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How to align with your purpose

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Use these tactics

Create a shared vision

Instil values for your vision

Help your team make decisions

Move your vision to execution

Let’s explore these tactics with an example: Pip’s Creative Agency

The agency aims to align its interdisciplinary creative team with a shared purpose, so everyone understands their role and the bigger picture. See below how Pip’s Creative Agency uses these tactics to solve their challenge.

1

Use Team Vision to create a shared vision

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⏱️ Time: 1 hour

🧠 What’s the goal? Create a shared vision to inspire and give high-level guidance to your teams.

👀 Why is this important? This tactic is the why. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Your vision should be what makes your team want to get out of bed in the morning.

💡 Tip: “The vision is a stake in the sand with a giant flag on it, big enough for everyone on the team to see and march towards.” – Jared Spool

Instructions

  1. Think about the impact that your team’s work will have on your customers’ lives in 12 months’ time. Individually, answer these questions and afterwards discuss as a team: (20 minutes)

    • By choosing our product/service, our users (customer type) will have the ability to… (change)

    • How will their lives have changed? What will they be able to do that they can’t do now? (change)

    • If we achieve the above, how will our users feel? (emotion)

  2. You should now have the ingredients to write a Team Vision. Use your elements of emotion, people, and the change to build your vision. For example, Team Tactics’ Team Vision could be: (15 minutes)

    We tap into today’s social currents to create campaigns that invoke awe (emotion) for brands (customer) that become movements of social and positive commercial growth (change).

  3. Now say it out loud: does it sound awkward? Revise it. Memorable? Good. Like a person would say in a conversation? Perfect. (15 minutes)

    ⬇️ In the next tactic, keep your team vision visible for all to see, as you open up the discussion on Team Values.
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2

Use Team Values to instil values for your vision

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⏱️ Time: 45 minutes

🧠 What’s the goal? Instil values that help you achieve your vision.

👀 Why is this important? The tactic while your team vision gives your employees a destination, your team values help them forge the path to get there. Starbucks focussed their values around spaces with comfortable chairs, power outlets and tables at which people can work. The coffee was incidental. Find the values your team really works to, and the rest will fall into place.

💡 Tip: it is so important that you make sure your team is able to Active Listen to each other.

Instructions

  1. As a group, discuss the following questions, then spend time individually answering them: (10 minutes)
    -What values will help us to go further? 
    -What values do people show that inspire you the most in our team? 
    -How are we different from other teams?
  2. Use Theme Sort to group the answers by values. Then Private Vote to decide the top values you’d like to keep.

  3. Ask everyone to summarise what each of these top value means to them in one sentence. For example, for respect: focus on the person speaking fully with your body and focus and you will both take away a lot from your conversation and make the other person feel respected.

  4. Share, discuss and then Private Vote on which explanation to adopt for each of your new values.

    ⬇️ In the next tactic, you will use your team values as a foundation to build your Team Strategy.
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3

Use Team Strategy to help your team make decisions

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⏱️ Time: 1-2 hours

🧠 What’s the goal? Help your team make decisions and give purpose and the autonomy needed to get stuff done.

👀 Why is this important? This tactic helps your team make decisions, and give them the purpose and autonomy needed to get stuff done. Aligning your team’s strategy to existing company goals is not only important, but essential for the organisation to pull in the same direction. When the direction is clear – you’re happy, your team is happy, and so is your organisation.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

💡 Tip: focus on one change, then repeat steps 1-5 for each additional change you want to address.

Instructions

  1. Put on display the top values you voted on in the last tactic. (5 minutes)

  2. List the most immediate tasks you could do to create that change. (5 minutes)

  3. What will be different once things have changed? What are two of the benefits (‘whys’) of the tasks you listed? For example: we’ll spot issues earlier, cutting down on repeat work. (10 minutes)

  4. How will this change the course of your team? What’s the outcome of the two benefits you listed? For example: improve internal collaboration to give us more time to focus on what matters. (10 minutes)

  5. Summarise your responses to steps 1–4 in the following order. (15 minutes)

    • What’s the desired end-state? (E.g., great collaborative environment so we can focus on what matters to our users.)

    • What will be different?(E.g., team will be ready and prepared for new employees)

    • What needs to change?(E.g., improve onboarding documents and communication.)

    • How will we do it? (E.g.,buddy system and updated onboarding)

       
      ⬇️ In the next tactic, you will focus on Design Principles, now that you have built up your foundational team strategy.
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4

Use Decision Stack to move your vision to execution

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⏱️ Time: 1 hour

🧠 What’s the goal? Connect the dots between vision and execution to keep your team aligned.

👀 Why is this important? This tactic will answer these two questions: Where are you going? How will you get there? Use this framework to tell the world about your team’s intentions. Identify gaps in your strategy to create alignment and give your team guided autonomy to do their best work. The decision stack provides guided autonomy for your team.

💡 Tip: it’s okay to have Decision Stacks for different teams, although ultimately they should be aligned in some areas.

Instructions

  1. Gather your team’s vision, strategy, principles and objectives from the previous activities (and anywhere else you might find them).(10 minutes)

  2. Sketch out the decision stack framework and fill in the details with the information you have gathered. (5 minutes)
  3. Discuss each section using the following prompts and make changes to your decision stack as you go.(40 minutes)

    Vision (Where we are going)
    Is it concise, clear and customer centric? Does it set an audacious goal? Does it avoid detail?

    Strategy (How we get there)
    Is it based on current reality? Does it tackle challenges? Does it outline value to your customers? Include coherent actions? Emphasise focus over compromise?

    Objectives (Our measurable steps)
    Are they qualitative, inspirational, time bound and actionable?

    Opportunities (The best bets)
    Are these your riskiest assumptions? Will they bring the most impact?

    Principles (Make great design decisions)
    Do they allow you to make decisions? Do they describe how you want to build your product? Are they specific to your company?
  4. Share your decision stack where your team and others can see it. This document shows how your principles guide your team to make the most of the opportunities available to meet their objectives, in line with the strategy and company or team vision.(5 minutes)

    ⬇️ Now that you have completed all four tactics, keep going. This is something you should keep doing regularly, as needed.
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What ways can I use this recipe?+
  • Over multiple days: four short sessions, about 1 hour each.
  • Full-day experience: two two-hour session with a longer break in the middle.
What do I need before I start?+

In person

  • Prepare (book room, invite people, write and share agenda)
  • Materials (whiteboard, sticky notes, pens)
  • Tech check (charger, adapter, screen projector)
  • Room (refreshments, temperature, chairs, wall space)

Hybrid

  • Prepare (book room, send call link, invite people, write and share agenda)
  • Materials (whiteboard, sticky notes, pens, Miro board)
  • Tech check (charger, adapter, screen projector)
  • Room (refreshments, temperature, chairs, wall space)

Online

  • Prepare (invite people, write and share agenda, create and send call invite)
  • Materials (Miro board)
  • Tech check (charger, adapter, microphone/headphones)
Extra reading+
What next?+

Congratulations, you have completed your How to Align with your Purpose recipe! You have now connected the dots from vision to execution. Your team has a clear vision, values, strategy and principles.

Now that you’ve aligned your team, you can let them know their impact and value with How to Value Your Team recipe.

Do you have questions, tips or tricks, etc? Join our Slack community of over 18,000+ professionals.

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