7 questions to design your team playbook
250% increase in usage was the result of adopting this framework, and it is not rocket science.
When I asked Google for the definition of a ‘Playbook’, I got this: ‘Playbook’ is a noun from North America meaning: “a book containing a sports team’s strategies and plays, especially in American football”. And the Cambridge Dictionary defines it as: “A set of rules or suggestions that are considered to be suitable for a particular activity, industry, or job”.
While I like to simply refer to it as:
“An IKEA-style flat-pack means to get things done”.
Think of it as a knowledge hub that is specialised in activities (a.k.a. plays or tools) that enable teams to collaborate, ideate, problem solve, make decisions…etc.
The importance of Playbooks
“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”
— Maimonides
Democratisation of creativity
IKEA made furniture accessible and easy — or easier — for everyone to assemble and use. A Playbook shouldn’t be any different. It should enable EVERYONE to use tools such as workshops, rituals, and ceremonies to work more efficiently and effectively, to problem solve, and to foster their creativity. This shouldn’t be a function-specific privilege.
A good Playbook should enable its users to pick a tool — or mix and match few — that it is suitable for their needs. These should come with their respective instruction manuals (e.g. how to, best-in-class examples, and templates when appropriate).
I believe, that you can — maybe should — start building your Playbook from one function such as Design or Product but it should not be designed — or be exclusive — only for them to use.
Taking this democratisation to a pro level is done but making your Playbook — or part of it- open to external users (e.g. Atlassian’s Playbook). These are great to learn from, but remember that your Playbooks should consist of answers to the ways things are done in your business.
Standardisation
Rory Sutherland, the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy in the UK and the founder of Ogilvy’s behavioural science practice, often talks about how one of the reasons behind the success of fast-food businesses, like McDonald's, is consistency.
“We don’t go to McDonald’s for the world’s best meal. We go because McDonald’s is always pretty good”
— Rory Sutherland
Despite my feelings and opinion towards McDonald's, I couldn’t agree more. And therefore, by standardising your plays, you will be leaning on the power of consistency.
When a business — or a team — is small, Playbook and ways-of-working tend to fall under the ‘norm’. At this stage, some or all team members, are experts when it comes to the norm. However, with scale, new joiners will bring with them new ideas, new plays, and new ways of doing things. Newbies, seniors and juniors alike, will start asking how things are usually done in this business.
Having a Playbook in place will not just help onboarding new joiners, but also prevent the confusion around plays’ names, the duplication of plays, and the variety of ways of doing the same thing. And more importantly, it will limit the concentration of knowledge with only a handful of people.
The seven
Whether you are designing a new Playbook, restructuring an existing one, or simply just adding a new play, following a template will help you to maintain consistency and improve the overall comprehension.
Note: No matter how much of an expert you are, it is very important to remember that this template should not be used in isolation, it is vital to answer these questions with the help of others.
Here are the seven questions that I use:
The why
1- What is the purpose of this play?
For you and everyone else to be on the same page, this a critical question to be crystal clear on.
The whos
2- Who should run this? 3- Who must be there? 4- Who could be there?
What is a play without players? It is highly important to make it easy for your Playbook user to understand who they need to perform the play.
The how
5- How should we run it?
This is the heavy part. In this section, you need to strike the right balance between details and clarity. You don’t want it to be too long but also detailed enough.
A practical way of structuring this is by splitting the actions into phases, by giving an indication of how much time each phase will take, and by stating the roles and responsibilities at each phase:
- pre: Any preparations that need to be done before the play takes place, and by whom.
- during: What happens during the play and everyone’s role.
- post: Stuff like documentations and follow-ups, and who is responsible for these.
The when
6- When should we run it?
This varies between industries. In the Tech industry, this can refer to the product development cycle. Hence, some plays might be time-related (e.g. Weekly kick-off), some are related to the development cycle (e.g. Critiques: as often as needed between 20–80% of design completion), while others are circumstantial (e.g. Design forum: when faced with multiple solutions).
The golden one
7- what is the definition of good?
You might not have the answer to this question from the get-go.
Nevertheless, you should not leave it blank. You are better off coming up with a hypothetical answer and then testing it over time. Keep repeating that until you find the correct answer as to what success would look like.
Is all this really worth doing?
Hell yeah!
Empowerment
IKEA is making things affordable (i.e. accessible) but also, they empowered their customers by enabling them to assemble these packages by themselves, and having a Playbook enables its users to just DO.
In fact, in my experience having a well-structured Playbook increased the use of some of the main plays (e.g. Critiques) by nearly 250%.
Agility and scalability
This is your ability to quickly adapt your plays to change and to be able to respond to a sudden demand for new ones.
Having this structure allowed us to respond to the unprecedented COVID-19 related circumstances in an effective and quick manner. When the business’ priorities changed over-night, and the team had to suddenly face new realities and different ways of working, we managed to design, test and roll-out a totally new cross-functional play in a matter of a week or so. It is not just a new one but also replaced two of our existing ones. I called it “Zeroing”.
Very shortly after launch, Zeroing proved to be a success. Not just in the number of sessions but also more than 93% of the participants said that they had a useful or very useful session. Some even started using the name Zeroing as a verb in their sentences.
Disclaimer: no matter how brilliant a Playbook is, it is useless without great players and advocators.
Please let me know in the comments section if you would like to know more about our “Zeroing”.
