Method

How to

How to

How to

How to

How to

How to

How to

brainstorm ideas

collaborate on drafts

give and receive feedback

request and grant approvals

track progress and drive results

⚡️ Gather insights from stakeholders, consider a range of options, and then focus your team on the best solution.

A brainstorming process should involve everyone who has an interest in the problem, including those who will be involved in the implementation and anyone affected by it.

These rapid discussions can take place in-person or on a video-conferencing platform. Distributed teams frequently use shared documents to brainstorm asynchronously.

To gather the most useful responses:

Align your team to a common goal.

Establish a clear sense of the problem to be solved, centered around a single topic or metric. Competing objections within a team can slow progress and your ability to produce quality ideas.

Share a short list of open-ended questions related to the problem.

Give the group ten minutes to generate responses to these questions. Encourage them to aim for quantity and to avoid filtering their responses.

Review the results of your brainstorming sessions.

Sort closely-related responses into categories. Invite the group to vote on the options based on factors like practicality, impact, and effort required.

Identify the Approver for this decision.

Don’t devote more than two or three days to brainstorming.
Generate new ideas quickly: avoid getting bogged down in endless conversations that prevent you from moving forward.

You know you've completed a successful brainstorming process when you’ve included a diverse range of stakeholders, considered a wide range of possible solutions, and winnowed the list down to one best option.

Templates to get started:

Template: Reverse Brainstorming

Viraj Aher

Product Designer at Spotify

Template: Spotify's Remote Design Sprint

Dayana Alvarez

Product Designer at Spotify

Template: Sprint Premortem

Adam Nathan

Cofounder & CEO of Almanac

Template: Opportunity Mapping

Cait Charniga

Sr. Product Designer at Spotify

⚡️ Define the problem clearly, iterate on your initial ideas, and use version control to keep track of the history of your document.

Drafting should take place on a platform that allows for collaboration on documents. Aim to make it easy for reviewers to request feedback, approvals, and read receipts; organize and clean up comments; and make private suggestions.

With the very best collaborative tools, you can create linked versions of the main document, collaborate in real-time, track document evolutions over time, and easily merge different versions back to your main document.

To create useful drafts:

Frame the issue.

Describe the context and the pain points that make this a problem that needs to be solved as quickly as possible.

Identify your objectives.

Articulate what you are trying to achieve with as much clarity and precision as possible.

Define success.

Explain the future state for which you are aiming and how, specifically, you will know when you have achieved it.

Strive for clarity.

Support your central message with data and facts before sharing with a group.

Keep it concise.

Aim for short, direct sentences that are easy to understand. Remove filler words. Keep it simple. And use formatting to your advantage.

You know you've completed a successful drafting process when you’ve created a document that clearly presents your proposal or idea.

Templates to get started:

Template: Organizing & Collaborating

Andrew Logemann

Editor-in-Chief at Almanac

Template: Communications Charter

Lynn Mueller

Operations Manager at Workbounce

Template: Team Charter

Adam Nathan

Cofounder & CEO at Almanac

Template: Team Retrospective

Herman Slyngstadli

Senior UX Designer at Bekk

⚡️ Assess work, set goals, and provide actionable recommendations for improvement as you seek to refine a work product.

Giving and receiving feedback on work is valuable for individual development and team growth. You can provide feedback on deliverables in several forms: an in-person meeting, a video-conferencing platform, or asynchronously on the doc or item itself.

Always include a document that you can share with your team member. Use this shared document to set specific, measurable goals and regularly check in on the progress they are making. A written record, that you both contribute to, helps them grow as a performer on the team.

Here are some important steps to follow when giving feedback on your team's work:

Establish clear criteria or standards.

From the outset, make sure you have a common understanding of what will make this project a success. Establish benchmarks so you can track progress toward the end goals during the project.

Start with the positive.

Begin the conversation by highlighting something that you particularly enjoyed or thought was well-done in the proposal or document. This sets a constructive tone for the rest of the feedback.

Be specific.

Provide specific examples of what was done well in the proposal or document, as well as areas where there is room for improvement. Avoid generalizations and focus on specific elements or sections.

Make actionable recommendations for improvement.

Discuss a plan for improving the proposal or document. Set specific goals and deadlines. If necessary, suggest resources or support that could help the person improve the work.

You know you've completed a successful feedback process when you’ve shared your evaluation of where things stand, aligned on specific, measurable goals for iterating on the work, and set up a cadence for following up.

Templates to get started:

Template: Feedback Profile

Ryan Sydnor

Cofounder at Grow

Worksheet: The Build/Measure/Learn Loop

Eric Ries

CEO at The Long-Term Stock Exchange

Template: Assigning Meaning to Hard Truths

Scott Belsky

Chief Product Officer at Adobe

Guide: How to use feedback to create high-performing teams

Mark Gregory`

Sr. Content Marketing Manager at Celential.ai

⚡️ Propose ideas from your team, involve a wider range of stakeholders, and align your team around a documented, settled decision.

Structured approvals help you ensure that all of your projects meet the success criteria you have defined.

With a clear and effective approvals process in place, you can reduce the risk of errors and mistakes. Not only that, a well-designed approvals process can help you make more informed and timely decisions, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations.

To achieve faster, better approvals:

Define roles.

The recommender writes the proposal, guiding the solution through the initial discussion and drafting steps.

Team members whose feedback is necessary to vet the proposal should be consulted.

The approver makes the final call, serving as the single point of accountability, resolving any divergent feedback, and committing the team to implementing the decision.

Establish clear criteria.

Consider factors like cost, level of risk, ease of implementation, and return on investment as you review the proposal.

Set deadlines.

Specify when the approval needs to be made. Avoid both making the decision too early and foreclosing valuable possibilities, and making the decision too late and missing the window of opportunity.

Gather feedback.

Everyone who needs to provide input on the decision should have an opportunity to contribute feedback. Keep this circle of team members consulted as small as possible to avoid slowing down the decision with too much deliberation.

You know you've completed a successful approvals process when new ideas are flowing up from the relevant teams, and the Approver have the information they need to make settled decisions.

Templates to get started:

Template: Project Plan From TeamGantt

Brett Harned

Digital Project Manager

Template: Product Roadmap

Claire Price

President and CEO at Octain

Template: The Async Protocol for Decision-Making

Andrew Logemann

Editor-in-Chief at Almanac

Script: Get buy-in and de-risk your ideas

Wes Kao

Cofounder of Seth Godin's altMBA

⚡️ Keep projects on schedule, within budget, and measure the results.

A brainstorming process should involve everyone who has an interest in the problem, including those who will be involved in the implementation and also anyone who will be affected by it.

These rapid discussions can take place in-person or on a video-conferencing platform. Distributed teams frequently use shared documents to brainstorm asynchronously.

To gather the most useful responses:

Align your team to a common goal.

In a document that all team members can access, put the important dates, milestones, and deliverables in writing. Have team members update the document daily or weekly with status updates. Pay attention to whether the project is on track. Flag potential risks that may derail the project's progress.

Set up a cadence for status reports.

Weekly or monthly status reports allow you to reflect on what's going right and what could be improved. Then, apply the lessons learned to the portion of the project that’s still ongoing.

Establish accountability.

Manage implementation with tasks or processes with attached assignees. Aim for speed to insight so you can learn quickly from both failures and successes.

Communicate clearly.

Make sure everyone knows about the project and its implications for their work, both those responsible for executing it and those who simply need to be informed.

Measure your results.

Establish metrics that allow you to judge whether the project is progressing successfully and whether your team is achieve the desired results.

You know you've completed a successful progress tracking process when all stakeholders know the status and risks of all projects underway, and you can make adjustments as necessary to keep projects on schedule and within budget.

Templates to get started:

Template: Weekly Status Report

Jo Chadwick

Founder at Wonderous Consulting Ltd

Template: Workstream Kickoff

Brie Wolfson

Founder at Constellate

Template: Quarterly Business Review (QBR) Memo

Brie Wolfson

Founder at Constellate

Template: Weekly Standup

Adam Nathan

Cofounder & CEO of Almanac

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