What is Strategy Teaming?

In its most basic form, Strategy Teaming is when a group of people get together, sketch out their situation, and use that sketch to inform in-depth conversations about what’s wrong and what to do about it.

Teaming, as defined by Amy Edmonson, is “teamwork on the fly.” Strategy Teaming, then, is teamwork on the fly about issues of strategy, however that may be defined in your organization.

Imagine a diverse group of professionals coming together to work on an important strategic challenge. They may know each other well, or they may have never worked together before. Regardless, they do their best to understand the situation together and decide what must be done.

Typically, one person will lead the conversation or facilitate a workshop-like process. A second person will record the outputs of the process, often updating the sketch (be it a drawing, a document, or any other kind of shared artifact). Everyone else participates in the discussion, offers suggestions, raises questions or objections, and negotiates to make sure the sketch makes sense and is reasonably correct according to their understanding. The roles may rotate, either as the conversation or process naturally ebbs and flows, or in a timeboxed fashion (e.g., every ten minutes). Less formal versions are also effective.

The name Strategy Teaming is inspired by Software Teaming, written by Kevin Meadows & Woody Zuill. The name of that work is itself inspired by Teaming, written by Amy Edmondson. Affirmed through conversations with Zuill, we decided to follow a similar pattern and call our facilitation-centered, whole-team approach for strategy, Strategy Teaming.