It’s one thing to detect as a team that you have an alignment issue, it’s another to diagnose the source of the misalignment.
When you’re working to get to the root cause of misalignment, start with assessing your team’s degree of alignment on the Five Ws & How (5W1H):
1. Who: Who is your project for? Who needs to be involved and who needs to know what? Who has ownership and accountability for what?
2. What: What’s your project for? What are your goals? What does success look like?
3. Where: Where are you shipping your work (what’s the medium)? Where is the primary home for team communications?
4. When: When are your deadlines? When are you expected to provide updates?
5. Why: Why are you doing this project (i.e. shared purpose)?
& How: How have you agreed to go about working together (i.e. work agreements)? How are you going to get the project done (i.e. processes, tools, technology, resources)?
These questions aren’t an exhaustive diagnostic, but they’re a great starting place. When you’re detecting team alignment issues, more often than not your team is misaligned on one or more of these Five Ws & How. Misalignment on one can make everything feel out of whack, negatively impacting team performance, collaboration, morale, and trust.
Once you diagnose the source of the misalignment, you’ll have a much better understanding of how to remedy it.
