be a part of everything we're doing. Everyone's in meetings. Everyone's on the email chains or everything's a shared decision, right? Yay. Collaboration. I feel like it's one of those two spectrums. Both of those inhibit our ability to drive work forward. The other part of teaming that I see a lot is that we are spending way too much time trying to coordinate work versus executing.
So you're spending endless time in meetings, um, in chats. Trying to figure out, okay, who's doing what? Who's handling what has the work move forward? Is it our time to pick it up? What should we be doing next? Who's working on what project? What's the status update over here? That's what I call coordinating work.
And we are spending so much time trying to coordinate work between the group of individuals that we've left very little time to actually execute, to actually like heads down. at our desk doing the deep work, but yet it's the deep work that drives work forward. If we are spending all our time coordinating work, we're not going to achieve our, um, strategy.
We're not going to achieve the outcome we're after. We actually have to spend time moving work forward. And the more time that we spend moving work forward, the faster, the better, the easier we're able to achieve those results we're after. Again, none of this is covered in an org structure or a job description, but do you see how that like actually dictates how work gets done, how we're teaming, how we're coming together?
The last part about teaming that I see a lot is that we avoid the uncomfortable. There's elephants in the room. There's people not talking to people. There's unspoken tension between certain functions and we avoid it. And that tension is impacting our team and how they're showing up each and every day.
It's impacting their ability to come together and problem solve through issues. It's impacting their energy because they're constantly feeling that tension that impacts our ability to get work done. Okay. The next one that we want to talk about is culture. Ooh, culture. This one has to go. Much of an impact yet is so not talked about you can again have the most perfect strategy the most perfect workflow the most perfect teaming, but if you have a culture of a fear of failure a culture of lack of trust of People not feeling safe to speak up and share their ideas of people stuck in the status quo Not willing to try new things You're never going to be able to truly reach your team's full potential.
And that's exactly what culture is. It's your team's values, their norms. Is there psychological safety on the team? Do you foster a growth mindset where people are constantly looking for ways that we can do bad things better, faster, easier. That's your culture. And the things that I see a lot of the times with culture is one, we just don't acknowledge it.
Those team values and norms. We don't acknowledge like who our team is at its core, what we value, what we expect out of everyone on this team, how we show up. We just let it be this unspoken thing. And when people come on the team, they're like, okay, what's going on here? And they're spending a lot of time and a lot of anxiety trying to figure it out.
Like a good example, like the most simplest example is when you come on a team and it's, it's all those things where you're like, I just wish I could ask somebody this. It's like. Is the expectation that we're allowed to go take a walk during lunch because we really value people having like time to, you know, refresh and recharge?
Or is the expectation that you need to be at your desk nine to five? That's a team norm. That's how our team operates. And if we have one person operating from like, I'm all about taking the walks, you do you. And we have one person operating from like, be at your desk nine to five and they're on the same team.
Now they're looking at each other being like, what the heck is wrong with you? And it's because we haven't brought to light, brought words around what our team's norms and values are. How we operate. What our expectations are and so they're unspoken and everyone's operating from a different playbook and looking at each other like what's going on?
It also is about Psychological safety. Does everyone on the team actually feel comfortable speaking up? Does everyone on the team actually feel comfortable taking risks without fear of failure or fear of judgment? And there's so much that goes into this. I think everyone's like, yeah But like truly, like thinking about your team meetings, does one or two people monopolize the conversation?
Or is there room for quieter voices to contribute? Thinking about ownership of work. My team doesn't own their work. Well, yeah, because they're terrified that if they make one tiny mistake, like everything's going to blow up. So of course they're coming to you every five seconds. We actually have to create psych safety.
And then the last thing I see a lot with culture is we are 1000 percent stuck in this way that we do things. And a lot of the times it's out of pride. Like we've been here from the beginning. We've built this thing. We are so proud of it. And so we don't want to accept that we need to continuously be looking and challenging those things that we've built and saying where are the gaps?
How can we do this better? What's an easier way to do this? And actually thriving on continuing to push ourselves to do things better, faster, easier. Okay, and the last thing, the last element we need to talk about is leadership. I think we forget a lot of the times the power our leadership has on a team, the power our leadership has to amplifying a team's potential versus potentially hindering it.
The power are just like a question in a meeting can have that will. Derail a team and send them down a path of work for a week that we had no idea that they just like ran with. That we just like had an inkling and said it and all of a sudden it's generating tons and tons of work. We have no idea how our energy How we show up.
And if we're coming from this place of overwhelm and frantic and chaotic and versus like grounded, calm, confident energy and how our team feeds off that energy in their own work. There is a Privilege that comes with leadership, but there is also this challenge of being put on that pedestal and the power that that privilege gives you.
And I think a lot of the times it's hard to go from being that individual contributor or even that manager. You know, when you first start out and you're truly managing a group of people to stepping up and being a leader. A leader whose job isn't to manage or, you know, force results across the finish line by getting in the weeds, but truly becoming a leader who's there to amplify.
The talent, the potential, the expertise of the group of people you've been given. And I think that's a hard gap to bridge sometimes, but that right there is leadership and leadership is what impacts our team. So, so much. And so some of the things that I see in leadership a lot as big struggles is one, not empowering our team.
And this is not from a place of like, I just want to micromanage and control everything. It's a place of a lot of the times just falling back into corporate norms. Well, I can't share that information with them because it's quote unquote, you know, top secret or whatever it is. Like we, we can't share that.
If we share it, then everyone's going to, da, da, da, da, da. So now we have lack of transparency. Well, I can't bring so and so to a meeting because, you know, I have the director title and they don't allow individual contributors in the meeting and you have to be a director to have your voice heard. And so.
And now the subject matter expert who knows that work better than anything is sidelined. Somebody making a decision. Who's the subject matter expert in us overriding that decision? Well, because they didn't have the full picture and really we need to be doing this and blah, why don't they have the full picture?
It's the, like, I think when people hear not empowering our team, we're like, Oh, that's the micromanagers. That's not me. But it's in these little things. Like that's why I say like leadership, you have so much power that we don't understand. It's these little things. It's these little things that are having such a huge impact on our team.
And so it's these little behaviors, it's these little questions, it's these little statements, it's these little energy shifts that are having the biggest impact. The other biggest issue that I see with leadership when it comes to our operating system is we're not leading. And this is going to be a gut punch and it's hard to hear because again, it's coming from such a place of like, Desire to help our team that we get into the weeds and we start to become the doers The managers of the work constantly pushing work across the finish line where we get caught up in like the the playing the game of leadership that we're You know canceling one on ones and we're stepping out of meetings or we're looking at our email Handling the latest fire drill or whatever we need to be in That actually truly leading, focusing on developing and empowering this group we've been given falls to the wayside.
Again, it's not intentional. It's just that all of the work, the chaos, the fire drills, the The corporate expectation and politics that come with leadership overtake the true leading. And the leading is the part that a lot of us want to be focused on. Like we want to be focused on developing our team. We want to be focused on creating this insane culture that everyone's dying to be a part of.
It just falls to the wayside. We want to be focused on the strategic work, the giving the direction to our team, but it falls to the wayside over the fire drills.
But that's what our team needs. Our team needs somebody steering the ship. Our team needs somebody giving the direction. Our team needs somebody in there helping them develop, get better. And so we have to create the space and time for that. So those five things right there. Those are your operating system.
Those five elements, your strategy, your workflow, your teaming, your culture, your leadership. Those are the elements that drive work forward. Those are the elements that take a group of individuals with different experiences and personality and skill sets and align them. To achieve a shared goal. Sure, is structure a part of that?
Yes. When we talk about workflow and how we break down work, we also talk about structure. But structure is not enough if you don't actually look at all of these elements of how work's getting done. And even more importantly is to recognize that our group, our team's potential is only as strong as the weakest part of our operating system.
So we can have the most beautiful strategy, we can have the most stream blind workflow, but if our culture is in the garbage, we will not rise to that, that insanely awesome strategy and workflow. We will forever be capped at the level of our culture. So every single one of these elements is important.
Every single one of these elements is key in reaching your team's full potential. But we have to be intentional about fostering each one and making sure each one is aligned towards whatever that goal we have for our team is. So I've talked way too long about what an operating system is and the different elements, but I needed to have this foundational, um, knowledge, this foundational information out to you guys, because in the coming weeks, we're going to continue to dive into your operating system, how to understand when something's off in your operating system, how to slowly improve your team's operating system over time.
We're going to be diving into, um, all of that good stuff. And I did want to let you know that I have been working overtime these past few weeks to get some insane resources out to you guys, and one of them is completely free, and that is the operating system audit, um, um, It's just an incredible tool. You right now in the link in the bio can go and click on it.
And what it will do is it takes you through a quick five minute, um, assessment of each one of these five elements that we just went over today. And it gives you a score, a rating, um, Of each one of these elements, it tells you if it's a critical gap, if it's functional, or if it's a core strength and you'll be able to print out a PDF with a true view, it gives you a pie chart of the health of your operating system, as well as a breakdown of where each element is, which is what's going to allow you to understand where you need to focus your time and energy, because this episode is not, I need to go overhaul my entire operating system.
No. Not going to help. It's in you actually pinpointing where those core strengths are, where those critical gaps are, focusing in and strengthening those gaps up to the level of the strengths. And that happens by you understanding where those gaps exist. So I'm going to link that in the show notes for you guys so you can go and get that assessment.
Totally for free today. And if you want help continuing to improve your operating system, a low lift solution, one that actually fits into your busy schedule and that your team is going to be completely bought into, because we teach you how to actually include them in the improvement process, you guys need to be inside liberated leader.
I just. I just out, um, unrolled some, unrolled, whoa, words. Um, I just rolled out some really, um, amazing updates to that. Which actually takes those, um, assessment results that you got. And I developed a road map, like a legit road map, of how to improve your team's operating system. I've broken down each element into the three most critical milestones.
And then I've given you All the resources to improve those from deep dive courses for elements that you truly want to master and understand to the liberated lab, which is like, uh, it's my baby. Um, it's a vault of my favorite low lift, what I call experiments. They're just little shifts. You can be trying in your team to improve each.
Element. So that is all inside the liberated leader. And I'll link that below, or just send me a DM and let's chat over on Instagram. Okay, guys, your action for today is to go take the operating system audit and learn exactly where your team's system is thriving and where those gaps are. Okay, let's go do the work.
