The Fast-Start Launch
Unleashing energy from hour one
“Our team accomplished more in an hour
than it’s taken weeks to do on other projects.”
—Ideas-to-Action team leader, rental services company¹
Chapter at a glance: The success of sprint-based change hinges on one pivotal moment: a team’s first hour together. This chapter provides practical tools for launching teams that immediately tap frontline wisdom and convert it to actionable solutions. Learn how to generate, evaluate, and organize ideas for rapid implementation, setting the foundation for the accountability methods explored in Chapter Six.
Forty-five minutes into the launch meeting, silence fills the room. Team members glance at their watches. The leader feels opportunity slipping away. The hour dissolves into unfocused chatter, yielding no clear plan. Everyone leaves eager to return to their regular duties.
While Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team2 identifies trust as the foundation of team success, frontline teams face a more immediate challenge: getting off to a fast start. Think of a rocket launch—success or failure is determined in those pivotal first moments. Our work with thousands of teams revealed a surprising truth: what happens in the first sixty minutes predicts with startling accuracy whether a team will succeed or fail.
In this chapter, we show how the first two steps of the Ideas-to-Action Process ensure teams lift into “orbit” in their launch meetings, setting the stage for the individual accountability that turns ideas into action.
Ideas to Action outlines the secrets for launching employee teams into orbit in their first hour.
Find out how when you buy the book.
