Rapid Team Forming

What is it?

The Rapid Team Forming canvas is a collection of easy-to-use tools designed specifically for agile coaches, professional facilitators, consultants, and teams coming together to collaborate. It supports rapid alignment by surfacing insights about individual working preferences and the collective ways of working decisions essential for early team cohesion and effectiveness.

Structured into two distinct yet complementary sections - "Working at Your Best" and "Ways of Working Decisions" - this canvas integrates personal preferences with practical team agreements. This approach ensures clarity, reduces friction, and enhances collaboration right from the outset.

When to use it

The Rapid Team Forming canvas is ideal for:

• Team Inceptions: Accelerating early alignment and team integration, to clarify roles, expectations, and essential collaboration practices.

• Product, Project and Programme Initiations: Setting clear, collaborative working foundations from the outset.

• Remote or Hybrid Team Formations: Quickly establishing effective working methods and understanding across diverse working styles and locations.

By quickly surfacing personal preferences and aligning essential ways of working, the Rapid Team Forming canvas can create a robust foundation for immediate collaboration, reduced friction, and enhanced team effectiveness.

Working at Your Best

1. Set Up the Exercise

• Open the "Working at Your Best" section of the canvas.

• Confirm that participation is voluntary. Members can pass at any time.

2. Capture Individual Preferences

• Ask each participant to add their name on a Post-it note and place it on their designated row.

• Introduce the first Clean Language-inspired question.

• Allow participants up to 1 minute to respond individually, writing their answers on Post-it notes.

• Progress question by question, ensuring everyone completes each section before moving on.

3. Group Review and Share

• Once all questions are answered, bring all participants together.

• Review responses together, inviting voluntary sharing, discussion and curiosity.

Note: Emphasise respect for personal comfort levels in sharing information.

Ways of Working Decisions

1. Set Up the Exercise

• Explain the Decision Wheel Method (see below).

• The Decision Wheel is a simple, interactive decision-making tool used to randomly select a decision-maker ("Decider") from the names of participants added to a wheel (e.g. using an online tool like Wheel of Names).

• Team members' names are added, and the wheel is spun digitally to choose a Decider fairly and transparently, promoting inclusive participation and quick decisions.

• Confirm that participation is voluntary. Members can pass at any time.

• Add participants to the Decision Wheel.

2. Gather Ideas and Options (2 mins)

• Present the first decision to the group.

• Give participants up to 2 minutes to silently record their ideas, options, and expertise on Post-it notes.

3. Select a Decider

• Use the Decision Wheel to randomly select a Decider.

• Allow the Decider the option to either 'Play' (make the decision) or 'Pass' (trigger a re-selection).

4. Facilitate Group Discussion (3 mins)

• Provide the group up to 3 minutes for open discussion, debate, and sharing perspectives in total.

• Participants should suggest ideas to and influence Decider.

5. Make and Record the Decision (1 min)

• Give the Decider 1 minute to announce the final decision clearly.

• Ensure the decision is recorded visibly on the canvas.

• The team commits to respecting and implementing each decision until evidence suggests reconsideration.

6. Move to the Next Decision

• Repeat steps the previous steps for each subsequent decision.

Notes

• Each Decision can usually take between 5 and 10 minutes.

• Some Decisions will move more quickly than others.

• The first few decisions will [probably] go slowly as participants develop familiarity with the approach.