NAVRESFORCOM N5 INNOVATION

10/19/2018

2018Leadership Toolkit for Building High-Performance Teams

1U.S Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Joshua Mcalpine/Released

The U.S. Navy is one large team. A team united and working towards a common goal – to maintain, train and equip combat-ready naval forces capable of winning wars, deterring aggression and maintaining freedom of the seas. This team is made up of many smaller teams deployed or training globally 24/7 – fleets, squadrons, ship’s crew, departments, divisions, task groups, platoons etc. Teams accomplish their goals not only because of the manning they bring to swarm problems, but also because each individual brings a unique perspective and background and thus can enhance creativity and problem solving.

Teams are led – not managed. General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal says leadership is co-produced from members of a team and “leading is more about being part of a feedback loop within a system than it is about being at the top of a command chain.” Leaders maximize performance and keep an organization agile – able to adapt to ever changing environments, threats, requirements, technologies, and competitors. This can only be done by providing and seeking feedback from both team members and “customers” (COCOM, Commander, Task Group Commander, etc.). A feedback loop must be continuous and deliberate.

This Leadership Toolkit contains recommended Department of Defense and open source industry best practices that enable organizational agility. The intent of the toolkit is to provide team and leadership resources that are scalable and simple to implement.

Naval Agility Campaign defines an agile organization as,

“a human-centered and technologically-driven system that is specifically designed and developed to sense rapid and complex environmental change, to adeptly anticipate the impact and implications of change, and to efficiently and effectively adapt to continuously create warfighter value and sustain competitiveness.”

Table of ContentsExample Debrief Technique.......................................................................................................5

The Benefits of Psychological Safety.........................................................................................6

Leadership Behaviors for Cultivating Psych Safety...................................................................6

a. Be accessible and approachable....................................................................................6

b. Acknowledge the limits of current knowledge.................................................................6

c. Be willing to display fallibility...........................................................................................6

d. Invite participation...........................................................................................................6

e. Highlight failure as learning opportunities.......................................................................6

f. Set boundaries................................................................................................................6

g. Hold people accountable for transgressions...................................................................6

Scrum – The Way Teams Work....................................................................................................7

Example of Effective Daily Scrum/Standup/Meeting:.................................................................8

a. Big Picture (e.g. time hack, date, who are we?)..............................................................8

b. Review the Sprint, Iteration, or Overall Objective...........................................................9

c. Identify threats and impediments....................................................................................9

d. Execution plan. What are we doing today?....................................................................9

e. Flexibility/Contingency Plan and Parking Lot..................................................................9

f. Retro or Debrief event (Micro-Debrief)............................................................................9

Lean Coffee: Running an Agenda-Less Meeting.........................................................................10

Science of Teamwork – How teams work...................................................................................11

Red Teaming...............................................................................................................................12

Advanced Leadership and Teaming Topics................................................................................13

Human Centered Design.........................................................................................................13

Cynefin.....................................................................................................................................14

Weak Signal Detection using Narrative...................................................................................15

Appendix 1: Red Teaming Techniques.......................................................................................16

1-2-4-Whole Group..................................................................................................................16

Tool: 4 Ways of Seeing............................................................................................................17

6 Empathetic Questions...........................................................................................................18

5 Whys.....................................................................................................................................19

Bibliography.................................................................................................................................23

Effective Debriefing—Accelerate Learning Using Lessons from TOPGUNA debrief is a facilitated or guided dialogue where a team can reflect on team performance. Debriefing is the most critical team lifecycle event and recent research indicates that teams that follow a structured debriefing approach outperform other teams by an average 25%.1 By following an effective debrief approach, teams build situational awareness, improve their teaming or teamwork interaction skills, they are able to self-correct, transfer knowledge, and develop accountable leaders who learn how to foster psychological safety.

In industry, debriefs go by different names: retrospectives, After Action Reviews (AARs), post-mortems, and critiques. Current industry debrief approaches range from unstructured conversation that often lead to blame to highly structured approaches that resemble a Navy Fighter Weapon School debrief. The former is to be avoided and latter is an example of the most effective.

Debriefing is a skill that can be learned. Researchers that studied debriefing in the aviation community recognized that “simply having good interpersonal skills and technical competence does not ensure that a person will lead an effective debrief.”2 Effective debrief training is one of the evidence-based best practices recommended by experts in the field of human factors.

Evidence-based Best Practices for Debriefing3

Before a Debrief Train leaders on how and why to lead a debrief. Ordering the fleet to follow Plan, Brief, Execute, Debrief (PBED) is not enough.

Build teams through Team Training Intervention (The “Science of Teamwork”)

Show leaders and teams how to foster Psychological Safety

During a Debrief Do

Solicit multiple perspectives (what happened)

Separate outcomes from decisions made

Avoid

Focusing on Task work

Telling not discussing

Conduct debriefs early and often; as close to “Execution” in PBED.

After a Debrief Follow-up on action items. Make them visible and track progress.

Holding debriefs only after something went wrong may negatively

Conduct periodic debriefs that are fit for purpose.

1 Tannenbaum, S.I. & Cerasoli, C.P. (2013). Do team and individual debriefs enhance performance? A meta-analysis. Human Factors: The Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 55, 231-245.2 Dismukes, R.K., Jobe, K.K, & McDonnell, L.K. (2000). Facilitating LOFT debriefings: A critical analysis. In R. K. Dismukes & G. M. Smith (Eds.), Facilitation in aviation training and operations (pp. 13-25). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.3 Adapted from Reyes, D.L., Tannenbaum, S.I., Salas, E. Team Development: The Power of Debriefing. People + Strategy HR Journal, Vol. 41, Iss. 2. Spring 2018 (46-51)

Accountability means that if called on, you can give an accounting.

Responsibility means the ability to respond; owning your power and ability to choose your response.

Accountability vs. Responsibility

trigger a connection as debriefs as a blaming session.

As a learning culture, Navy leadership should view a failure to debrief as a failure to engage in learning.

The story behind the tool:

As early as 1917, German pilots recognized post-flight debriefing as a way to gain a competitive advantage over a near-peer competitor. As a result of conducting briefs and debriefs, the German pilots took command of the skies in early 1917.4 Today, most modern military aviators have effective debriefing techniques burned into muscle memory as a result of the U.S. Air Force’s and U.S. Navy’s Fighter Weapon School training syllabi. These techniques have made their way into special operations units including Navy SEALS and are recognized in industry as the most effective.56

Navy Application:

Ordering the fleet to debrief without providing debriefing training should be viewed no differently than asking sailors to perform a technical task without technical training.

Debriefing accelerates and improves the quality of the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loops within an organization and teams, according to Scott Tannenbaum and Chet Richards.78 Debriefing is a low-energy cost approach to improving shared mental models within Implicit Guidance and control and feedback loops.

Example Debrief Technique

4 Richard P. Hallion, Rise of the Fighter Aircraft 1914-1918.5 United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructors partnered with NSWC in the early 2000s to share briefing and debriefing best practices, according to an interview with CAPT (Ret.) Rinehart “Rhino” Wilke 6 “…debriefing with fighter pilot techniques offer more “bang for the buck” in terms of learning value…” from McGreevy, J. M., MD, FACSS, & Otten, T. D., BS. (2007, July). Briefing and Debriefing in the Operating Room Using Fighter Pilot Crew Resource Management.7 May 5, 2018 RRWG Zoom call with Scott Tannenbaum8 April 26, 2018 RRWG Zoom call with Chet Richards

Set the Time and Stage Who? Where? When? Part of the Plan. Room is prepared. Debriefs are events.

Two Key Questions How and Why did these things happen Focus on Teamwork

Establish Psychological Safety Leader must display fallibility Use Direct language

Lessons Learned What did we learn? Action Items.

Alignment Check What was our objective? Did we achieve what we set out to do

End on a High Note Celebrate team successes

Timeline What Happened? Look at positive and negative events

Fostering Psychological Safety

Psychological safety describes a climate in which people feel free to express relevant thoughts and feelings without fear of being penalized.9 According to Amy C. Edmondson, author and professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, psychological safety is critical to innovation. “Removing the fear of speaking up allows people to suggest novel or unorthodox ideas, which are integral to developing innovative products and service.”10

Google’s Aristotle Project studied 150 teams to codify the secrets to team effectiveness. This project identified five traits teams must have to be effective with psychological safety being the most important.

The Benefits of Psychological Safetya. Encourages speaking upb. Enables clarity of thoughtc. Supports productive conflictd. Mitigates failure

e. Promotes Innovation f. Removes obstacles to pursing goals

for achieving performanceg. Increases accountability

Leadership Behaviors for Cultivating Psych Safety11 a. Be accessible and approachable

Encourage team members to learn together by being accessible and involved.

b. Acknowledge the limits of current knowledge When leaders admit they do not know something, their genuine display of humility

encourages other members to follow suit

c. Be willing to display fallibility Leaders must demonstrate a tolerance of failure by acknowledging their own fallibility When debriefing, leaders should admit a personal failure in front of the team.

d. Invite participation Leaders need to show that they value team member’s inputs Red Teaming Techniques can help accelerate participation

e. Highlight failure as learning opportunities View failure as a learning opportunity

f. Set boundaries Be clear about what is acceptable

g. Hold people accountable for transgressions When people cross boundaries when set in advanced and fail to perform to

set standards, leaders must hold them accountable. Scrum—the way teams work

9 Edmondson, A. C. (2012). Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.10Ibid.11

Scrum – A Method for Team Leadership and FeedbackScrum Guide: https://www.scrumguides.org/index.html

The story behind the tool:

One feedback tool growing in popularity and use in corporate America and slowly gaining visibility within the U.S. Military is called Scrum. The co-creator of Scrum is Dr. Jeff Sutherland, a former West Point graduate and Air Force RF-4C pilot who flew 100 mission over Vietnam. According to Dr. Sutherland, Scrum is based off of John Boyd’s OODA loop and the Toyota Product System. Dr. Sutherland points to his experience at West Point as being influential on making work visible in Scrum. The framework is also influenced by Dr. Sutherland’s work in biology and complex adaptive systems.

Scrum is not an acronym but is named after a Scrum in the sport Rugby. Dr. Sutherland gave the framework the name “Scrum” after reading the 1986 Harvard Business Review Article, The New New Product Development Game by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka. Ikujiro Nonaka is often referred to as the Grandfather of Scrum.

What is Scrum:

Scrum is a team framework designed to help teams solve complex problems. Scrum is similar to and compatible with to TOPGUN’s Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief (PBED) process. Scrum has five events: (1) Backlog Refinement, (2) Sprint Planning, (3) Daily Scrum (Briefing/re-planning session), (4) Review and (5) Retrospective (Debrief). The Sprint is the container for the events. The ideal Sprint length is one week but shorter Sprints are encouraged.12

Scrum recognizes three roles: (1) Product Owner (Mission Commander), (2) Team, and (3) Scrum Master (Person responsible for ensuring Scrum is followed and impediments/blockers removed). A Scrum team’s ideal size is seven plus or minus two.

Scrum has three artifacts or social objects: (1) The Product Backlog (Think Joint Integrated Target List (JIPTL) or Target List), the (2) Sprint backlog (Think Air Tasking Order or squadron daily flight schedule) and (3) Product Increment which can include open space boards to make work visible and a burndown chart that provides situational awareness on current team progress against planned work.

12 Scrum is Open Source and is Offered for license under the Attribution Share-Alike license of Creative Commons, accessible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. By utilizing this Scrum Guide you acknowledge and agree that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of the Attribution ShareAlike license of Creative Commons.

The Scrum values

Commitment, courage, focus, openness and respect.

Scrum is often associated with software development and today’s Agile Software movement. However, the word “Software” is not mentioned in the Scrum Guide and Agile or agility is an outcome, not a process of doing Scrum. Scrum is used in healthcare, logistics, product development, marketing and manufacturing. Anywhere a team or crew is needed (interdependent work), Scrum can be applied, even at the executive level.

The Burndown chart used by Scrum teams is often associated with landing an aircraft on a runway and the fuel ladder used by naval aviators. The Burndown chart replaces traditional project management status reports, reducing

Navy Application:

Scrum is more structured than TOPGUN’s PBED but is NOT a substitute for Teamwork Training Intervention (i.e., Crew Resource Management (CRM), Bridge Resource Management (BRM), Operational Risk Management (ORM), or TeamSTEPPS©). Scrum can be used to deliver these evidence-based team and crew approaches, but it is recommended that teamwork training is prioritized over Scrum.

Tactical Units using PBED with Mission Commander roles and leader-leader models of teamwork may want to consider staying with their current approach. However, U.S. Navy units with exceptional PBED and teamwork skills that have applied Scrum as an organizational scaling framework have seen a 13X increase in productivity. This far exceeds industry’s ideal mark of 4X productivity—doing twice the work in half the time.

The advantage Scrum gives over PBED is it works as a forcing function to (1) make work visible, (2) prioritize work, (3) create a container to monitor output, (4) minimize context switching (4) and provides an explicit opportunity to develop leaders (Scrum Master and Product Owner Roles).

For the U.S. Navy, the combination of Scrum, PBED, and Teamwork Training Intervention (CRM/ORM/BRM/TeamSTEPPS), provides an evidence-based and low energy-cost approach to creating a network of high-performing teams.

This link will take you to a YouTube video that summarizes Scrum in under five minutes:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=scrum+in+five+minutes&view=detail&mid=C624F525047DE81ACF76C624F525047DE81ACF76&FORM=VIRE

2. RESFORCOM N5 Innovation Team Daily Scrum

Example of Effective Daily Scrum/Standup/Meeting: a. Big Picture (e.g. time hack, date, who are we?)

Begin Scrums/Standups/Meetings in a similar fashion as a mission brief. Concept is to help the team “compartmentalize” or focus on the event Think of the Scrum/Standup as a way to put a bubble around the team so they can

focus on the work. Review the burndown chart with the team. This helps build awareness on how the

team is doing compared to what was planned.

b. Review the Sprint, Iteration, or Overall Objective Why are we here? Restate the Sprint/Mission/Meeting objective

c. Identify threats and impediments Ask, “What is going to prevent us from achieving the Sprint/Mission Objective?” Go around the room. Don’t get anchored on one thing. The objective is to build

Situational Awareness on what each individual sees as an impediment to accomplishing the Sprint/Mission Objective.

Meetings, training, holidays, leave, flu, weather, systems, are valid threats to achieving the objective

Quickly review existing impediments/threats (should be visible)

d. Execution plan. What are we doing today? Course of action (COA). This is where team members “Walk the Board” and inform

other members what they plan on working on after the Scrum. Try not to use this as a status report. The Burndown, already covered, is the status

report. If a discussion is needed, put the discussion on hold (Parking Lot) until all team

members have “walked the board.”

e. Flexibility/Contingency Plan and Parking Lot Contingency planning around threats/impediments should be done at the end of the

Scrum, in the “parking lot.” Team members who feel they do not need to be part of a parking lot conversation

may leave the Scrum.

f. Retro or Debrief event (Micro-Debrief) An advanced technique to rapidly build a high-performing team is to conduct a rapid

debrief on the Scrum Focus should be on interactions or teamwork.

Lean Coffee: Running an Agenda-Less MeetingA tool for increasing productivity of meetings is Lean Coffee: a structured but an agenda-less meeting. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting was democratically generated.

Step 1. Setup a Simple “Kanban” (a lean scheduling system for lean manufacturing – “Kanban” is Japanese for “visual sign.”).

Step 2. What to Discuss. Using Post-it notes, have the team or unit apply Think-Write-Share to generate ideas on what should be discussed. Place ideas under the “To Discuss” column.

Step 3. Vote. Each team member can have two or three votes. Have each member dot vote on the topics they wish to discuss. In dot-voting, participants vote on their chosen options using a limited number of stickers or marks with pens.

Once the voting is complete, prioritize what is to be discussed starting with the card with the highest number of votes first.

Step 4. Talk. Time box discussions to a few minutes. At the end of a time box, have each team member gives a thumbs up (to continue), thumbs down (to move on to the next card), or thumbs horizontal (for neutral). Feel free to apply Red Teaming concepts such as no one speaks twice until everyone speaks once.

Learn more about Lean Coffee here. http://leancoffee.org

Science of Teamwork – How teams work

Some Background:

Military research in teams and teamwork has significantly advanced the science of teams in industry. For example, the U.S. Navy’s Tactical Decision Making Under Stress (TADMUS) program helped researchers understand how to better train teams in the U.S. Navy’s Crew Resource Management (CRM) and Operational Risk Management (ORM) programs inform how teams are developed in hospitals and in well operations.13

Actions

In the absence of a formal team development training program, commands may want to consider using lessons from the Navy’s CRM and ORM programs to develop teamwork skills. Another free resource is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Team Strategies for Enhancing performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS®) program. Free smartphone apps exists for both Operational Risk Management and TeamSTEPPS® programs. 14

Example teamwork skills that can easily be applied

Communication o SBAR - Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation o Communicating critical informationo Learn names

Team Eventso Plan-Brief-Debriefo Try to build one shared mental model for each event (See Scrum and Debrief

section for examples) Situational Awareness

o Constantly Scan the environmento Look for weak signals

Discuss barriers to effective teamworko Changing team membership, lack of time, hierarchy, distractions, workload,

fatigue, lack of information sharing, ego and fear, cognitive biases,

13 According to Eduardo Salas, Team Strategies for Enhancing Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) is built on naval aviation’s Crew Resource Management (CRM) program. Eduardo Salas is the chief scientist behind TeamSTEPPS and worked on the CNO’s CRM program. 14 ORM is part of General Military Training (GMT)

Red TeamingRed Teaming is a flexible cognitive approach to support decision making. It intertwines Applied Critical Thinking and Groupthink Mitigation tools in a structured manner to expose information and courses of action that may otherwise have been overlooked. Red Teaming also requires practitioners who foster Cultural Empathy and are committed to a continuous journey of Self-Awareness and Reflection.

Background: We are Human.

Our visual and decision environments are filtered to us courtesy of our eyes, our ears, our senses of smell and touch, and the master of it all, our brain. By the time we comprehend and digest information, it is not necessarily a true reflection of reality. Instead, it is our representation of reality, and this is the input we base our decisions on. In essence we are limited to the tools nature has given us, and the natural way in which we make decisions is limited by the quality and the accuracy of these tools.15

The benefit of using a group in decision making lies in the varied experience, knowledge, and perspectives of the participants. We must find ways to leverage multiple perspectives through employing good group dynamics to overcome natural human barriers that limit options. These barriers include

Ego and Fear Linear thinking Culture

Cognitive Biases Hierarchical structures Physiology/Environment

Brainstorming and BOGSAT (Bunch of guys/gals sitting around a table) do not work. According to research, individuals are more likely to generate a higher number of original ideas when they don’t interact with others. Brainstorming is particularly likely to harm productivity in large teams, when teams are closely supervised, and when performance is oral rather than written. 16

Think-Write-Share is designed to provide users a structured approach to critically think through any question and serves as a starting point for hearing all voices in any discussion. This tool is very effective for enabling critical and creative thinking.

Think-Write-Share is designed to mitigate fast thinking, grandstanding, thinking aloud, spring-butts/spot-light rangers, and the highest paid person’s opinion (HIPPO).17 T-W-S is the foundation for many Red Teaming exercises found in the Red Team Handbook available through the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies (UFMCS). Red Teaming Handbook (V9),15 Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 243.16 Brian Mullen, Craig Johnson & Eduardo Salas (1991) Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: A Meta-Analytic Integration, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 12:1, 3-23, DOI: 10.1207/s15324834basp1201_117 Red Ream Handbook V9.0: https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/documents/ufmcs/The_Red_Team_Handbook.pdf

Advanced Leadership and Teaming TopicsThese select advanced leadership and teaming topics may require additional reading outside of the provided resources.

Complex Adaptive Systems

“…indeed, the age old mythology of leadership may yet come to be understood best through the more modern lens of Complex Adaptive Systems where outcomes are irreducibly driven by the interplay of followers and context as much as they are by the visionary privilege of the leader.”

-General Stanley McChrystal. Leaders: Myth and Reality

Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) informs today’s Agile movement, safety, resilience engineering, the science of teamwork, innovation, high-reliability organizing, knowledge management, culture and leadership.

Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) are non-linear, open systems where and understanding of the individual parts does not automatically provide and understanding of the whole system. The term complex adaptive system describes a system that is networked, dynamic and adaptable, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A good discussion on Complex Adaptive Systems can be found in the SOCOM Design Way.

https://jsou.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=41586761

Cynefn

The Cynefin framework  (KUN-iv-in) is a conceptual framework used to aid decision-making. Created in 1999 by Dave Snowden when he when he worked for IBM Global Services, it has been described as a sense-making device. Cynefin is a welsh word for habitat or the place of multiple belongings.  

Cynefin offers five decision-making domains—obvious, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder—that help leaders identify how they perceive situations and make sense of their own and other people's behavior.

https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making

OODA loop.

The OODA loop is the cycle, observe, orient, decide, and act, developed by military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd. Boyd applied the concept to the combat operations process, often at the operational level during military campaigns.

Human Centered Design Human-centered design is an approach to interactive systems development that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements, and by applying human factors/ergonomics, usability knowledge, and techniques. This approach enhances effectiveness and efficiency, improves human well-being, user satisfaction,

accessibility and sustainability; and counteracts possible adverse effects of use on human health, safety and performance.18

Facilitator’s Guide to Human-Centered Design Lead others through the human-centered design process

Free Training

https://www.plusacumen.org/courses/facilitator%E2%80%99s-guide-human-centered-design

Additional resources: SCOOM Design Way

https://jsou.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=41586761

Complex Adaptive Systems Thinking

Cynefinhttps://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making

18 ISO 9241-210:2010

Appendix 1: Red Teaming Techniques 1-2-4-Whole Group

Tool: 4 Ways of Seeing

6 Empathetic Questions

5 Whys