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Strategy Formulation

Picking the Team

Strategic planning is a team process. This chatper discusses how to pick and set up the team; later, under Meetings chaper, I discuss several meeting timelines to use their time wisely. In the best of all worlds, the team leader gets to pick his or her team, that seldom happens.

The best team size, five to seven members - an odd number so you can vote to break a tie.

The best team membership - the smartest folks you can find, a mix of adapters, positioners and aligners.

The best team motivator - a piece of the action, the responsibility to implement an idea.

I've set up and worked as the facilitator for many teams, but often:

• Team size is usually determined by the number of people who must be involved and can easily grow too big.
• Team membership is assigned solely by a job position and not skill, yet
• Some team members are only fill-ins for the folks with the real power, so they can't take responsibility for their decisions.