Finding alignment by committee
Finding alignment by committee
As part of my association with Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), I participate in international committees with fellow EO members on various initiatives. For the last three years, I’ve been the Lead of one called Train the Trainer, a tight-knit group of 50 who teach fast-growth business strategies to EO firm founders around the world.
Every year, we get together to build the content program and establish best training practices. As many of you who have ever been part of a volunteer committee or board or association can attest, this is an endeavour that’s a lot of work and requires a lot of patience.
That’s what made this most recent Train the Trainer event, held in Amsterdam, a particularly satisfying experience. My strategy was to manage the process by delegating the training modules to various experts within the trainer community, which would give us a chance to create content and deliver it to each other.
Now, if I’m honest, I initially took this approach because I find the idea of leading sessions for such an impressive group quite intimidating. But I also wanted to avoid the event turning into a vent session. Not surprisingly, given that this committee is made up of entrepreneurial experts in their fields, these meetings have often been characterized by tension between trainers – with disagreements around priorities and effective use of our time together – veering us away from our purpose.
So instead of dictating from above, we sent a survey in advance asking our attendees to help define what they needed from the training so we could tailor it to the desires of our group. Would they be interested in a module on Adult Learning Theory? Would they like expert training on effective Story-Telling? Could they develop and lead a module on a particular area of expertise? How much focus on the content did they actually want? We followed up with a call with four trainers to get their input on the feedback we received.
This made the planning-process was a cinch – in fact, it only took 25 percent of the time required over the previous three years. Over a few calls with my fellow (and brilliant) trainer Andy Clayton and our rock-star senior staff lead, Lauren King, we divided the sessions into 15 different modules and assigned these to various trainers and speakers. The trainers ran with their assignments like the pros they are, needing zero- to little-direction. Andy, Lauren and I didn’t need to waste time getting stuck in the weeds.
The result was a colourful two days that were made all the more interesting by the variety of content, personalities and facilitation styles.
I also found the session to be more harmonious than in years past. (It’s often felt akin to the drama experienced during a gathering of extended-family over the holidays.) This year, we kept the peace. Everyone got along and appreciated one another’s quirks and contributions.
Granted, our good behaviour may have been because there were 11 newbie trainers who had been invited to the training feast for the first time. Or perhaps the punch had been spiked. (We were in Amsterdam...) Most likely, it was because, for the first time, everyone shared in the sense of ownership over the meeting.
Instead of one or two facilitators leading the content, the participants owned the room.
Naturally, I was thrilled everything had gone so well. And as I excitedly shared my experience back in Toronto with my business partner Erin, she stated, without skipping a beat: “Sounds like you applied self-managed business thinking successfully to an association meeting”.
Without intending to, creating a self-managed association was exactly what we did.
We defined a vision for our session that aligned and inspired our trainers. We had the right people in the right seats. We performed as a connected team, each of us engaged in our work, autonomously. Most importantly, rather than re-invent the wheel, we replicated what worked, then iterated what we learned in previous years.
No wonder it was so satisfying.
“Teamwork is the ultimate competitive advantage because it is so powerful and so rare.”
As Patrick Lencioni explains, “Teamwork is the ultimate competitive advantage because it is so powerful and so rare.” Too often, we don’t think about the associations we belong to as being yet another team that requires alignment. Perhaps we assume that because we’re there voluntarily, that must mean we’re naturally on the same page. But it’s only when we set up structures and systems to delegate and elevate individual members that we build associations that thrive and drive forward a shared agenda.