A Guide To Kickoff Columinity With Teams, Stakeholders, And Management

Based on the latest scientific research, Columinity (formerly Scrum Team Survey) is a pioneering tool to help teams improve where it matters most. It’s your evidence-based companion for continuous improvement. It highlights performance patterns on multiple levels and illuminates how to move forward.

We defined five steps to get the most out of Columinity:

1. Study the research
2. Explore the principles
3. Facilitate a kickoff
4. Inspect the results
5. Develop strategies

We strongly recommend all users to follow these steps. They prove to increase the chances of successful usage of the tool drastically.

In this blog post, we describe step #3 —how to kickoff to kick off Columinity with teams, stakeholders, and management. It uses the Liberating Structure “Purpose-to-Practice” as the foundation, a great start for every initiative. The result is a completed Purpose-to-Practice canvas. We recommend revisiting and updating it periodically.

This blog post is also available as a workshop template via our Columinity interface. The original workshop template contains an even more detailed explanation. If there’s anything you’d like to know more about, always feel free to reach out!

How to prepare the workshop

The invitations and steps are aimed at the Agile/Scrum teams, stakeholders, and supporters (managers, leaders, coaches) who use the tool. If you work with many teams, it’s also an option to invite representatives of each team. If you run this workshop online, copy the P2P worksheet to an online whiteboard to collect your insights.

If you’re interested in learning more about Purpose-to-Practice, check out the following articles:

• Shaping Resilient Initiatives With Purpose-to-Practice
• The original description on the Liberating Structures website
• Plan Your Sprint With Purpose-to-Practice

How to facilitate the workshop

The Liberating Structure ‘Purpose-to-Practice’ (P2P) is a great start for every initiative. For example, a team kickoff, a new project, or the start of a new user group. Each of these initiatives will increase their chance of success by having a shared purpose.

The first step of P2P is to define the purpose together. From there, P2P covers other essential elements — principles, participants, structure, and practices — designed to help achieve that purpose. Because everyone is involved in defining these essential elements, you ensure a shared understanding and encourage self-organization.

For this kickoff workshop, we only explore the various elements with a straightforward “1–2–4-ALL”. This can work perfectly. It’s also possible to discuss the parts with other Liberating Structures. For example, use “Nine Whys” to clarify the purpose, “Min Specs” to identify the principles, and “Social Network Webbing” to determine who to involve.

Step 1 — Clarify The Purpose

The Liberating Structure “Purpose-to-Practice” intends to create a solid foundation for a new initiative. Columinity is an example of such an initiative. To make this a robust implementation, you need to develop a strategy with a meaningful purpose. A purpose that gives guidance and direction. So, we start by exploring this together and craft a shared purpose statement.

Invitation:

“What do you hope & believe the tool will make possible for your team and the wider organization?”

Examples:

• Start a continuous improvement cycle within my team
• Stop ignoring the impediments that block us from delivering value
• Boost a more effective collaboration with management

Step 2: Explore the principles and guidelines

Now that you have some clarity on the tool's purpose, the next step is to think about the rules and principles you must follow to succeed in that purpose.

Invitation:

“What are the essential rules & guidelines we must follow to achieve our purpose? What principles do we want to live up to? What principles do we expect to be challenging?”

Examples:

• Start small, grow naturally
• Focus on building trust and psychological safety
• Invite participation; don’t make it mandatory

Step 3: Determine who to involve and include

Who else needs to be included to achieve your purpose? What stakeholders, clients, users, managers, or other teams must be involved?

Invitation:

“Who can contribute to achieving our purpose and must be included? Who are our stakeholders? Which of our supporters (managers, leaders, coaches) do we need to involve?”

Examples:

• Management, HR, Stakeholders
• Other teams
• This awesome person from that other company

Step 4: Consider how to structure your path forward

In this step, the participants work together to determine what structure they need to achieve the overarching purpose. How can they organize themselves and distribute control? How can the various teams collaborate the most effectively? How do we involve the stakeholders and supporters (managers, leaders, coaches)? How do you ensure you’ll have enough time & focus to use the tool? This is the ‘How’ part.

Invitation:

“How must we organize ourselves and structure our path forward to achieve our purpose? How can we most effectively collaborate with our supporters, stakeholders, and other teams?”

Examples:

• Coaches do a bi-weekly check-in with the teams to see how things are progressing and if there’s a need for support
• The existing Sprint Retrospective and Sprint Review sessions are used to try the recommended DIY workshops
• Each team takes a new snapshot every six weeks

Step 5: Identify strategies, ideas, and actions

Now that you have more clarity on the purpose, the principles, and the structure, it is important to consider what you will be doing together: the practices. This is the ‘What’ part.

Invitation:

“What strategies, ideas, and actions will we implement to achieve our purpose?”

Step 6: Create 15% Solutions to start improving

We like to end sessions on a personal note by asking people what they want to contribute to the success of the tool’s initiative. No matter how small, if everyone makes one small change together, it generates a significant change. The Liberating Structure “15% Solutions” is super helpful for this.

Invitation:

“What is your personal 15% Solution to contribute to the success of the tool’s initiative? What is something you can do that you do without permission from others or resources you don’t have access to?”

With this workshop, you clarified the tool's shared purpose with your client and identified the principles, participants, structure, and practices for using it. We recommend that you revisit and update the Purpose-to-Practice canvas periodically. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas, please feel free to contact us and share them with us.

Important: Kickstart An In-Company Community

A thriving (in-company) community is a crucial success factor for change initiatives like Columinity. A community serves as a platform for employees to connect, collaborate, and support each other. They organize events, discussions, and activities to promote engagement and knowledge sharing. A vital characteristic of a strong community is that people invest time and effort voluntarily.

In this blog post, we describe why a community is also important for the success of Columinity and how to get started. So, in addition to kickstarting Columinity with your team(s), consider kickstarting a community simultaneously!

Closing words: what’s keeping you?

From experience, we know how hard it can be to drive continuous improvement in your team. There are often a thousand things to improve, but what will be most impactful? We are building Columinity to make this easier for you and your team. It’s free for individual teams. So give it a try and expand from there!