Tension and Practice

Instructions for use

STEP ONE

— 5 min.

Gather your team around a table or shared space. Put the practice cards aside and begin with the tension cards in front of you.

STEP two

— 30 min.

As a group, consider and discuss each tension in the deck and select the top 5-7 tensions for your team or organization. Devise your own method for review and prioritization. Be creative. Take care to ensure all voices are heard. Discard all but your top tension cards for future rounds of play.

STEP three

— 15 min.

Take turns drawing one card at a time from the practice deck and either a) pair it with a tension it may help address, or b) discard it face up. Discuss and debate your choices as you make them. Feel free to pair more than one practice with any one tension. For more information about the practices, explore the list below.

STEP Four

— 5 min.

Ask each participant to choose a tension they’d like to address. If two or more participants select the same tension, they can work together.

STEP Five

— 30–45 min.

‍Ask each sub-team to design an experiment based on the tension they selected, the associated practices, and their own intuition. Allow ample time for experiment design. Encourage everyone to start small.

STEP Six

Invite each sub-team to propose their experiment and seek the consent (not to be confused with consensus) of the broader group. Proposals that are deemed safe-to-try by the group require no further approval. The sub-team should commit to a first action for moving the experiment forward, and the results should be shared transparently in real time. Congratulations, work will never be the same again.

Experiment template

TENSION

What is your tension? Share a story that brings it to life.

PRACTICE

What do you propose we try? What is your hypothesis?

PARTICIPANTS

Who will be involved? What are they committing to?

DURATION

How long will the experiment last? When will you conduct a retrospective to collect perspectives and learning?

LEARNING METRICS

How will we know if it was beneficial or harmful? What stories do you hope to hear?

REQUIREMENTS

What do you need—in terms of resources, space, supplies, support, and funding—to conduct the experiment?

Criteria for a good experiment

Can be done in 8 weeks or less
Is within your control
Is financially and culturally safe-to-try
Addresses a shared tension while not necessarily solving it
Tests some kind of actual change in the organization (as opposed to creating a plan)

Explore the practices

If you looked at any of our practice cards and wondered, ”What does this even mean?” you’re not alone. That’s why we’ve gone ahead and linked an article (either written by us or by others) to every practice to help elaborate on each one’s meaning.

Craft a clear and compelling purpose for the organization

Craft a clear and compelling purpose for every team and every role

Ask teams to share their essential intent for the next six to 24 months

Clarify the metrics that matter and use them to steer

Recognize and celebrate noble failure

Replace “Is it perfect?” with “Is it safe-to-try?”

Give everyone the freedom to choose when, where, and how they work

Clarify the decision rights held by teams and roles

Use the concept of a waterline to create guardrails around both team and individual autonomy

Start distributing authority to the edge of the organization

Crowdsource and eliminate policies and processes that no longer make sense

Start by stopping a meeting, process, or habit that is holding you back