“What has to happen in the next two hours that will indicate time well spent,” Sam asked. Each person looked around at each of the other members of this management team, then looked down and began to write.

It was not Sam’s intention to figure out the solution to this problem. It was Sam’s intention to have the group figure out the solution to this problem.

The responses from the team were positive.

• We have to agree on the purpose. We have to agree on what we are trying to achieve. We have to agree on the goal.
• We have to agree on what actions we will take. We have to agree on the coordination and interdependencies of those actions. This has to be a period of cooperation.
• We have to agree on what results we are looking for. We have to agree on what measures we will collect and analyze. We have to agree to raise the flag when something doesn’t look right, not to bury our statistics in a warehouse.

Most importantly, this was no longer Sam’s problem. This problem now belonged to the group. -TF