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Team Member Selection Guide, First Team Meeting Agenda and diagnosing the work climate in the team

The two tools below are straightforward and easy to apply. They consist of a team selection guide and a possible agenda for the first meeting of the team. Their purpose is chiefly to remind managers of the key steps in selecting and preparing teams properly for the front-end of the project. Readers should take these as simple templates, which they may need to adapt or expand to their own circumstances. The third tool provides diagnosis for checking the work climate in the team. This allows the team leader to assess and intervene if necessary to make sure the team remains productive and creative throughout the early stages of the project. Here only a short introduction is given, readers need to get the questionare instrument and the accompanying manual from the original authors. The benefit of this tool is that it is designed for innovation teams.

Tool One: Team Member Selection Guide

Step 1: Decide the focus of the Project

Is the main challenge the customer, development or appropriation? What is the likely need for major changes to the organization? If there is more than one challenge, what is the balance between them?

Step 2: Identify a Pool of Potential Team Members

With the focus of the project in mind, identify a pool of potential team members. This should be significantly larger than the size the firm envisages for the core team. It might also include people outside the division or business unit, consultants or facilitators. Make sure the pool includes some managers known for creative thinking or unusual views on the business. Make sure the pool contains not only those with previous experience of innovation, but also some managers who would benefit from learning more about innovation.

Step 3: Give Each Potential Member a Score out of 10 on the Following Attrubutes

1. A set of perspectives or mental models thought useful to the project. For example, marketing, finance and IT. Or customer, employee and partner.
2. Potential to be an ambassador or spokesperson for the project.
3. Their fit with the primary focus of the project (and if necessary secondary focuses).
4. Experience with innovation projects or important tools the team may use
5. Motivation to succeed and potential to learn.
6. Ability to work in teams.
7. Any other attribute the firm thinks important.

Step 4: Remove Weak Candidates and Choose the Best Combination of the Rest

This is the difficult step. The scores on the various attributes should not be used mechanically. Rather they provide summary profiles of the potential members to help discussion. These can be presented as ‘snake-plots.’ The leader and sponsor should then use these profiles to look at possible teams.

To make this task manageable they may first remove any weak candidates. In doing this, they should take care not to remove unusual views or people without experience. A weak candidate is someoene with a clear strenght on one attribute but weak on others may still be a candidate for the team.

They can then assemble the remaining candidates into several hypothetical teams for debate, winnowing this down to the two or three teams they prefer. They can discuss these teams with other executives and senior managers to make the final choice.

Step 5: Revisit at Gate 3

At the minimum, the firm should revisit team membership after Gate 3 approval. The nature of the project changes once the innovation goes into development and so the team’s composition may also need to change. The leader and sponsor can apply a similar procedure for adding new members or replacing existing members.

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