Roles and responsibilities fail: when a team play doesn't meet your expectations

[Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_]

Failure is always a chance for learning, right?

I recently joined a team that's been going through a lot of change: changing team members, skills, objectives, and as a result it wasn't clear who was responsible for what going forward.

I thought running the Roles and Responsibilities play would help clarify what 3 of us on the team would be responsible for.

We got started listing the roles on the team, like Product Owner and Product Marketing Manager, and after going through the play we realized we were rather aligned with the tasks.

Except what what we all thought of as the responsibilities for the roles did not match what people thought THEY were responsible for (or had the time/capacity to be responsible for).

So we had some very nice job descriptions that didn't match the actual roles within the team. 🤦‍♀️

Retrospectively for our team it would have been more useful to start out putting people's names and not their roles to list out the responsibilities, but that's against the recommendation of the play.

Here are my asks:

• how have you attempted to mitigate the risk of choosing a play that doesn't work for your team structure?
• stick to the script or seat of the pants: do you think running a successful play is more likely if you try to really follow it closely, or is it better to adapt as you go along?
• has anyone integrated some improvisation or creativity steps when running a play to make it better match the needs of the team?

Bonus points if anyone has a team play fail they're willing to share 😉

[Amanda Barber]

Great topic, @Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_ - For my team, it's always best to tweak the plays to suit our needs. I don't think any play can be one-size-fits-all. I do like to be very prepared - to the point that I can adapt on the fly.

I'd recommend this video for some helpful tips, too! https://www.linkedin.com/events/teamplaybooklive-clarifyingrole7114947931429814275/comments/

I like starting my plays with an ice breaker of some kind to get people warmed up. I also highly recommend doing prework and preparing folks for what you'll be doing so they have an idea of what they're "walking" into. Hope that helps!

[Dave Mathijs]

Hi @Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_ , thanks for sharing your feedback and findings on this play.

Our team had some difficulties completing this play as we weren't able to time box it properly.

Too many discussions about which responsibilities belonged to which role etc.

But in the end, I'm glad we got the conversation going and put all the pieces of the puzzle together ...

Don't hesitate to get in touch with me directly to further share insights.

[Sven Peters]

Thanks @Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_ for sharing your experience with the Roles and Responsibilities play. This is super insightful.

The plays in the team playbook have been tested with many teams. We recommend adopting them to your team’s needs, structure, and organizational culture. 

I love your findings, especially the following:

• Your job descriptions didn't match the job you were doing. Fixing those helps clarify expectations from other teams and maybe even the leadership team.
• You clarified the responsibilities for you and others. Discussing this as a team and clarifying who’s responsible for what is essential. Especially writing it down and reviewing it is a good exercise vs. talking about it or assuming everyone knows it.
• The play didn't fit your team. So you tweaked it. Congrats on going with what your team needs instead of following a process that Atlassian has written down. For example, I don't know any team that is doing Scrum after the books. 

Keep the feedback coming. We would love to learn from your experience to help more teams understand their roles and responsibilities. 

[Mark Cruth]

I absolutely LOVE this story because IMO the play worked exactly how it was intended to work @Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_ ! You might have had a rougher go at it because of the big disconnects, but the goal of the play is to show those disconnects. Amazing work helping your team see this 🎉

Love the thoughts and advice from Amanda, Dave, and Sven. The only thing I'll add is the goal of the play is getting to the outcome vs following the steps. The steps represent one way you can go about it, but if you can get to that outcome in a unique way that fits your team, do it and share what you do (we're always looking for new facilitation ideas!). 

As for failures, for me I ran a Goals, Signals, and Measures play with a team last year that completely BOMBED! I came in assuming the team already had some idea of what they were attempting to do and why, and they just needed some structure to create goals...not the case. After 30 minutes of going nowhere, I was like "This isn't working..." and ultimately ended the meeting early and gave the team some homework to identify their vision/mission before we could start creating goals. We did two additional sessions to better align on vision/mission before heading into goals, and the second attempt went MUCH smoother. 

[Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_]

@Mark Cruth Thanks for the support! I think my rule following side got the better of me, and I'll definitely try to focus on the outcome over checking the boxes of the steps next time.

[Dave Mathijs]

@Sven Peters and @Mark Cruth These team shaping plays are very valuable and I would definitely recommend EVERY team doing them. Thank you both for spreading the word and appreciating our feedback, it really means a lot! 

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for your thoughts and candor on this topic, @Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_ 

I have participated in discussions where facilitators tried to precisely follow a script, such as for some Six-Sigma and Lean workshops...or where an inexperienced facilitator tried a "new method", and often people participating felt boxed-in, confused, unheard, and didn't achieve their outcomes...or the team missed seeing opportunities which appeared. 

Scripts are a helpful tool, yet teams have people, and those often require more adaptive methods of support...and honestly if there was one way to do everything for every team we would all be doing it by now  :^)

Drawing a parallel to when I help teams with retrospectives or larger workshops, I always have multiple plans in mind, and anticipate decisions points when I know it is time to pivot.  And when it seems the participants start down another path during the session, we pause to ask: "is what we are doing / discussing now more valuable than what we were planning to do?"  Together we can then decide how to proceed.

Regarding roles and responsibilities, my variations include a mapping of "what does our team need to accomplish / support" and individuals adding "how can I help in any of these, or other areas".  These may reveal that what we thought were the containers for roles and responsibilities are different for this team, and once adjusted we are better able to define expectations, staffing needs, and supporting feedback / accountability methods.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_]

I think if I do the play again, I'll start with something similar to your idea of "what does our team need to accomplish"

[Walter Buggenhout]

Love the post, @Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_ and all comments below.

I am a big supporter of keeping the desired outcome in mind, no matter what play or workshop you are trying to run.

Specifically when it comes to roles and responsibilities, in my experience these are very often originating from job descriptions formally conceived by people not doing the actual daily work, they get outdated or sometimes they simply don't exist (well, they do in people's minds, but they are not shared). It is great if you can have the openness and the buy-in to discuss them and tweak them to reality, primarily to get clarity on who can take ownership of what, where you can find help or influence. And as our environment is under constant change, do this again every now and then.

I might also add that I believe having a strong facilitator is an important factor to success. When you notice early on that you need to bend the scenario to reach your goals, it takes empathy, experience and skill to keep the team's eyes on the prize!

[Mohamed Riza _ServiceRocket_]

Most of the times, the plays are well thought of and do work great than you doing all the thinking from scratch. However, I do agree that this may not work a 100% with your team and you may tweak and makes changes to the play as you see fit for your team. 

[Tim Kopperud]

Hi @Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_, great post. 

What I find interesting in your post is the gap you actually identified about the "roles vs. people" even though the play didn't suit your exact expectations which led you to the three questions. 

So, just my initial thought is; "did it actualy fail?", or "gave the play valuable insights about an unknown gap?".

Since you run the play within a newly changed team and say "...as a result it wasn't clear who was responsible for what" in combination with your question "...mitigate the risk of choosing a play that doesn't work". Have you evaluated that your findings might highlight that your current team structure is not ideal? On the play there are a few tips on the right side e.g. "Tip: Agree to disagree" and "Tip: Review" which leads to follow-up sessions and subsequent play runs. I mean, you might try to adjust the team role structure slowly in incremantal steps toward a place where roles and responsebillities are instantly clear and the time/capacity problem is solved, which I think is an important goal. It would be exciting to hear how a later run of the play goes. 

TimK. 

[Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_]

You're right @Tim Kopperud that the play gave great insights into the unique way the company organizes roles and responsibilities. I already had thoughts about how the current team structure was not ideal, so the play helped prove that in a certain way.

I think if I run it again at a later time, I will not use formal roles, but people's names since there is not a strict demarcation between who does what (people can be halfway between two "official" job titles), and I might start out by asking everyone to list the things that need to get done and then mapping them to the people they think do them. We focused on what each role should do and failed to identify unmet responsibilities, which might be easier to think of when starting from the question "what needs to get done" versus "what should each person do".

[Andy Gladstone]

@Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_ I really don't have much else to add. The experts have already provided some pretty great feedback. I just needed to post to tell you I appreciate the vulnerability you displayed in drafting a post that was not just another success story but a retrospective on your experience that we can all learn from when trying to run any play or practice with our teams. I'd love to hear how things are going and if you have made any progress in achieving the goals with your team you intended to reach through this play.

Keep being awesome!

[Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_]

@Andy Gladstone Thanks for the support! I'm trying to be more agile and adaptive now since that seems to be the best way forward with the team, instead of trying to focus on formal descriptions. I'm trying to convince myself that playing it by ear and adapting as we go is the way to feel free!

[Varunish Garg]

Seeing your own team fail at delivery the commitment is truly a heart breaking event. 

[Aaron Geister]

This was a great read and also great reminder that its okay if we do fail to understand our own role(s). I don't have any specific examples to share today but definitely going to try and weave in a roles and responsibilities play as our team grows.

I think with what I am reading it would be helpful either way success or fail and seems like a win win for a team to uncover each team members own thoughts on their won roles and responsibilities.

Thanks much for the read.

[HIMANSHU KUMAR]

Thanks @Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_ for sharing your experience, it would be a great exposer for the teams. We would love to learn from your experience to help more teams understand their roles and responsibilities.

[Josh Shepherd]

Sometimes when talking about R&Rs we get mired in details and it becomes personal rather then talking about business structure. If everyone comes with honesty and from a place of trust then the conversations can be very productive.

I love starting with the assumption that, "Everyone is amazing. Amazing at who they are, what they know, and what they can accomplish. There are business processes and definitions that can help us be better together." Starting from that mindset, and reminding everyone to go back to that first axiom whenever we get off track.