Professional Team Building's Last Step

Why is it a critical professional team building exercise to look back at the successes and breakdowns of every one of your plans?

When projects end in success, we often high-five and move on to the next project or task. This may be successful in the short run, but it is not sustainable over time. Taking the time to identify the gaps between the goals you set out to achieve and the position where you end up is how successful teams stay ahead in the marketplace.

In Flawless Execution, the Debrief is where the root causes of success and breakdowns are identified. Debriefing allows you and your team to iterate and achieve even higher levels of success in the future.
In this webinar, Matt “Hobo” Brady teaches you how to conduct a structured Debrief to assure your team can scale successes and eliminate failures that may have occurred during the project.

Why should we look back at the things we want to improve? Pausing to look back enables you to stay ahead of the rate of change in the marketplace. This process, what we call the Debrief, allows you to focus on sharing information and transferring it throughout your teams and organizations. The lessons learned from one team’s Debrief are shared among all teams in the organization and reduce rework to save time and advance process in a more advanced fashion.

Why Should You Be Debriefing?

Who doesn’t have the time to innovate, improve, and constantly stay ahead of the rate of change? We know the marketplace is changing faster than it ever has before. It’s changing from customer demands, supplier demands, strength and number of competitors in just about every industry. You’ll see a new startup every day trying to get a bite of the market.
Debriefing is a skill and is a deliberate practice and is the only actionable way to move from where you are to where you want to be.

Let’s say you have a group within your organization, Team A, and they spend 2 weeks solving a problem. They went through all the trials and errors, bumping through the pitfalls and learning to come out of them. After 2 weeks that have achieved their goal. Now a few months later groups B – G must complete a similar mission and they all step in the same potholes and the same pitfalls. Have you ever been on one of those teams? I’ve been on “Team F” before where half way through you’re pulling your hair out trying to figure out where the traps are and what the secrets to success are, only to find out Team A did the exact same thing a couple of months ago and didn’t spread the information; they didn’t share their lessons learned. It’s an extremely frustrating position to be on as a team member and a leader.

Flawless Execution and The X-Gap

So what is the Execution Gap? It’s the difference between what you achieved and what you expected to achieve. The gap between actual and expected results.

Think about buying a new car. You go to the dealership and test drive the car and it has a brand new, beautiful navigation system in the dashboard loaded with all the bells and whistles. The salesperson is doing a great job pitching it to you, showing you all the bells and whistles. You ask, “how will it integrate with my current phone?” and the answer is “It won’t.” The salesperson tells you how it stands on its own, it’s a unique and effective product.
But it’s not something you will use. You use your phone every day and no matter how unique and effective the navigation system is if it doesn’t integrate with your phone, it is not important to you.

In this situation, the design team believed they were very successful. They have created a state of the art navigation system that has more features than any other navigation system on the market. They made this high-end piece of equipment fit into the dash of the car. Although the design team and dealership salesperson see the navigation system as a success, they are looking from a vantage point that is less important. There is no vantage point more important than that of the buyer.
Ask yourself, “In whose eyes are we successful?” and this will be the vantage point of success that matters.

As an Executive Consultant for Afterburner, Matt trains the leaders of global organizations to utilize the same processes and techniques used by elite military teams in the high-stakes environment of combat.

A seasoned combat veteran, U.S. Army Major Matt Brady (Ret) has deployed 12 times and commanded forces during multiple high stakes conflicts including “Operation REDWINGs,” the tragic SEAL mission depicted in the movie “Lone Survivor.”

In addition to his service in the U.S. Army, Matt has served as a strategic advisor to the Co-Founder and CPO of Airbnb and project leader in the company’s internal innovation lab.