Guide Your Team into a Proactive Mindset

Disrupting routine

Do you want your team to get used to change before unexpected things happen? A simple way to mix things up is to add a surprise element to your next meeting. Here’s how you can do it:

• Change the Agenda: Instead of the usual list of topics, send out a meeting agenda with questions. This can help spark problem-solving before the meeting even starts.
• Change the Format: Try a walking meeting or a video-free meeting to give everyone a break from screens.

Next, alter the meeting environment:

• Physical Movement: If the meeting is in-person, get people moving. Have them brainstorm with sticky notes and markers instead of using whiteboards and laptops.
• Virtual Tweaks: For virtual meetings, ask participants to change something in their background and then challenge the group to identify what’s different.

Also, think about changing the meeting structure:

• Icebreakers and Puzzles: Start with an icebreaker, even if everyone knows each other. End the meeting early or solve a puzzle together. The idea is to add an element of surprise to keep everyone engaged.

Finally, shake up who attends the meeting:

• Guest Speakers: Invite an industry expert, customer, or client to talk about a current challenge or a hot topic.
• New Perspectives: Bring in an employee from a different department for a fresh viewpoint.

Changing up routines introduces unpredictability, but since it’s a low-stakes meeting, it’s less likely to make people nervous. Interrupting the usual patterns can help break the monotony and get everyone more engaged. So, I challenge you to open your calendar right now and commit to shaking up at least one of your meetings this week.

Expanding Agile Thinking

Agile thinking is crucial for making your team more resilient. To help your team adopt an agile mindset, start by presenting them with a series of disruptive questions without any prior warning. Disruptive questions are provocative and open-ended, meaning they can’t be answered with a simple yes or no, and they can take a positive or negative angle.

For instance, asking customers what they dislike most about your product will give you more insightful feedback than asking what should be improved. Similarly, instead of asking employees what’s good about your product, ask them what kind of industry award it could win and why.

Now that you understand disruptive questions, here are our top five examples. Take note of those that could benefit your team immediately:

1. Transforming Products and Services: How can our service be turned into a physical product? Or how can our physical product be turned into a service?
2. Turning Unpleasant into Pleasant: How might we use unpleasant experiences to create pleasant ones for our customers or clients?
3. Offering Unique Freebies: What could we offer for free that no one else does?
4. Monitoring Industry Shifts: What are the biggest shifts happening in our industry, and which related industries should we keep an eye on?
5. Speeding Up Projects: If we had to deliver one of our current projects in half the time, what would we do differently?

Regularly asking and answering these types of questions will help your team think beyond the obvious and develop truly innovative solutions when it counts. To keep building their agility, create your own disruptive questions using the criteria of being provocative, open-ended, and either positive or negative in their inquiry.

Meeting Adversity Like an Optimist

Want your team to handle any challenge with resilience? Try a simple 15-minute exercise called “That’s great.” Start this at the beginning of your next regular meeting. If you’re meeting in person, divide the room into small groups of three to four people and ask each group to bring just one chair. For remote meetings, create virtual breakout rooms with three to four people, but no chair is needed.

Here’s how it works:

1. Role Play as CEO: Each person takes a turn acting as the CEO of any company they choose.
2. Present Challenges: The other group members present the “CEO” with at least three urgent, alarming issues that need immediate attention.
3. Respond Positively: The person in the CEO role must respond to each issue by saying, “That’s great,” and then explain why the issue could actually be a positive development.

For example, if you pretend to be the CEO of a shipping company and your team tells you there’s a nationwide rail strike, you might respond with:

• “That’s great. Now we can start using our fleet of driverless cargo trucks we bought last year.”
• Or, “That’s great. Let’s find an air cargo company to partner with to solve this.”

Keep these guidelines in mind:

• No issues should involve death or illegal activity.
• Everyone must take a turn being the CEO at least once.

Now that you know the exercise, schedule it into your next meeting. The more you encourage your team to find opportunities in crises, the more resilient they’ll become in real situations.

Key Takeaways

Building a proactive mindset in your team doesn’t have to be complicated. By introducing small disruptions and fostering a culture of agility and resilience, you can prepare your team to handle any challenge with confidence. Start implementing these strategies in your next meeting and watch your team thrive in the face of change.

• Introduce Surprise Elements: Changing meeting agendas and formats can help your team get used to unexpected changes.
• Disruptive Questions: Asking provocative, open-ended questions fosters agile thinking and innovative solutions.
• Meeting Structure: Use icebreakers, puzzles, and guest speakers to keep meetings engaging and bring fresh perspectives.
• Resilience Exercises: Activities like the “That’s great” exercise teach your team to find opportunities in crises.