Endava had more than 300 teams across Europe, and a team coaching group of five or six people to support them.
Do the math, and the job describes itself. The coaches went where the fire was: the team in conflict, the team about to lose a client, the team whose lead had just asked for help. The rest waited, and most of them waited for good.
Everything for individuals, nothing for teams
It wasn’t for lack of investment. Endava had spent a great deal on developing its people: leadership programs, coaching, mentoring, a long list of learning platforms and initiatives.
All of it had one thing in common. It developed individuals. A leader could grow, an engineer could learn a new skill, a manager could get a mentor. But the team itself, the unit that actually delivers the work, had nothing of its own. Developing a team as a team depended on whether one of a handful of coaches could make time for it.
The quiet teams
We used to explain the problem with a picture every parent recognizes. Most of a parent’s attention goes to the child who is struggling. The quiet ones, the ones who seem fine, get much less of it, and sometimes they only feel the absence later, when it is harder to make up for.
Endava’s coaches were in the same position. The struggling teams got the attention, as they should. The teams that seemed fine got almost none, and nobody could say how much they were leaving on the table.
Team development on autopilot
What we proposed was a first for Endava: team development that runs on its own, for every team, with coaches stepping in only where a team really needs them.
We called it the Team Journey, and it ran as a loop:
- An assessment session, built on Tuckman’s stages of group development.
- The team chooses one area to work on, out of twelve.
- One-hour team sessions on that area.
- The assessment again, and the next area.
The assessment is a one-hour session called Can Your Team Reach New Heights?, and it is where everything starts. Every member first rates the team on their own, anonymously, on twelve statements from 0 to 10. The first one reads:
People on my team know each other, from personal stories to work habits and core values. How well does this describe your team? Not at all 0 … 10 Perfectly
The others cover goals and priorities, confidence, openness about mistakes, constructive conflict, how the team works and decides, results, initiative, sustainable work, innovation, continuous improvement and well-being. Then the team learns Tuckman’s stages, from forming and storming to norming and performing, places itself in them, first alone and then together, and sees suggestions drawn from everyone’s answers. The decision is the team’s: one area to work on first, and the sessions that go with it.
Having a greater understanding of your team’s current dynamics, what do you see as the most important area for improvement?
- Getting to know each other betterAnaLukaMarko
- Building trust and psychological safetyIvana
- Enhancing our ability to resolve conflicts
- (Re-)defining how we organize our work
The twelve areas a team could choose from:
- Getting to know each other better
- Aligning direction and purpose
- Exploring strengths and weaknesses
- Building trust and psychological safety
- Resolving conflict
- Organizing how we work
- Making decisions and solving problems
- Acting independently
- Building resilience and managing stress
- Innovation and value creation
- Nurturing a growth mindset
- Well-being and personal growth
Behind each area sat a set of one-hour sessions. A team that chose to get to know each other better, for example, could work through the Big Five personality traits, the DISC model of communication styles, decision-making styles, or cultural intelligence.
The idea was simple. If most teams can develop themselves, the coaches’ time goes to the teams that need a person in the room, and every team gets something, not only the loudest.
Starting where it was needed most
Endava went through procurement, signed a contract, and chose where to begin: with the teams that needed it most, before every other team. Dinko Gredelj, a senior learning and organization development specialist in Endava’s people development team, ran the sessions with them.
One team’s assessment showed why they came first. Asked how well they know each other, the team gave a median of four out of ten. The recommendation was to start at the beginning: getting to know each other better, before anything else.
Teams like these are the hardest test a program can face, and they show things a calm team never would.
The insight that shaped the product
The assessment asks the group to agree on one area to work on. In one of the early sessions, opinions were split, and the group could move on only by forcing the decision.
Dinko saw the point straight away, and said so:
“This would provide higher value than forcing someone to accept something against their belief just to be able to move on.”
His recommendation was to let a group move forward without full agreement, and to take every option and every vote into account. He was right, and it became a principle of ExecuteOS: alignment is not agreement. A team can disagree and still be clear about what it will do next.
What carried over
Endava later restructured, its people development team changed, and the roll-out paused before it reached the teams the program was designed for: the quiet ones.
What the work showed carried straight into ExecuteOS: every team assessed, the team choosing what to work on, a person where the dynamics are hardest, and alignment that doesn’t force agreement. And the question it started with is still the right one for any organization with more teams than coaches: who is developing the teams that seem fine?
What we learned
Endava’s team development showed us what it takes to develop every team, not only the ones in trouble. Five principles came out of it, and each one shapes how ExecuteOS works today.
1Give every team a way to develop itself
Five or six coaches for more than 300 teams is not a staffing problem that hiring solves. Team development scales only when most teams can work on themselves, and people step in where they are needed.
In ExecuteOS: the same sessions for every team, without a facilitator, and a view of where a person is needed.
2Let the team choose what to work on
The assessment ends with the team, not a coach, deciding what matters most right now. People commit to the area they chose themselves.
In ExecuteOS: the check shows the gaps, and each team agrees on what to close first.
3Alignment is not agreement
Dinko’s point became a principle: people can disagree and still be clear about what they will do, as long as the disagreement is visible.
In ExecuteOS: a group moves on when it aligns or when its time runs out, and the result says which; each person signs or declines the commitments.
4Send a person where the dynamics are hardest
A team in the middle of conflict needs someone with it, at least now and then. We saw the same with new joiners at Paysafe.
In ExecuteOS: sessions run on their own, and leave room for a coach or a leader to join the teams that need one.
5Show the whole picture from the start
Starting with the teams in trouble helps them first; starting with a check across all the teams shows the whole organization where it stands, and where to begin.
In ExecuteOS: a check across every team that has to act on a priority, so the picture, and the change, is visible from the start.