The Joy of Teamwork

Recipes for Courageous Collaboration

Recipes for Courageous Collaboration

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Main Content

5 Key Muscles & Mindsets

Take the Team Health Check to assess your team's five key collaborative muscles — then get tailored practices that can help.

Purpose

1) PURPOSE

Your WHY. Unlock meaning and set smarter goals.

agility

2) AGILITY

Your HOW. Hack the hamster wheel and get more done.

empathy

3) EMPATHY

Your WHO. Understand and delight the people you serve.

trust

4) TRUST

Your PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY. Boost brainpower and creativity.

openness

5) OPENNESS

Your TRANSPARENCY. Help others help you.

scan

TEAM HEALTH SCAN

Not sure where to begin? Take the Team Health Scan to get started.

These techniques have transformed the way we work. Bianca MugyeniBianca Mugyeni

A master class in agile team management.EmilyEmily Goligoski

The missing owner’s manual for anyone who leads or works in teams.Phillip SmithPhillip Smith

Better teamwork

Matt Thompson is obsessed with better teamwork and healthier organizations. He teaches agile teamwork and collaborative leadership practises that help busy people become happier and more effective at work. A former Senior Director at the Mozilla Foundation, he's the author of The Team Health Handbook (coming in 2023), a cookbook for healthy, high-performing teams.

Want to read an excerpt from my book?

I'm sharing free excerpts from The Team Health Handbook, a cookbook for healthy, high-performing teams. It's a collection of meeting hacks, team recipes and agile techniques anyone can use to run better meetings, work smarter together and make life more sane.

Stealing from the best of agile, "working open," organizational psychology, self-management practices, and ancient Buddhist warrior monks (just kidding), it's like mixed martial arts for healthy, high-performing teams. Join my newsletter for exclusive sneak peeks. (NOTE: may contain occasional swearing and/or typos.)

Team Health Practices

POP: Strategic planning in 60 seconds or less

POP stands for "Purpose, Outcome, Process," a ridiculously simple tool for adding clarity to chaos, designing better meetings, and bringing wayward projects back on track. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. (Read more.)

Retrospectives: the one meeting technique you can’t live without

This scientifically-designed meeting recipe -- used by everyone from Navy SEALs to "Teal organizations" to agile software developers -- is arguably the fastest, easiest way to improve literally anything. (Read more.)

OKRs: how to set smarter goals (using both sides of your brain)

Don't let the Dilbert-ish acronym fool you: OKRs (or "Objectives and Key Results") are like the perfect mix of chocolate and peanut butter. A simple template for setting better teams goals, OKRs draws on both sides of your brain -- mixing qualitative with quantitative, inspiring with specific, and big picture goals with short term results. (Read more.)

DARCI: hack hierarchy and avoid human pile-ups

DARCI (which stands for "Decider, Accountable, Responsible, Consulted, Informed) is a simple way to avoid Death by Org Chart and set clear roles in a more human, fine-grained way. It's perfect for ensuring accountability, avoiding managerial bottlenecks, and unlocking the benefits of "fluid hierachy" in a practical way. (Read more.)

The Heartbeat Technique: work in rhythm to overcome busyness and burnout

Prioritize, execute, improve. That's all that great teams really do, over and over and over again. By creating a predictable rhythm and ritual for doing these things well, your team can overcome the curse of chronic juggling, burnout and brain fry. (Read more.)