Approachability is an advantage. Making coaching easy is an advantage. This tool minimizes the effort to manage expectations, manage perceptions, and share helpful feedback across three communication channels.

The RACI matrix almost got it right but still harbors too much ambiguity. In your team’s formal planning, govern only what is worth documenting outside email, and nothing else. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.

In innovation, most attention is the work within the project. Before your next project begins, consider what questions your team should answer. This documentation provides transparency, alignment, and sets you up for success.

It’s one thing to identify what a user wants to be able to accomplish. It’s another thing to capture what they consider a chore and want to leave their scope of responsibility.

Your colleagues, especially your manager, need to know if you’re bored, buried, or somewhere in between. Share your workload so the team can balance the workload!

Perceptions of health are important! They can be as easy to share as Red, Yellow, and Green. THEN the conversation starts!

Of course not every team member is immediately aligned. Some stakeholders work to undermine the mission, the sense of teamwork, or an individual. Without actually using Aikido in your office, you need tools to neutralize contrarians without injuring them.

Verb Sprawl is a real problem that slows teams down. In planning your team’s work, instead of governing meetings or emails, govern what is worth documenting outside email. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.

In a fast-moving world, you need a simple framework for weekly reflection. Your colleagues don’t have to finish and share every sentence every week, but everyone must be thoughtful of these every week. Own your praise. Own your critique. Own your silence.

Don’t rely on HR to define and govern feedback. Own it. Conduct it yourself. Be approachable. Groom it in others. Isolate feedback into three communication channels: email etiquette, meeting etiquette, and deliverable contribution. Neutralize personality conflict. Ask and negotiate “What do you want me to do differently?”

A culture of reflection, honesty, and humility leads to healthy organizational improvements. Asking the two questions, “What did we do well?” and “What could we improve?” is lazy. These breed mediocrity and fail to bring out people’s best ideas. There is a pattern in the problems. Micro-mentor yourself monthly using constructive language. Make your success inevitable.

Your organization might be caught in meeting gridlock and email overload. You cannot just talk and email your way to success. You must document things outside email. It’s dry, sterile, unforgiving, and ruthless. But documentation keeps its value. A ruthless factory results in a valuable Asset Portfolio.