The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:20 - 00:00:30:17
Kevin Eikenberry
Leaders have been trying to unlock the potential of teams for a very long time. Today, we're going to give you some tools to help you do exactly that. Some you might know and even use. Others are likely new and will be powerful when you do use them. All will help your teams meet the moment when the moments are complex and uncertain.

00:00:30:22 - 00:00:57:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping organizations and their leaders grow and lead more effectively and make a bigger difference across their teams, communities, and the world. If you are listening to this podcast, you could join us in the future for live episodes on your favorite social platform. Find out when they're happening, what's going on, and how to do that.

00:00:57:07 - 00:01:24:00
Kevin Eikenberry
By joining us on one of our platforms where we live stream these. Just go to our Facebook or LinkedIn groups. Just go to Remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linked in two of the platforms where these live stream. If you want to get more from this episode and every podcast you listen to, download my short Practical Action guide.

00:01:24:05 - 00:01:52:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Just go to Kevin eikenberry.com/get more where you can get more from any podcast you listen to. Here we go. I'm going to bring in my guest and we're going to dive in. Her name is, Carina Ward. She is the author of the new book, Teams Who Meet the Moment. She's an organizational expert who has worked with PepsiCo, Planned Parenthood, Chanel, and more, and is a partner at Auguste at Auguste.

00:01:52:14 - 00:02:17:08
Kevin Eikenberry
She's worked with some of the largest, most complex organizations in the world to shift their everyday ways of working. Before August, her adventures included conducting research on implicit bias, helping arts organizations behave as creatively behind the scenes as they do on stage, and running social innovation labs. Her motto is get caught trying, which means she'd rather try and screw it up than not try at all.

00:02:17:09 - 00:02:29:19
Kevin Eikenberry
She lives with her partner and kids in Brooklyn, New York. And as we're doing this live, she's celebrating, surprisingly to herself, that the Knicks just won the NBA championship. Carina, welcome.

00:02:29:21 - 00:02:37:11
Karina Mangu-Ward
Thank you. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me go next. I don't care really about sports, but it has been an exciting time to watch.

00:02:37:13 - 00:02:44:17
Kevin Eikenberry
So, yeah, I'm going to correct you. You. In the past, you haven't cared about sports. But for the last few weeks you have I have.

00:02:44:20 - 00:03:06:13
Karina Mangu-Ward
Cared about towards. We'll see if the habit lasts. And let's let's talk in six months. And whether I still care about sports. But listen, watching a team of people come together like. And the thing I love is that everything Jalen Brunson talks about is about the work, the practice, the discipline. Like the magic of the of the work that's so aligned.

00:03:06:13 - 00:03:16:07
Karina Mangu-Ward
So my philosophy about all good things in life and in team work, like we have to get good at things if we want to have sustained performance. So I don't care about sports, but boy, I care about teams.

00:03:16:09 - 00:03:30:03
Kevin Eikenberry
There you go. Which is probably at some level why you wrote the book. But I want to ask you the question. In my introduction, I said a little bit about the work that you've been doing for a long time. So the question is why the book?

00:03:30:05 - 00:03:51:16
Karina Mangu-Ward
It's a good question. I'm going to answer it in two ways. One is, my business. August. We've been around for ten years, and our work for these ten years has been around helping teams inside large, complex organizations do things in a world that feels literally and metaphorically on fire. Right? The world has been chaotic and busy in the last ten years.

00:03:51:18 - 00:04:13:17
Karina Mangu-Ward
And what we've gotten really good at is helping teams thrive in the in the face of that, not just survive, but thrive. And there are certain things that we noticed over the last ten years that were the practices that we teach, that people kept coming back to us with. I'd run into someone on the street five years later and they'd say, you're the person that taught me that thing about safe to try decision making.

00:04:13:17 - 00:04:35:08
Karina Mangu-Ward
Or I still do retrospectives every month with my team. And I realized that there was a set of things that we were teaching that were so effective, so sticky, so meaningful, that I wanted to make sure that anyone on a team had access to those. So the why is like, we had all this great knowledge, and we wanted to make sure as many people had access to it as possible.

00:04:35:08 - 00:04:58:02
Karina Mangu-Ward
But the personal answer to that question is like, I've just always been obsessed with teams. I was a band kid, a theater kid, I studied psychology. I've always loved what makes it so tricky for us to work with each other and why, with this sense that it's so important that we figure out how to collaborate in this world, in our families.

00:04:58:04 - 00:05:10:12
Karina Mangu-Ward
And that's just what's in my book. I think I wake up every morning thinking about that question. What does it take for groups of people to come together and do extraordinary things? And so this book, I don't know if this book is just all about that for me.

00:05:10:14 - 00:05:13:02
Kevin Eikenberry
It started in band. So what instrument did you play?

00:05:13:06 - 00:05:30:07
Karina Mangu-Ward
Oh my God, I could go on for days. I was a clarinet player turned oboe player turned drum major of the marching band, which I will say very proudly. Yeah. I've always loved. I've always loved to be part of an ensemble. I think there's just a magic to it.

00:05:30:09 - 00:05:33:09
Kevin Eikenberry
You didn't play the oboe in the marching band. I'm here to tell you that right now.

00:05:33:15 - 00:05:35:23
Karina Mangu-Ward
I was I was playing a march in the.

00:05:36:01 - 00:05:44:20
Kevin Eikenberry
And I was in the marching band at Purdue University for two years. Played, at ball games, played at the Indy 500. Yeah, but that's not what this podcast is about.

00:05:45:01 - 00:05:47:09
Karina Mangu-Ward
It's not. It's not. Wait, what was your what was your instrument?

00:05:47:11 - 00:05:50:20
Kevin Eikenberry
I played the sax. I played all of the saxophones at one time or another.

00:05:50:22 - 00:05:53:21
Karina Mangu-Ward
I somehow can see that. I love that for you again.

00:05:53:23 - 00:06:14:21
Kevin Eikenberry
There you go. So, listen, there are nine practices. That you hinted at practices. If people knew already or were listening closely, they heard a couple of them, already. We're going to dive into some of those. We won't get to all of them. But, before we get to the practices, what would you say is the big idea of the book?

00:06:14:23 - 00:06:41:00
Karina Mangu-Ward
Yeah. You know, there's a lot of talk about performance inside organizations, what drives performance. And in the book, we break it down. It's a bit cheeky, but the section is called lies. We love. These are things were attached to and there are three. The first is we just need a better strategy. You know, the C-suite and everybody else loves to obsess over getting the right thing down on paper.

00:06:41:00 - 00:06:58:08
Karina Mangu-Ward
And we pay millions of dollars and we spend months and months crafting the perfect strategy. It's not wrong. It's just not enough. In a world that is constantly changing, it's not always about getting the strategy right. It's about building the capacity to adapt when it becomes wrong, which it always well, the second lie it right. I see you nodding.

00:06:58:12 - 00:07:01:02
Karina Mangu-Ward
It's always wrong eventually, right?

00:07:01:04 - 00:07:04:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Sometimes before we actually start using it, most of the.

00:07:04:01 - 00:07:24:05
Karina Mangu-Ward
Time before we start using it, because it took us so long to make it. So strategy is essential, but I think we need to think a lot more about like, strategy sprints and kind of ongoing strategic thinking. The second lie is superstar talent leads to superstar teamwork. I mean, how often does this happen? We obsess over getting rock stars or technical talent.

00:07:24:05 - 00:07:51:13
Karina Mangu-Ward
We have all this lingo to describe these folks. It's not that that's not great. We want people who are masters of their domain, but that does not mean that they are going to be superstar collaborators. And in modern organizations, all value is created in groups of people. Cross-Functionally, like teams, are the engine of value creation. And so a superstar who is superstar talent, who doesn't do superstar team work, is not actually going to deliver on that talent.

00:07:51:13 - 00:08:13:18
Karina Mangu-Ward
And then the last one, I think is the most insidious, which is that if we just work harder, it will lead to better results. This is the like nine, nine, six movement or like the email that goes out at night saying, hey, we're in a tough period. We just need to grind a little harder for the next three months, which turns into six months.

00:08:13:23 - 00:08:39:14
Karina Mangu-Ward
And effort matters. Hard work is important, of course, but if you're working in ways of working that are a little bit broken, it's not going to move the needle. So the big idea is that we need to hold those things as important but not essential, and recognize that exceptional teamwork that's fit for this moment is what actually is both great for outcomes, but also great for people.

00:08:39:19 - 00:08:54:04
Karina Mangu-Ward
Because how frustrating is it to go to work every day and feel stuck in the grind of tough decision making or being punished for failure or slowness? You know that it stinks for people to be in work environments like that.

00:08:54:06 - 00:09:05:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, and the thing is, you use the word grind. I often use the word busy, calling it the most dangerous four letter word in the English language because, you know, we wear that like some sort of badge.

00:09:05:17 - 00:09:06:05
Karina Mangu-Ward
Right?

00:09:06:07 - 00:09:28:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Of honor when, it activity is not the answer. A consistent. Yeah. Is the answer right. It's like the wrong it's exactly the wrong measurement. And yet that's the thing we measure because that's the thing it's easy to measure in some ways, I suppose. So there are three themes, with three practices each. And my math says that means there's nine practices.

00:09:28:10 - 00:09:47:10
Kevin Eikenberry
And so what I thought we'd do is have you outline, just tell us the three themes first, because that gives us a frame for the stuff that I'm going to then ask in the time that we have left, how does that sound? So that sounds like one what the three themes are that you have sort of framed and the team have framed the work around.

00:09:47:12 - 00:10:20:17
Karina Mangu-Ward
Yeah. So, the three themes are organizing for impact, deciding and uncertainty and designing for learning. And I'll say a little bit about each of those. So organizing I love that. I love the the lower thirds. These are so cool. So organizing for impact is all about how we organize our people and our time so that we're not just keeping busy so that we are having the intended outcome that we want to have.

00:10:20:19 - 00:10:48:18
Karina Mangu-Ward
And this requires a couple of shifts that requires us to being a little bit less oriented to hierarchy and organizing ourselves around things like the pecking order and who's been here the longest and whose formal job says they should do this and that and more around marshaling the right people in the right seats, with the right capabilities in service of our most important outcomes, and then helping that group of people move in a predictable cadence way at the at a speed that matches the nature of the work.

00:10:48:18 - 00:11:13:21
Karina Mangu-Ward
So organizing for impact is the first one deciding in uncertainty. This is hard. This is hard for us as humans to act with imperfect information and to not get stuck in analysis paralysis and kind of the swirl of looking at each other and saying, like, do we have are we okay? Can we move forward, not getting bogged down in, you know, consensus when it's not the appropriate decision making method?

00:11:13:21 - 00:11:36:08
Karina Mangu-Ward
Because so much of our decision making in these days, actually this the, the when and how we make a decision matters just as much as what that decision actually is. And we get obsessed with the what we don't pay enough attention to the how and the when. And great companies, great teams know that that really matters. And then the last one is around designing for learning.

00:11:36:08 - 00:12:00:10
Karina Mangu-Ward
And I think it's a fantasy that we can be able to get everything right the first time. I mean, perfectionism is it's everywhere drives us. We feel like it protects us. But in modern organizations, in a world that's always changing, we have to make learning not something we just talk about, but truly a habit of our everyday practice.

00:12:00:12 - 00:12:22:20
Karina Mangu-Ward
And this is easier said than done. And this is I want to say, I want to say two last things about this. These things are simple but not easy. And don't confuse those two. Right. And the other thing I'll say is, one of the reasons we wrote the book this way is there's a lot of books out there that focus on like one granular piece of each of these, and those are books that have changed my life.

00:12:22:20 - 00:12:34:12
Karina Mangu-Ward
They're really important. But there's something about the system of these nine practices together in these three buckets that we have seen really get groups unstuck with each other.

00:12:34:14 - 00:12:52:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So what I want to do in the time that we have, is talk about, at least to start with, I want to talk about one of the practices. Well, I won't I won't succeed, but what I'm going to try to do is talk about one of the practices in each of the themes, that I think might be useful, especially.

00:12:52:19 - 00:13:11:01
Kevin Eikenberry
I mean, they're all useful, of course, but that, I think are worth us spending a little time on in this setting. And the first one in the in the designing piece, the organizing piece, I want to talk about his team charters. And the reason I want to talk about it is it's in part, in part because it might be something people already know.

00:13:11:03 - 00:13:33:09
Kevin Eikenberry
In my experience, a lot of people know about team charters, and a lot of people say, hey, we did one of those ones, but that doesn't mean that they do them or do them well. So first of all, for people who may, I don't want anyone who's not heard that term or know what that means. Or once you describe it, know that they call it something else, like so tell us what a team charter is, Karina, from your perspective.

00:13:33:09 - 00:13:36:13
Kevin Eikenberry
But then I want you to say, okay, where do people mess?

00:13:36:14 - 00:13:57:02
Karina Mangu-Ward
Yeah. So Team Charter really simply is a document that describes the fundamental attributes of a team in the one that we create. That includes the purpose of the team, what they're sprinting to accomplish in the next 12 weeks, who has power. They call those decision rights. What decisions can the team make or not make? And then the roles.

00:13:57:08 - 00:14:24:03
Karina Mangu-Ward
We talk a lot in August about roles, not sales. So I mean, it's not the people but the roles that are needed to accomplish the work, right? Team charters include lots of other things, team agreements and metrics, but those four are kind of like the keystones for us. And what I think a lot of people do is write something down, because it's important to have written it down and then put it away in a closet and they'll look at it again.

00:14:24:05 - 00:14:25:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Or on a hard drive or on.

00:14:25:21 - 00:14:47:17
Karina Mangu-Ward
A hard drive or in a Google drive, like, I mean, like the metaphorical closet. And so I think that's the first thing that people get wrong. Sometimes people obsess about getting it so perfect that then it's immediately wrong because of course the work is dynamic. So I think a good team charter is like just good enough, just fast enough to get the team up and running.

00:14:47:21 - 00:15:16:02
Karina Mangu-Ward
And then it should be something that you look at like at least once a month and go, are we still steering in the right direction? Is this still? Do we need more or different roles? Are we living our decision rates right? It's a useful living document and I think that's where people get it wrong. And there's one other place where I see people get stuck a lot, which is the charter is actually most useful up front for negotiating.

00:15:16:02 - 00:15:39:05
Karina Mangu-Ward
Or one of the ways it's most useful is getting all of these senior sponsors who have their own ideas about the work on the same page, so that later on, when you're eight weeks in and some senior is like, I thought we were doing this, you could be like, we're not doing that right. So it's critical for maintaining focused, purposeful action over the course of a sprint.

00:15:39:05 - 00:15:53:19
Karina Mangu-Ward
And the last thing I'll say is be willing after 12 weeks to throw it out or start again. Right. So the mistake is thinking like, we got to run on this team charter that we wrote for a year. Work is too dynamic for that. So you got to be willing to let it go if it's not the right thing.

00:15:53:21 - 00:16:14:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Okay. So what's magical about because some people that they their, their antenna went up at the beginning when you said 12 weeks. So what's so magical about 12 weeks? And listen, my team our team's not going anywhere. It's the same group of people. We're going to be here for six, eight months, maybe not a year, but we're going to be like, why 12 weeks?

00:16:14:07 - 00:16:35:00
Karina Mangu-Ward
Yeah. What I've found is that 12 weeks and it could be 16. I mean, it could be eight, right? So it's like but there's there's a, there's it's a sweet spot there at 12, which is that's enough time for us to really learn by doing. We're going to try some stuff. We're going to get the work going. We're going to go after our outcomes, and we're not going to be sitting around talking about the work.

00:16:35:00 - 00:16:54:11
Karina Mangu-Ward
We're going to be doing it, and then we'll know whether we're headed in the right direction or not. We'll have data from our users, from our customers, from our clients. Whether what we're doing is moving the needle in some way. So there's the learn by doing piece. And then also, Kevin, I will say it's likely that in 12 weeks something will change.

00:16:54:13 - 00:16:56:22
Karina Mangu-Ward
Something is always changing.

00:16:57:04 - 00:17:15:21
Kevin Eikenberry
So so I think I think the thing that I want to highlight here before we go on is that a lot of people, when they learned about charters or when they're used in their organizations or they're used when we form a team and there's a lot of logic to that. And, you know, we've got 50 years of organizational theory about that, like when we start.

00:17:15:21 - 00:17:33:12
Kevin Eikenberry
So we get people clear of what the rules are, they clear what the agreements are like. All that makes sense. But I think what you're bringing to the party is in a world that's changing more rapidly than ever, is that they need to be living documents. But the thing I really like about what you said, and I want everyone else to really get, is, is to learn by doing.

00:17:33:15 - 00:17:39:04
Kevin Eikenberry
So, if we create a charter, we're all we're creating a charter at the beginning, when none of us really know.

00:17:39:06 - 00:17:40:04
Karina Mangu-Ward
We have a.

00:17:40:05 - 00:18:00:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Ton of room to work on a project, or to work on a thing and a stakeholder, or a boss or someone spend some time and then we're supposed to build this, which we should do. But even if things didn't change, we're going to get it wrong because we need to learn. By doing. I mean, I really love that one piece.

00:18:00:06 - 00:18:01:07
Kevin Eikenberry
It's really important.

00:18:01:09 - 00:18:11:17
Karina Mangu-Ward
Yeah, yeah. The the fantasy that we can understand things before we've started acting is a fantasy that's useful for another age. And it's not the age that we're in.

00:18:11:19 - 00:18:17:07
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm not even convinced it was it was accurate then. It's just it's just been totally exposed.

00:18:17:09 - 00:18:20:17
Karina Mangu-Ward
Yeah. Completely as a as an absolute fraud at this point.

00:18:20:19 - 00:18:43:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Right, right. So, we could talk and I might come back to cadence, before we're done, but I want us to go on. I want us to talk about deciding, in uncertainty and and, you know, I wrote a book with the word uncertainty in the title that came out last year. Same. And it's about navigating uncertainty.

00:18:43:18 - 00:19:06:12
Kevin Eikenberry
And, and the the thing that keeps coming to my head as I was listening to you talk about it, is the same thing that comes to my head all the time on this topic, and that is that there's always been uncertainty, and maybe there's more now than ever. But I love that. Now we're actually talking about it.

00:19:06:14 - 00:19:19:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, right. And we have to decide through it. We have to navigate through it. So tell me a little bit more about why specifically you guys leaned into this as one of the three things.

00:19:19:07 - 00:19:48:22
Karina Mangu-Ward
In my ten years that August, in my ten years before that, did the decision making moments where we've got to make a call and then act on it, that is the place. There's lots of other dynamics and uncertainty that we need to navigate, but that is the place that I find groups get stuck the most and have the least language skill and shared practice around.

00:19:49:00 - 00:20:23:18
Karina Mangu-Ward
It's like this little black hole in organizational life, you know? And sometimes we get hired in to do work on decision architecture and decision culture. And it's hard to figure out, like who owns decision making here, who owns improving decision making in an organization. And it lives in lots of hidden places or nobody owns it. So I think it's it's very under attended to, but highly critical thing that happens every day and every team that we're kind of unskilled at and at the, at the, at the, at the worst, we're really very bad at and get very paralyzed.

00:20:23:18 - 00:20:45:18
Karina Mangu-Ward
And at best we just lack shared practice and shared language. So a lot of what the book is trying to solve for is that shared language, shared practice. And we have these the three practices named in the book, even over safe to try and make a proposal, which to me are the three most powerful pieces of shared language that we can have.

00:20:45:18 - 00:20:48:04
Karina Mangu-Ward
They get us unstuck in those moments.

00:20:48:06 - 00:21:12:17
Kevin Eikenberry
Speaking of shared language, if there's one thing I often will say this during these let people listen to a long time will know that I often say during these conversations, the thing that I will remember longest from a specific book or conversation, and in this one it will be even over because of the language. Like you can read it, you can say it like Karina, even over what are you talking about?

00:21:12:19 - 00:21:24:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Once she explains it, everybody, you're going to get it and you're going to smile and you're going to say, yep, because this is the language we should use or is way better than the words we do use, like prioritization.

00:21:25:00 - 00:21:25:11
Karina Mangu-Ward
Yeah.

00:21:25:13 - 00:21:27:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Even over's. What do you mean?

00:21:28:00 - 00:21:51:01
Karina Mangu-Ward
And even over as an expression of one good thing that you're choosing, even at the expense of another good thing. I think one of the fantasies of prioritization is you get to choose a good thing over a bad thing. That is rarely the case in my experience. Inside organizations, we have so many wonderful things that we could do.

00:21:51:03 - 00:22:20:07
Karina Mangu-Ward
We have to choose a good thing, even at the expense of the bad thing. I'll give you like a really simple example leaders who are giving tough news to their team, they have to choose. Do I want to choose candor or comfort? And just naming before you go into a difficult conversation and saying, I'm going to choose candor, even over comfort, I'm going to say, the hard thing and the honest thing, even at the expense of everyone feeling or being comfortable with what I share.

00:22:20:09 - 00:22:46:00
Karina Mangu-Ward
That saying it to yourself and knowing that you're making a choice before you act is one of the ways that teams, groups, leaders navigate uncertainty together. But this can also apply to like very hard, hard business conversations to each other, right? Like, are we prioritizing growth on this new product or margin or is it margin even at the expense of growth?

00:22:46:00 - 00:22:54:03
Karina Mangu-Ward
And we want both things. And what I want to be really clear about this with even over, is if you can have both things, of course have them.

00:22:54:03 - 00:22:55:13
Kevin Eikenberry
It's not an even number.

00:22:55:14 - 00:23:14:15
Karina Mangu-Ward
It's not an even number. Right? You don't need the even over if you can have both things. But the even over is helpful in the moment where you have to choose. And what I love about a good even over is that it's flippable one of my favorite stories about kind of an even over operating in business is when Disney started its streaming service.

00:23:14:17 - 00:23:38:04
Karina Mangu-Ward
They were clearly prioritizing getting subscribers, and they were choosing subscriber growth even over revenue. And then at some point, that strategy flipped, right? They started charging and more and more they wanted revenue even at the expense of new subscribers. So one place where I don't want people to get stuck is to think I choose an even over, and then I'm stuck in it for the rest of time.

00:23:38:04 - 00:23:56:07
Karina Mangu-Ward
Just like the Team Charter, it's about dynamic reprioritizing based on what your context and what your business needs in the moment. And it says leaders hate this practice. I'm not going to lie, this has been one. They love it and they hate it. It's one of the hardest for them to wrap their mind around because they're like, why are you making me choose?

00:23:56:07 - 00:24:14:07
Karina Mangu-Ward
And what I want to say is, even if I don't have you have to, you have to. And also you are. You can pretend like you're not, but even if you don't state that even over, you're choosing something. And it's more confusing and disengaging for your people. If you are not explicit about what you are prioritizing at the expense of something else.

00:24:14:07 - 00:24:45:03
Kevin Eikenberry
So let's go back to candor versus comfort. Like if you don't think about that, you're going to wander around and or you're going to do one or the other and, and do neither of them. Well, yeah. And, and and when you realize, well, if you and if you take that example, anyone listening can say there have been times when I needed to make one of those choices and other times with the same person, perhaps, that I need to make the other choice.

00:24:45:09 - 00:24:53:13
Kevin Eikenberry
And that's okay, because what we're doing is trying to help us be conscious about what matters. It's all about in this.

00:24:53:15 - 00:25:13:04
Karina Mangu-Ward
Yes, I love that you're using that language because it's about making the implicit, explicit and consciously being aware and be able to describe it together. It's one of the actually the most effective managing up tools that I've seen. So I can go to a leader and say, I'm working on this project. And I am, you'll see in the choices that I've made that I'm choosing breaths even over death.

00:25:13:05 - 00:25:30:20
Karina Mangu-Ward
And that's because I think that that aligns to our business strategy. Can I check that prioritization with you? Does that seem to make sense from where you sit? So it's a way of claiming your own agency, your own ownership, making your own choices, but still getting alignment to those choices. So nobody later on can be like, why did you choose that?

00:25:30:20 - 00:25:49:14
Karina Mangu-Ward
I don't understand that. Right? And then it gives you the power to move. And what it avoids is micromanagement, because if you don't state that even over, it's much easier for a leader to have to be like, remember in this one, choose breath. Remember in this one, choose depth right? And when we align in advance, we can just run and that is powerful.

00:25:49:14 - 00:25:52:13
Karina Mangu-Ward
And engaging is good for people and good for outcomes.

00:25:52:15 - 00:26:16:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So the third theme is designing for learning. And you know, Karina, we could had a whole conversation about each of the themes. But you probably won't spend too much time with me. Three here, small batch working public retrospectives. I would really love to talk about retrospectives. The thing I want, I want to say about retrospectives that I love, and you actually said it earlier, is schedule them.

00:26:16:23 - 00:26:31:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Some people are pretty good at doing at the end of the project, we should be continuing to do them, just like we should be continuing to reflect ourselves. I love that, and I want you to talk about work in public a little bit.

00:26:31:08 - 00:26:49:06
Karina Mangu-Ward
Oh, you you misdirected me. I was all ready to talk about retro, but I do. But I do feel like there are more common practice, right? Like. And that's why. Right. And like the hell I will. Dion is frequent and often a postmortem is not a thing. Who cares? You can't learn. It's too late. In our modern world, but work in public.

00:26:49:06 - 00:27:27:20
Karina Mangu-Ward
So this is about the idea that when we share what we affectionately and August call shitty first drafts, or when we share a document that's not finished or complete, that's not polished with our teammates, that we even though that is extreme, vulnerable thing to do, getting, the shared consciousness of what I'm working on and having other people be able to see and feedback on that is the way we actually get to great results, and the fallacy that what's expected of us and what good work looks like is the grand reveal.

00:27:27:22 - 00:27:43:05
Karina Mangu-Ward
Pulling the rabbit out of the hat and being like, I went away for a month and I've brought you back this perfect project plan. And someone goes, oh, hold on, if you would talk to me a month ago, I would have told you that we already have a team working on that, or we've got a plan that a template that you can use, right.

00:27:43:09 - 00:28:05:00
Karina Mangu-Ward
So when we share, the way that this looks really simply in practice, you even at the August team, we have a slack us where we do all of our communication. I will often start a document. Let's say I'm working on our sales strategy for the upcoming, you know, quarter. I'll drop the link to that document before I've put a single thing in it, and people on my team can watch me work.

00:28:05:00 - 00:28:15:22
Karina Mangu-Ward
They can watch me build my strategy. If they happen to look at it, they can get in and leave a comment like, oh, how do you think about this? Or think about that? It's not the expectation that you're always in everybody's document, right?

00:28:15:22 - 00:28:17:01
Kevin Eikenberry
But they're available.

00:28:17:03 - 00:28:44:17
Karina Mangu-Ward
But they're available. And it is an invitation to to participate early and often. And I will tell you when I first started in August and this was our practice, I found it. It made me really uncomfortable and really nervous because I had I had kind of come up and been taught like, you're a good professional, if you can do things yourself and you can get things done and you can kind of like figure out how to soak up all the context and get things right, and it's just not the way that it is.

00:28:44:17 - 00:29:01:09
Karina Mangu-Ward
And I've seen many, many teams transition from I build a deck and then I email it to you and I pass it to you, and then you do your work in it, and then you pass it to the next one. And they do their work in it too, just working in shared documents where we can real time collaborate and see each other's work as it unfolds.

00:29:01:09 - 00:29:19:19
Karina Mangu-Ward
Now, Kevin, I'm going to make I'm going to I'm going to go down a rabbit hole for one second, which is I is destroying this for people. I have people working in private in their own little instances. And that is something that we are that we are breaking the mold on that August when we have figured out how we built our shared brain.

00:29:19:19 - 00:29:31:22
Karina Mangu-Ward
We do everything in public when it comes to AI because we can't lose this habit. We can't allow ourselves to get isolated and working alone. In the age of AI, I feel that is that is so important.

00:29:32:00 - 00:29:54:13
Kevin Eikenberry
I was glad you said that, because I was going to ask a question about that before we finished. And we're almost finished. We need to continue to move on. And, I guess I have one more question about the content, if you will, before we go on. And that is, other than having everyone in the organization get a copy of the book, teams that meet the moment, what would be your organizational next step?

00:29:54:13 - 00:30:02:08
Kevin Eikenberry
What would you recommend someone someone's listening and saying, hey, we want to start to do some of the things that Corinne is talking about. Where would you suggest they start?

00:30:02:10 - 00:30:29:08
Karina Mangu-Ward
It's a great question. I guess we always think about go where the energy is. So we, you know, most of our work that we do is with large organizations who want to transform their team in culture. And usually where we start is we pick a few kind of strategic priorities, or we know that good teaming would unlock something that really matters to us, whether it's a, you know, high priority that is totally new for us, or an important revenue generating team that is stuck in kind of in gridlock in some way.

00:30:29:10 - 00:30:48:15
Karina Mangu-Ward
And we invite them into this practice and then, you know, this is the kind of thing where you can talk and talk and talk about it, but it's best experienced. So you want to try this stuff and then start to role model it outwards. And that is what we we really take kind of like a movement methodology with this stuff.

00:30:48:15 - 00:31:12:13
Karina Mangu-Ward
It's like a magnet's not mandates. It's it's really hard to say to people you must team in a new way. It's much more powerful to just use the language, model it from the top and also show that it delivers results, which is why you want to be choosy about where you apply it, you know? But that being said, any team member in any organization can start to try these at any time.

00:31:12:13 - 00:31:31:01
Karina Mangu-Ward
And I think that what I've observed is that like excitement over new ways of working builds momentum and energy. So I would say like believe that you can spark a movement for more effective team work in your organization and just start by starting. Don't wait until you get permission. Just do it and others will follow.

00:31:31:03 - 00:31:40:20
Kevin Eikenberry
That's so. That's what I always say. A quick. One of the things we didn't talk about here is meetings, and things I say about meetings is, listen, if your meetings get better, people are going to notice.

00:31:40:22 - 00:31:42:13
Karina Mangu-Ward
Absolutely. And if you're.

00:31:42:15 - 00:31:44:10
Kevin Eikenberry
Wait a minute, what's Carina doing?

00:31:44:12 - 00:32:04:07
Karina Mangu-Ward
Yeah. And if your decision making gets better people are going to be like how do they do that? And if all of a sudden you're bringing people together for learning moments that yield real insight and actually change the way you do things going forward, people will go, I want that too. So I completely agree with you. It's the power of that.

00:32:04:09 - 00:32:16:13
Kevin Eikenberry
So I have a question now, Karina, that you knew I was going to ask because I told you, and if people who are longtime listeners know, I'm going to ask this question and it's this, what are you reading these days?

00:32:16:15 - 00:32:55:06
Karina Mangu-Ward
All right. Two things I'll say. One is I'm a massive fan of memoir. I read memoir constantly. The reason I like to read memoirs is it gives you, like, a hidden view into what, like family and life dynamics are like. Like I love seeing inside other people's worlds. So that's my answer number one. But on the, on kind of the semantics of the book, there are three books that have either come out or are coming out that I want, that I've really enjoyed or I'm anticipating the first one is getting patterns, who was written by former colleague of mine, at August Clay Parker Jones, and it's got some of the

00:32:55:06 - 00:33:18:22
Karina Mangu-Ward
same practices in it. It's even more robust set. And what excites me about it is it's good stuff. But also I love that there's a growing movement around transforming work and team work right now. If we really need it, it's right for the era. And so I'm glad that his book is out there and others. Today was Fun by Bree Groff, because my book is about sort of like the serious, like grind of teamwork.

00:33:18:22 - 00:33:36:02
Karina Mangu-Ward
And I think her book is like a push back at that, around, like, how can we be more joyful at work, and find the kind of our humanity in the day to day. And then the last one is Priya Parker wrote, the Art of gathering, but she has a new one coming out, the Art of conflict or the Art of arguing.

00:33:36:02 - 00:33:55:15
Karina Mangu-Ward
I forget what it's actually the last word is, but like, I'm very, very excited to read that because I think that how we engage in conflict is like one of the bedrocks underneath all of this, our ability to just like, disagree in a healthy and productive way with each other. So that one's on my reading list.

00:33:55:17 - 00:34:13:19
Kevin Eikenberry
We will confirm what the actual title title is. A pre Parker's new book, the Art of gathering. It's a fabulous book. We'll have all of those in the show notes. But before we go, but like a memoir, give me one that you love.

00:34:13:21 - 00:34:39:01
Karina Mangu-Ward
I read this memoir called Between Two Worlds, by. So, like, I'm not going to pronounce her name right, but we can put it in the in the show notes. About coming up, getting cancer young and then figuring out after you've survived the worst. How do you figure out how to live? And I think it's just, like, a fascinating and meaningful and just like her telling her story of, like, from so deep inside really moved me.

00:34:39:03 - 00:34:53:06
Kevin Eikenberry
We will have all of those. Everybody in the show notes. We'll also have a link to, teams that meet the moment as well. Karina, where do you want to point people, either about the book or about your work? Like where do you wanna point people before we go?

00:34:53:08 - 00:35:21:05
Karina Mangu-Ward
Absolutely. So, Argo, Agco is, my company, August Public. We have everything up there and then slash book. We've got some really great resources. You can take, teams that meet the moment, assessment that looks at, the ways in which your team is or isn't meeting the moment in these three categories. We've got a public Google Drive full of resources, including a discussion guide for the book, and practice cards associated with each practice.

00:35:21:05 - 00:35:29:16
Karina Mangu-Ward
So we really believe in, like, giving the good stuff away so that folks can have great teaming practices. So find us there Agco slash book.

00:35:29:18 - 00:35:53:14
Kevin Eikenberry
On that combed book. So before we go, everyone, the question that I will ask you as a viewer or a listener is this, you may have heard me ask it before because I ask it every week, 500 and sometimes now. Now what? It's the only question that matters at this moment. You've soaked up some of the insight and wisdom of Karina.

00:35:53:14 - 00:36:14:06
Kevin Eikenberry
You've heard our conversation. The only thing that matters is what are you going to do with what you got? Because if you don't take any action, this was little better than, I don't know, than streaming something on Netflix. Right? Like, maybe not as entertaining. More more useful, but not useful if you don't apply it. So I hope you'll ask that question.

00:36:14:06 - 00:36:27:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Now, what? And whatever that answer is for you, you go apply that thing. The sooner the better. Karina, thank you so much for being here. It's such a pleasure to have you. I enjoyed this conversation so much.

00:36:27:10 - 00:36:29:22
Karina Mangu-Ward
Thank you. Kevin, really wonderful to be here.

00:36:30:00 - 00:36:47:22
Kevin Eikenberry
So everybody, that concludes this week's episode, which simply means we'll be back next week. So if you just happen to find us for some reason, make sure you subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. And if you really love this because you're a part of multiple teams, you should share this episode or the podcast itself with others. Please do those things.

00:36:47:22 - 00:36:54:23
Kevin Eikenberry
And then when you do, you'll be back with me next week for another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. And we'll see you then.