What Happens to Trust When a Team Stops Running Its System
Everyone was frustrated with someone else. Nobody would say with whom.
I heard it in every interview. One at a time, each team member told me how proud they were. The firm had grown. The team was strong. Clients were happy.
Then came the rest.
“We say we’ll work one way. Then we change how we work based on whichever partner brings in the work.”
“We delegate, but it’s more like tossing work over the fence and not caring about it.”
“We talk about the Accountability Chart, but I’m not sure we’re accountable.”
“We’re growing, but in spite of ourselves. We’re a good team. Not a great one.”
I could feel the tension.
Five Firms Under One Roof
The firm came together over four years, as five successful professional services practices combined. Their industry was changing fast, and none of them could keep up alone. So they joined forces. What started as a handful of people grew to nearly fifty.
They built shared processes to support it. On paper.
Then each partner kept working the way that had made them successful in the past.
Tools on a Shelf
They had the tools. A weekly leadership meeting, an issues list, a scorecard, an Accountability Chart. EOS in name.
But in name only.
In the original practice, the weekly meeting worked. Real issues went on the table. They dug until they hit the root cause, and solved them in the room.
As the firm grew, the discipline slipped. The Accountability Chart stopped matching how the work actually moved. Rocks got set unevenly, and nobody went back to check how many got done.
The weekly meeting got skipped once, then again, and then it was gone.
Here’s what stopped with it.
Issues stopped making the list. They got talked about in hallways instead, between two people instead of the whole team.
When one did make the list, nobody dug. They fixed the symptom. Or decided they’d get to it later. Or decided they could tolerate it. Then they moved on. The root cause stayed where it was.
And the honest conversations stopped. The frustration turned into guesses about why someone did what they did.
A process problem that would have taken twenty minutes on a Tuesday became a question about someone’s motives.
Playing It Back
We met in a boardroom on the top floor. A long table, with the leadership team and their chief of staff around it.
I didn’t start with the agenda. I started by playing back what I had heard in the interviews.
“It sounds like you’re proud of what you’ve built. You’ve grown fast, and you do right by your clients.
It sounds like you merged, but day to day you still often work like five.
It sounds like people tiptoe around the real issues. They don’t get put on the table, so they don’t get solved. They build up.
What did I miss?”
Then I stopped talking.
Heads started nodding around the table.
“That’s right,” someone said.
The room broke open.
In Fight Less Win More, that’s called a summary.
Trust First
Patrick Lencioni’s model of a cohesive team starts with trust. Healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, and results build on top of it.
They scored themselves on each one. The scores matched what I’d heard in the interviews. A good team that could be great.
One of the partners said it plainly.
“I want this to succeed. It’s the right thing for my clients. It’s the right thing for my team, and the team we’ve created together. And I want this to succeed for my legacy.”
The conversation shifted from whether to how.
What IDS Asks of a Team
So we walked back through IDS, the tool at the center of the weekly meeting. Identify, Discuss, Solve. Each step asks something of the team.
Identify takes trust. You dig until you hit the real issue, and sometimes the real issue is you. Or me.
Discuss takes conflict. Jeff Bezos describes two people arguing over the height of a ceiling. One says eleven feet. The other says twelve. The easy answer is eleven and a half. Nobody has to argue, and nobody is right. Get a tape measure.
When you can’t agree on the answer (and in business, things are complex), someone decides and everyone commits. Bezos calls it “disagree and commit.” It only works if the disagreeing happened out loud first.
Solve takes commitment and accountability. Someone owns the next step, and everyone knows by when. A decision nobody argued over is a decision nobody owns.
Back to the Fundamentals
By the end of the day, they recommitted to the weekly meeting. To the discipline of it.
It’s early. The real test is the weeks the meeting feels optional.
Every team I work with knows the fundamentals. Meet every week. Put the issue on the list. Say the hard thing in the room. None of it is complicated.
Discipline is doing it in the weeks you don’t feel like it. That’s where trust gets built.
Where to Start
Hold the weekly meeting at the same time every week.
Put the issue on the list the week you feel it. Waiting turns a process problem into a question about a person.
Keep asking why until you hit the root cause. If the answer gets uncomfortable, you’re close.
Disagree in the room. Then commit, even when it didn’t go your way.
Three questions:
When did your leadership team last say something hard to each other, in the room?
What frustration are you carrying about someone that you haven’t said to them?
Which of your issues has turned into a question about someone’s motives?
The weekly meeting is where a team builds the trust its tools run on.
The fundamentals win.