Four Rules For Fast Teams

Fast Company had an interesting article titled, Four Rules For Fast Teams that gives some guidelines for how to lead a team that is moving at a high speed toward a very tight deadline. 

In the spirit of creating missional velocity, here are four rules for leading fast teams and a few comments on how the team at Community Christian Church applies this: 

1. LET THE GROUP MAKE IT'S OWN RULES.  I hate to create policies.  I had someone tell me "policies are what we create when we can not create a culture strong enough to get people to do what we want."  We have a mission to accomplish and and everything is subservient to accomplishing the mission Jesus has given us.  Our team understands clearly the mission and they make up most of thier own rules.

2. SPEAK UP EARLY AND OFTEN.  Jon and I often will say to one another, "OK we are not having this conversation again...what are we going to do to change it?"  We refuse to get stuck and stay stuck.  And if you are stuck get help and get it quick. 

3. LEARN AS YOU GO. Every week we evaluate every aspect  of what happened the previous weekend.  Excellence is not a destination and leaders are learners. 

4. FAST HAS TO BE FUN.  CCC is a fun place to work!  When people ask me what I do for fun one of the things that I want to say is, “I work.”  It’s not that I don’t have outside interests, it’s just that at CCC we’re not sure when the fun stops and the work begins, or when the work stops and the fun begins . . . something like that.  Eric likes to call what we do “recess”.  Fun is a must...and for 17 years it has been fast and fun!

Comments

[Sean Michael Murphy]

sounds like a great place to work...here's hoping others take your lead

[Mark Howell]

Good stuff. Thanks for the link!

[Glen Wagner]

Hi Dave,

Is it fair to say that the only policy you have is not to have any policies?

In some groups I work with that eschew policies I am finding that it can create bottlenecks and become an unspoken control mechanism. One client of mine "hates to create policies" same as you.

However when his teams get bogged down in decision making there is an escalation to the exec team for final decision. This is true in areas like budgeting, expense reimbursement, hiring and new initiatives. The exec agenda then gets hijacked by tactical discussion instead of strategic / future thinking they need to focus on. They have since created a handful of simple policies that have streamlined certain processes and actually increased the effectiveness of the whole organization.

If you thought creating a policy could help make CCC more effective at HPFTWBTG would you go for it?

Thanks Bro. Keep writing good stuff.

Glen

[Dave Ferguson]

Glen, good point. I agree - the "we don't have any policies" policy can actually be a way to control the organization by making sure that the exec/CEO gets to control everything. Good stuff.