Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously

by Jeff Gothelf

Managers can create the conditions for collaboration to flourish by making a few changes in the way teams are composed, managed, and organized. These changes are simple enough to describe but can be difficult to implement, because they require coordination with other departments. Indeed, without the support of senior leadership, these changes may prove quite difficult to achieve, as simple as they may seem. Here is a list of key changes that enable sense and respond teams to collaborate effectively: Creating autonomous, mission-based teams Using cross-functional teams Building dedicated teams Supporting new work flows Co-locating teams Being careful with remote work Being careful with outsourcing Holding retrospectives and using minimum viable processes Think of this list as a starting point rather than a recipe. Every organization that implements these ideas will need to do so in a slightly different way. Think of these points as principles rather than hard-and-fast rules.