Boost Innovation and Strategy Through Cross-Team Collaboration

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the Strategy Gap, a show for leaders who want to bridge the gap between strategy creation and strategy execution. I'm Jonathan Morgan and along with Joe Krause, each episode we have conversations with strategy and operational leaders on key issues in strategic planning and strategy execution. If you're looking to actually accomplish your goals, this is the show for you. Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Strategy Gap. This episode will be similar to the last two we've released, really focusing on some important research that we came out with a few, I guess about a month ago at this point, maybe a little bit longer than that on the state of strategy execution. Through this report, over 250 strategy leaders were interviewed and a lot of good findings about what's important to them, what they're having success with, what they're struggling with, and all information that regardless of your role and strategy or the industry that you're in, you can definitely learn from. So with that, this is the third episode of the series, so go back and at least listen to the first one. That's the overview on the overall state of strategy execution.

Jonathan Morgan [00:01:05]:

It's a good introduction to this content and it'll identify all the different categories. And then this episode in particular will be about the second theme out of the report which is collaboration. So if this is your first time listening to it, go listen to that overview episode but also give a little reminder on the key themes that came out of the report. Number one, alignment and leadership. A strong vision and engaged leaders are key to keeping teams aligned and driving strategy forward. Number two, which will be the focus of this episode is collaboration. Breaking down silos and working together fuels innovation and leads to better results on strategy. And then in subsequent episodes we'll be going through three through six which are accountability, clearly defining roles and ownership helps teams move faster and stay focused on their goals.

Jonathan Morgan [00:01:52]:

Number four, progress tracking. Keeping an eye on real time updates and key metrics ensures things stay on track. Number five, continuous improvement. Regular check ins, ROI assessments and updates to planning cycles keep long term success and focus. And lastly, number six, data and technology. Leveraging technology and data driven insights improves alignment, decision making and execution. So quick summary there, but today's episode, Joe and I will be talking through a lot of good information on collaboration. And so to kick things off, Joe, collaboration means a lot.

Jonathan Morgan [00:02:23]:

Means a lot of different things to different people. What's the feeling you get when you hear the word collaboration? What does that mean to you?

Joe Krause [00:02:29]:

I've been known to be a pessimist. So first thing that comes to mind Is, oh boy, another meeting. Right, Another. A lot of struggling on calendars, looking for time to get a big, large group together. That's definitely the downside of collaboration that pops into mind. But then the bigger real reason for collaboration is that we, if we're going to make a plan, let's make it the right plan first time. So the only way that works is with the it takes a village. If you want to go fast, go alone.

Joe Krause [00:02:52]:

If you want to go far, go with others. Right. That whole concept. So even though I'm griping about the calendars and figuring out when we can all meet, that's number one thing that sometimes organizations skip and as a result, it impacts their execution efforts for sure.

Jonathan Morgan [00:03:04]:

Yeah, I'd echo a lot of those comments. I think we haven't talked much about, like our individual roles on this podcast, but I've been moving more into operational role and much more heavily involved in the people aspect of the organization. And to me, that's, I feel like the biggest thing in this conversation for collaboration is it's not, I mean, getting better results is certainly important, but I think a big portion of that is making people feel like they're involved and that they understand the why behind things. And like that's, that's the, the ultimate impact that you feel. But we'll go through all that and more as part of this conversation. So really to kick things off, wanted to focus on kind of one of the other big buzzwords when it comes to collaboration, and that is the ever so popular silo. So one of the results that came out of the study was that 77%. So a good number of the respondents of these leaders reported that silos between their departments hindered both strategy execution and also innovation.

Jonathan Morgan [00:04:01]:

So innovation we don't always talk about within the confines of strategic planning and strategy execution on this show, but we've had some episodes about it. And ultimately, if you are executing, you should be also innovating. So knowing that stat, Joe, 77% kind of reported that SILO exists. They're having an impact. What do you glean from that or what have you seen from your experience?

Joe Krause [00:04:21]:

Well, it matches reality for sure. I mean, because to Jonathan's point, he's looking more inward to make sure that achieve it can do the best they can for the people that work here, as well as making sure that we are the best organization we can be in terms of how we serve our clients. So it all comes together. My role is still very much focused on being customer facing, so I'm using that as the lens, we do a number of new implementations per month and sometimes I'm a part of them, sometimes I'm listening to call recordings. And this is like the number one topic that comes up when the organizations we're speaking to, they're saying, okay, we're a certain size municipality, we have our strategic plan and we want to definitely track that. But how do we connect the climate action plan, how do we connect the Parks and Rec plan? How do we get all these other plans that exist a into one place? But also how do we make sure that they are speaking to each other so that each plan doesn't have a duplicative efforts across the board? And it's something that there is no great answer for. It's a case by case thing. So first and foremost, going into the conversation with an open mind, knowing that silos should be avoided, I think it sounds stating the absolute obvious.

Joe Krause [00:05:24]:

But if you're an organization that has multiple departments, you have to make an effort to keep people involved. Mainly because if you don't, what's going to happen is that people are going to start thinking that their silo is the company. They're going to start being protective over what they're doing. And no matter what they're doing, it's always the best. And every other department's encroaching on their little kingdom they have going on, which obviously, obviously isn't great. And then also the plans that you're creating, let's say they're organizational. If people aren't really apt to contribute and collaborate, the plans are going to have huge blind spots. And as a result, you aren't really setting yourself up for success.

Joe Krause [00:06:00]:

So knowing that silos exist, I think we all agree they do, will we have the time and energy to break them down all the time? I think the answer probably is no. We're all very tired with our day jobs sometimes. But the goal here is to make sure that you fight through that fatigue and ensure that that's happening. And Jonathan spent many years working with organizations and things haven't changed too much. But do you have any examples of where you had a client back in the day, Jonathan, that had a similar situation? I can think of at least a couple that I know you worked on. What are your thoughts on how you helped them through this struggle, which is how do we change the way we work?

Jonathan Morgan [00:06:35]:

Yeah, for sure. And I think in general with collaboration, in the context of planning, it really comes down to a couple of different areas where it makes sense. It's on the planning Side, are the right people involved or are we collaboratively planning in a way? We're not duplicating efforts, obviously, in the management, the execution of the work itself. Are we working together? Are we duplicating efforts? And then also, I wouldn't discount collaboration on the actual execution side or the reporting side as well, because you're not really collaborating on results. But I'd consider sharing results and talking about results an important part of collaborating to continue that ongoing success. But to your specific question, I'm going to focus more on the planning side. Probably the biggest failure I've seen with organizations is I'm going to steal your stories. People listen to this, are going to hear me steal Joe's stories.

Jonathan Morgan [00:07:27]:

But it's the old adage of they come down like Moses with the Ten Commandments, like, here's our plan. This is what we must do. I mean, that's fine if you have all the information, but most of the time you're working off of the information from a small circle as opposed to working with a broader audience on what we should be doing in our plan and what we should be focusing on and what we focus on in the past, particularly if you're new in our organization. I think everybody's worked with individuals that come into the team. They don't ask any questions. They just assume they know everything and they're giving out all their ideas and not always taking the feedback. That's not collaborating. So companies I've seen that do it well, they have a good structure for how they want their plans to be built.

Jonathan Morgan [00:08:06]:

Particularly large organizations where they have multiple different departments or regions or business units. It's good to come up with a common structure. But don't come up with the ideas for them. Collaborate with them. Give them the structure. Give them a process for how to facilitate that conversation, to create those plans, and then do a vetting process to see what makes a cut, what doesn't, and how you can then ultimately connect those plans together. So I'll flip somewhat of that question back on you, Joe. On the actual planning side of strategy, what have you seen be successful or unsuccessful in relations to collaboration?

Joe Krause [00:08:40]:

Yeah, because I think there's two extremes. There's one where it's the Moses analogy, where leadership comes down with, here's what we're doing, like it or not, you don't like it, hit the road. And then there's one where it's like, what does everybody think? And we'll make sure everybody's thoughts are completely absorbed into the plan. And all Of a sudden you have a big mess of a plan that has no direction. So in a perfect world, senior leaders should be fairly plugged into the future. It's the reason why they're hopefully in the position they're in, to see where the puck is going versus where it is now. All the other cheesy analogies. But the senior leadership team should spend some time in a smaller working group, maybe whittling down the list of possible down into a smaller subset.

Joe Krause [00:09:13]:

So if the goal here is we have three or four priorities, maybe they come to the larger group with eight or 10 saying, here are all the things that potentially could take us to where we want to go. And then test that with your next level of leadership to see is there a blind spot? Maybe you hit a home run and like the ones that you decided are great. Or maybe there was one that the group came up with that wasn't on your list of 10 that needs to make it. But there has to be at least somebody at the leadership level that's going to be able to say yes or no. That sometimes is a challenge too. It's like I've heard everybody's conversation and my ruling is here are three priorities. Some people avoid that conversation because it feels like it's heavy handed. Only if you're not doing the conversation part right.

Joe Krause [00:09:50]:

You have to open the conversation up to say, just because you presented an idea here today doesn't mean we're going to do it. But I want to hear what we think. With our limited time, energy and resources. If we can only make three bets this year, out of the 15 that I have on the table, what are the three? Everybody make your case. And eventually somebody in that room has to say, here are the three. There's a book of knowledge, a book of research, I should say, that has good knowledge in it called Leading from the Center. It was done by Duke University. They broke organizations into three separate types of roles in order for planning to be effective.

Joe Krause [00:10:23]:

They had architects, translators, doers. Architects are the people that I'm talking about. They're the ones that are in the senior roles that basically are saying, I'm scanning the landscape. I'm also going to be the person that's going to say yes or no. At the end of the day, the buck stops with me. They engage translators. Those are your next level down in leadership. They're the people that are maybe closer to the street, so to speak.

Joe Krause [00:10:43]:

So they should definitely have some good insight as to what's happening. So you have to include them and if you don't, to Jonathan's point earlier, they're not going to feel like they are included. And as a result, your plan, not mine. And I'll ride this thing out. So start with a small working group, get some work done, then involve your group versus just having 20 people get in a room and just let's talk. You have to at least get started a little bit, get the conversation going, get everything you need, and then somebody has to make the decision. Those are the ways that I've seen be most effective to get to some plan that we feel is reflective of what the organization thinks versus maybe two people, what they think.

Jonathan Morgan [00:11:18]:

Yeah, Just to push back a little bit on that. I agree with most of the things you're saying, but how do you avoid the situation where you've gotten these 15 ideas on the table, three of them make the cut. There's going to be people that may be in the room saying, oh, not my president, not my plan. Right. Why should I care about this anymore? How do you get them over the hurdle from that standpoint? Or what have you seen organizations do? Because if someone's dead and disengaged because they don't agree with the decisions that are made, not even collaboration, it's the opposite of collaboration, is going to have damaging effects to the execution. So what have you seen? People avoid that and make sure that, yeah, you know what? We couldn't get all these ideas done, but this is why these other ones are still important.

Joe Krause [00:11:57]:

Yeah. I was a big fan of the masterclass website. I don't remember that. During the COVID time, Masterclass had all these amazing teachers and you can learn how to make bread from a master baker. And Gordon Ramsay will teach you how to make eggs. It was pretty cool, I must say. But there was one that was around negotiation. It was like a former FBI negotiator and he would just talk about the art of negotiation and what to say, what not to say.

Joe Krause [00:12:18]:

And the one thing that he was really interesting that serves this question is that if you get ahead of what you think somebody else is going to think, it really diffuses something. So let's say you are at a hotel and you want maybe an upgrade. And the hotel person saying, I don't know, I'll have to look in the system. So before asking for it, you can always disarm the conversation by saying, I might sound like a jerk by saying this, but you like putting that little preamble in front of it. Helps people get prepared for what's coming next to my Point is, if you are getting everybody in a room and saying, I am including you because I respect you as leaders, I think you have incredible insights. I'm going to tell you that if we have 15 ideas and we can only pick three, 12 of you are going to feel some sort of way at the end of this. And I want you to know that it is not personal. This is what has to happen for us as business leaders.

Joe Krause [00:13:06]:

And if you have the rules of engagement spelled out ahead of time in that meeting, not to say there won't be any hurt feelings, but there'll be less just because it was very clear. And if somebody still can't get over it because their idea wasn't picked, that's a whole other HR conversation. Right. Because it's the only way you can plan. If you decided to just have all 15 ideas in your plan, and those are our 15 focus areas, you're doing yourself a disservice, potentially your shareholders, the people that you serve, if you're in a public sector. So you have to be the bad guy. But it's not so bad if you say upfront that you are going to be a bad guy at the end of the cycle.

Jonathan Morgan [00:13:38]:

Let's, let's move a little bit onto the next phase of planning which is, you know, you've got your plan, let's assume we nailed it, right? Everybody's in agreement, we got our plan down, we got the ideas, everyone's in agreement on those, and now we have to actually do the work. What we found that the survey and the respondents agreed upon was that organizations that had strong cross team collaboration saw a two time increase in strategy achievement. So you know, when you're thinking about your goals, how much was accomplished, twice as much, which is pretty, pretty impressive number. Now you can argue, all right, strong collaboration to one organization is different than strong collaboration to another organization. But I think there's enough beyond this that shows, yeah, if you can figure out collaboration while you're actually executing the work, you're going to not only see better, better results, but you're going to have less duplicative efforts, less competing efforts. People are going to be more aligned on their goals. So thinking now in terms of we're doing our plan, what advice would you give for those that are in this stage or what have you seen companies do successful for really increasing that collaboration on the doing side of the plan?

Joe Krause [00:14:43]:

Yeah, I mean you would think that this would come naturally just because if you're creating a strategic plan and you're a multi department group Then a lot of the things that you're working on can't be done unless something else is done in a different department. Or maybe you're more of a support function where you're in finance or in HR where you're doing things that impact all the different departments. So by the very nature of that, you all should be getting together fairly regularly. I would say monthly is a good place to start and getting that scheduled asap. Right. So if you're in that meeting where you're creating the plan, sometimes people are so exhausted by the end of the day, they're like, I guess we'll talk about it next time we meet. Now be purposeful with it. Every month we're going to repurpose one hour of our normal leadership meeting to talk about the strategic plan.

Joe Krause [00:15:25]:

Like getting that rule figured out ahead of time so that it's just the way we do things is really incredible. That honestly, at the end of the day is the one thing that I see more often than not for folks that don't have a plan. Well, I'll check in in a month. Oh, how'd that meeting go? That collaboration meeting? You're supposed to have to review the strategic plan with all the different departments. It was spring break last week and we had to reschedule. I'll ask him the next month. How did it go? You got to reschedule? Oh, we had a real big issue. We had a reschedule.

Joe Krause [00:15:53]:

You can give yourself maybe two reschedules before it's never going to get scheduled. So if you find yourself careening down that path, I'll give you a pass on one. It happens. If it goes past two, it's never going to happen. And as a result, you're going to blink. A year has gone by and you're going to be no closer to your plan being executed. So at the end of the day, it is once again the basics. How do we get the meeting scheduled? How do we make sure that the agenda is pretty clear and that we also have the space to do it? So don't make it a 10 minute briefing, make it within reason.

Joe Krause [00:16:21]:

An hour is pretty good. 90 minutes would be better to make sure that we're making updates and providing support to each other. Because if you're using a system like achieve it, you should be coming into those meetings knowing what already happened. And now you can use that time that you had that hour to, to discuss what you need from each other. And that's the real reason why you're together. I know Jonathan mentioned in the past, he looked into a little giveaway that basically was a way for you to type in the salaries of all the different folks in the meeting and hit go. And at the end of it, you can spin it around and say, this meeting cost us $300,000. Was it worth it? If you're going to have those meetings, they better be worth it.

Joe Krause [00:16:55]:

And the first step is to have the meeting, which many times isn't happening. And I'm sure you've never experienced that before. Jonathan, the meeting's being rescheduled, right?

Jonathan Morgan [00:17:04]:

No, definitely. All of my meetings happen on time with an agenda and are very productive. I'm going to take a little bit of different response, actually. I don't disagree with you, but I think in addition to that, the natural approach when people think about silos is bang on the table. It's like, we've got to remove all the silos. That's good in principle, but I'm not the big bad wolf over here. We're not just going to remove everything. I think the more realistic thing is how can we better connect the teams? And connect could be through meetings like Joe mentioned, but also just be to having better access to what people are working on.

Jonathan Morgan [00:17:38]:

Unless you're working in very like secure private information, most of the time the information isn't that secret where the other teams shouldn't know what's going on. So whether it's just sharing access to your plans, wherever you're storing them and achieve it, or a different system or SharePoint or whatever the case may be, whether it's having open conversations about it and company meetings or all hands, or whether it's just having the ability to quickly slack or message or hop on a call with somebody to ask a question, I think that's where collaboration starts is at the ground floor and making sure that people actually are used to talking to each other and know what people are working on so that whether it's something that they're actively working on together and they can more quickly solve an issue or what happens, I see a lot of times in organizations is people are trying to figure out something and a different department did the same thing two years ago. And yeah, maybe it's not the exact same problem, but you can learn that and learn from it if you know it actually happened. And so that's where I think the biggest gap happens is it's the lack of awareness more than anything to what people are doing and just having that conversation and that more visibility into what's going on.

Joe Krause [00:18:42]:

Yeah, I mean, it Is it is funny you say that because, like, the big questions that we get a lot of times from customers is how can we set up the system so that people can't see each other's plans because they feel like there's some real secret sauce to what's happening? Most of the time that's not the case. I mean, listen, I'm not like an expert in everyone's business, but for the most part, I've seen enough plans to know unless there's like, somewhere it's an acquisition that wasn't announced where there could be some headcount reduction. Those are the types of things that might be the exception. But for the most part, most people, if you give them access to other people's plans, won't be going around and rummaging through them. They just like the idea that they do have access. So there's just transparency available. So many times it's not the actual that people want to go line by line through their neighbor's departmental plan, but there's a fact that it's like, it's an open book. Here's what we're going to see.

Joe Krause [00:19:28]:

Because if you're not doing that, to Jonathan's point, you might have done something two years ago. And Mark Twain's famous line, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Just because now we're two years into the future and we tried something in the past, it may not work. It may work, who knows? But at least knowing what someone did before you start retreading is something that's like a. It's like an unforced error. You can definitely remove that just by having a conversation, right? So the goal here is to have conversations, ask questions, and have ways to make sure that teams like working together, right? If there's a shared success, make sure that everybody, the direct team and the indirect team, all shares in that success. And it makes people want to work together, too. So to Jonathan's point, you can't hit the table and make this happen.

Joe Krause [00:20:10]:

It's going to be more naturally like the four stages of teams creation, right? The forming, norming, storming, and all that sort of situation. You have to make it so that people look forward to connecting because they say, wow, the burden is a little bit lighter because I have a whole team behind me, not just my team, but all these other departments. If that starts to happen, then you're in flow state and these plans are going to be easily achievable. But if people avoid seeing each other and there's like a Weirdness, it's just not going to work long term. So ask yourself, are you seeing that in your organization? And if so, what can you do to fix it? It's going to take some time, but it is something worth fixing.

Jonathan Morgan [00:20:44]:

I think a lot of the information we're saying is very important. I think most people, as you're listening this like, well, yeah, like obviously this is important. Like, I want to increase collaboration. That's really the last point I want to talk through is so much of this stuff is so obvious. It's just how do we actually make it real in our organization? And this came out in the study as well. So really all this information we want to back up by stats. And this one is two pointed stat. 77% so large, large majority of organizations had a formal strategy in place to promote collaboration and break down silos.

Jonathan Morgan [00:21:18]:

So everyone agrees, very important thing. However, 79% of failed strategic initiatives, they reported the cause was from poor collaboration. So everyone wants it. They agree collaboration breaking on silos is important. But 80%, 79% failed because of poor collaboration. So really this brings up kind of the conversation we're going into. Joe, as everyone wants to do it, everyone says they're going to do it, but at the end of the day, they don't always practice what they preach. What do you think the main reason is for that and how do people overcome that? I want to do it, but we can't actually do it.

Joe Krause [00:21:53]:

Well, I'm a proud son of New Jersey, been here since I was born. I still live here today. And. And if you live in New Jersey, you're going to go on a field trip to see Thomas Edison and his various workshops and his various things. So Menlo park and West Orange are two places and for better or for worse, an interesting character in history, but he also did have a decent amount of quotes. The one that comes to mind when it comes to this is that opportunity is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work. So the reason why I think that second stat, the second part of the stat is people had a plan and equally failed at the same rate basically when actually doing it. Because this is not super easy to do.

Joe Krause [00:22:31]:

It's exhausting a lot of times, especially starting something new. You could feel like you're pushing on a rope where you'll have some departments that are pushing back and really making it difficult to get these meetings going or people are showing up unprepared to a conversation that you said you need to be prepared for. Or they're just making it generally not so much fun to want to seek out collaboration. That's not uncommon. Especially a lot of people rage against any change, right? You change even the most simple thing at work, people get a little bit crazy. You've changed the brand of coffee. If you change the water that you have in the break room, people are going to have a comment about that. And if you're changing all the ways that they're working and they feel like you're micromanaging them, like, why do I need to be in this meeting? These are the types of things that are going to be out there and it's going to be up to you to really push forward.

Joe Krause [00:23:17]:

The good news is if you do that, you're going to start having more teams that buy in and less teams that detract. And then at that point, by the time the detractors are like the few people, you can then point to all the other people that are seeing success with this new approach and they have nowhere to hide. So either that point they get with the program or they decide that there's something else they want to do. So the real story here is that most people, when they're met with resistance, give up. They can say, this looks too hard. Why am I fighting this? I don't get paid enough to fight this battle. If you're a strategy leader or you're a senior leader in a great organization, this is why you're in the seat you're in. You need to fight that battle.

Joe Krause [00:23:51]:

And it might take two or three meetings for it to start to become feel like it's normal. But you're going to get to that second meeting and you're going to feel like, I don't want to do this anymore. And that's the reason why that stat exists, at least in my experience. What do you think, Jonathan?

Jonathan Morgan [00:24:04]:

Yeah, I'm going to say yes. And I think it comes down to that lack of follow through. I mean, there's other things too, right? Teams aren't aligned on their priorities to begin with or the collaboration tools don't exist. But to me, the biggest reason is the lack of follow through. And that typically is shown in probably at least two major ways that I can think of right now. First is that you say you're going to do something and have these meetings and then you don't actually keep up with that. You say the plan's important, but then you don't actually report out on and just talk about it amongst the company. And so that's A form of collaboration, right, that's collaborating at the senior leadership level with the rest of the organization.

Jonathan Morgan [00:24:43]:

And if you're not collaborating with them, they're probably not going to be collaborating with each other as effectively. So making sure you're saying, hey, this is important, we're going to keep talking about it so that the rest of the organization knows, yes, I need to keep working on it. And the other aspect is, you know, similar to what you mentioned Joe is like on those cross team collaboration initiatives having follow through for how you're going to keep that communication cycle going. So I just got out of meeting right before this that was been a joint initiative between product and marketing that we have meetings every two weeks that we didn't really have much to talk about this week but we still had the meeting to make sure that there weren't any major updates and we're going to keep doing that until the release is out so that we're ensuring that we're collaborating. Because if not, it's not that you have bad intentions to, you're just going to get back into the whirlwind of the day to day and that's going to take over and you're going to blink like Joe said in his other example and the year is going to be passed or months going to be passed and nothing's been done and climbing collaboration with the other team. And it's probably too late at that point because it's hard to catch back up when you're working across teams on something that you haven't been doing for a while. So much more to it. But those are the immediate examples that come to mind for me.

Joe Krause [00:25:50]:

And as you're saying that it makes me think too. Let's state the obvious. If you're going to run the meeting, make it a good meeting for crying out loud, right? We've been to some meetings before where you're like, what is the purpose of this? There's no agenda, there's nobody running the show, there's no action steps, there's no decisions being made. We all hate those meetings. So if you're the person that's advocating to have these meetings, make it a good meeting, send an agenda, start on time, have the conversation, cut people off if they're talking too much, call on people that aren't talking to make sure that you get their thing. So there's a lot of like meeting mechanics that sometimes we forget about when we're further along in our career and think of the best meeting you've ever sat through One where you came out and go, I feel really connected. Or that was a hell of a. That was a good use of time.

Joe Krause [00:26:30]:

Right. That might be a good benchmark here and replicate that over and over again so that people don't dread coming to your meeting. That can help with this. So we're talking about the real basics. Go back to that and Jonathan. That was one of Jonathan's meeting, the one he just mentioned, with a cross collaboration. I went over the plan, we actually used achievement, went through each of the different sections, who's going to do what. He added a few things that he didn't think about that somebody else brought up on the fly and we all felt informed.

Joe Krause [00:26:57]:

Right. So ultimately. And we ended on time. We started on time, ended on time, everybody felt good about it and now we know what we have to do. It's not rocket science, but I would say that we look at the preponderance of how many meetings we have in a week. How many would you classify as excellent? Probably not high enough. So all you can do is look at your meetings, especially if you're a strategy leader and ask yourself, is one of those meetings that people dread or one of the ones they say, this was a good use of time. That will really help with long term collaboration.

Jonathan Morgan [00:27:24]:

Yeah. And form your own opinion about Amazon and Jeff Bezos as much as you'd like. But one of the stories that's often come out about Amazon is in his approach is having meetings where the first, I'm going to butcher it, but the first however many minutes, you're just reviewing the brief for kind of what's happened. Now, I maybe would recommend a little more collaboration talking than that, but I think what it does enforce is that everyone's going to be prepared because somebody has to pull that brief together. It's forcing that. You've read the brief. I think everyone's been in meetings where it's like, hey, here's the agenda, or hey, review this beforehand and you get in the meeting and you know that nobody's done it. So at least having some sort of activity or behavior that forces that people are coming into that meeting prepared is really important to continue that follow through.

Jonathan Morgan [00:28:07]:

And also make sure if it's something ongoing, schedule that meeting the next meeting at the end or make it a recurring one so that it's going to happen again. If not, you're going to get a week down the road like, ooh, we forgot to record or schedule a meeting. Then you look at calendars and everything is already booked up. So simple mechanics can be important. Alrighty. Well, Joe, that's mostly it. Anything else on the topic of. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty, but anything else on the topic of collaboration that's worth diving into in more detail?

Joe Krause [00:28:32]:

As with most of the advice we give, it's the basics and then doing those basics consistently. You can't just do this well for a month and expect that it's going to stick. You got to be the consistent voice in the wilderness that's having these meetings, making it a good meeting, making sure people feel connected, being the bad guy. Sometimes where you have to say no to people like all these types of things. If you do it consistently, it'll just be the way that you work and people won't even think about it for another moment. But there will be some short term pain or fatigue. Fight through it. The other side of it is worth it.

Joe Krause [00:29:03]:

So good luck out there. And as always, this is just one of the many reasons why an organization can be successful with execution. And on our next episode, we're going to be digging into another aspect of what it takes to be successful in strategy execution in your organization.

Jonathan Morgan [00:29:18]:

Perfect. Well, thank you, Joe. Thank you everybody and we'll talk to you soon.

Joe Krause [00:29:35]:

Sa.