Summary
External agencies augment internal enterprise teams by providing fresh perspectives and adding energy. However, often the agency's capability is not being utilized to its full potential due to poor engagement strategy. In this talk, Séamus highlights obstacles to "inter-team" integration and presents tactics to prevent engagement issues and empower teams to work better together. We can achieve successful inter-team alignment with choreography, but it involves learning new routines, moving to the same beat, and not stepping on each other's toes. Séamus based this talk on real client stories from running an agency for 12 years.
Key Insights
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Team dynamics are unique, impacting project outcomes significantly.
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Unprepared internal teams can create friction and confusion at project kickoffs.
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Lack of transparency for external agencies limits their ability to perform effectively.
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Shifting job scopes can create miscommunication and role ambiguity.
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'Dancing monkey' culture underscores the need for support from internal teams.
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Effective collaboration requires shared understanding of project scopes and goals.
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Choreography can be an analogy for aligning team interactions and workflows.
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Time for onboarding and discovery is crucial for external agencies.
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Building relationships through informal interactions can enhance team effectiveness.
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The Team Alignment Canvas can help visualize and clarify team roles and responsibilities.
Notable Quotes
"Welcome everybody. It's an honor to be kicking off today's festivities."
"No two teams are the same. Every team comes with its own unique relationships and expectations."
"In the best interest of the client to get teams working well together, otherwise you're leaving value on the table."
"The first obstacle is unprepared internal teams."
"We're here to bring out-of-the-box thinking, but then you see uncertainty on their faces."
"We discover an iceberg of things that we never anticipated."
"When the external agency comes in, the overall orchestration of team interactions gets trickier."
"We need to be more prepared to dance together."
"Collaboration should start at the very beginning of the engagement."
"If you see a dancing monkey, you know what you got to do, right?"
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