My opening video was playing as my care assistant wheeled me into position.
The moment it ended, I began.
“In the summer of 2010, I fell from a third-storey window.”
In front of me, at Google’s Boland’s Mills office in Dublin, sat the company’s newly formed
Global Food, Beverage and Restaurants team. They had travelled from New York, Chicago,
London and Singapore to get together as one team.
Getting there
That moment had been weeks in the making, starting with briefing calls with Julian Coulter,
who leads the team. On the morning itself, Melissa Mendes met us for the tech check. I always like to get a feel
for a room before I speak in it. Then I spent time with Julian, building on our calls so that I
understood exactly where the team was and what it needed.
The team had already begun a day and a half of meetings. When their kick-off finished, I
joined them.
The brief
Julian’s ask was clear. Talk about tenacity. Talk about stepping outside your comfort zone
to achieve results.
That made sense. A new team brings new teammates and new ways of working, and this
one was doing it in a fast-moving and fiercely competitive market.
So we worked through the three decisions at the heart of my Unbreakable Framework:
• Do we step into the arena as competitors, or sit back as spectators?
• Do we deal in facts as realists, or rely on hope as optimists?
• Do we work together as collaborators, or go it alone as soloists?
What the team asked
The questions that followed told me where the team’s thinking was.
How do we move from spectator to competitor?
One person asked this directly.
My answer was that we liberate ourselves when we define ourselves by our willingness to
try. Once trying is the measure, we are free to be competitors, pursuing success and risking
failure.
How do we get people to work together as collaborators?
Several questions came back to this, which made sense for a team that had only just come
together.
I pointed them to Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator, and his book Never Split the
Difference. When we are trying to collaborate around a common goal, he reminds us to
raise our ambition, not lower it. There has to be enough room for everyone to win.
Two ideas for any new team
If you are leading or joining a new team, these are the two ideas to think about:
- Define yourself by your willingness to try. It liberates you to pursue success as you
risk failure. - Raise your ambition, not lower it. Make the goal big enough for everyone to win.
Thank you
Thank you to Julian Coulter for the invitation and for the time he invested in getting this
right, and to Melissa Mendes, Meghan Song and Stephanie Gatton for making the day run so
smoothly.