Hi, everyone. Kumar Adatrade here with Angelo Meridian. Welcome to another episode of our Angelo shorts. I think we're up to episode 46. Yes. And, if you remember the last time we met, Mike and I were on online And we were talking about the art of I don't have a glass in front of me. The art of emptying your glass. And so if you didn't watch it, go back and watch it. Hey. You got a glass. There you go. There you go. the art of entering glass isn't, you know, It's not it's not actually literally emptying your glass. It's it's making room in your in your head space for change for transformation for whatever that's, that's that's, sort of holding you back and, preventing you from achieving your goals whether as an individual or as part of a team or a company. So today, we're gonna be talking about a technique, and the technique is while our title of our show is don't be sorry. Be more sorry. Yes. Right? And so this is a technique that we use at Ash Meridian. That our very esteemed colleague, coach Michael here came up with. And so we thought we'd talk about this technique and and what makes it so powerful. So so so Mike, what is sorry? Well, it's really I'm glad we're doing this right behind the, empty your glass because to your point, it's empty in your glass is about getting space in your head and on your calendar, right, opening that up. So sorry is 1 of those techniques at the end of last, last short. We said we don't have time to get into the techniques. This is the primary technique that that I certainly use everywhere I go, and I know most of us at agile Meridian have been using it as the primary way to really start to help folks not only empty their glass, but to start to set up a good change management activity. anything if you're trying to do to transform into something adopt into something whatever whatever, descriptive, term you wanna use, it's really meant to be the the tactical way to try to get those things started. Very repeatable. It's very simple. you can do it in face to face, which is obviously the best but most things today, we can't do them face to face. So we have done them, in distributed teams, with all the great tools that are out there. So you can do it in several different ways and it's that's the acronym stands for strengths, opportunities, risks, and impediments. And it's it's a great, great tool to start to allow folks to empty the glass. We use this a lot. and in fact, I use it elusively with every DRI team that gets put together at any organization at at any level. senior leaders, operational teams, cross functional teams of of any sort, whether it be technology, manufacturing, health care, whatever. So that's what it stands for, strengths, opportunities, risks, and impediments. and I know Chris, you and I have have done activities like this in the past. And, you know, we we we never really had a specific technique. We kind of leveraged these mindsets though in the past, and I I know that you've leveraged this before. With different groups. Yep. It works very well. the good part about it is by to empty your glass, you really have to start to think about things in different categories and think about what you're gonna get rid of. Right? You don't get rid of all of it. You get rid of some of it. So it it gives you an opportunity to as a team to go through and, you know, figure out what's important and what's not, and and it's as well. It's a great exercise because a lot of folks get in the day to day, you know, a lot of teams get into the day to day grind and forget about their strengths, what the tunedies are. They're so busy serving today they can't solve for tomorrow. So it's really good to create some space that way. Yeah. That's a good point. You know, I I imagine that the strengths and opportunities portion of this, is I am I'm I have run this before. I I don't know how you run it, my you created it. So I'm running it more as a facilitator, and I I love it because it strikes an opportunity section of this. For me, allows me and the group to figure out where they are now in terms of their strengths and what opportunities lie ahead. So in a way, it's is acknowledging and leveraging their current strengths, and then looking to the future to say, to see you know, what what can the what should the goals be? What should their outcomes be? and and things like that. So it's it's more future focus while recognizing everyone in the room their strengths that they have. So did I get that right? Yeah. Absolutely. And and I think you hit on something very important. There are different groups in in these sessions that are gaining different things. you've got participants, typically, so I know we're working with a lot of, directly response individuals or DRI structures. We're getting new teams together cross functional teams when we're helping organizations move decision making toward and and move leadership towards the work. Right? This is a great exercise because what's happening is is these groups are typically getting together in this fashion for the very first time or a very they've never really operated in a in a, like, an organized way in this as a group. Alright? So there's a lot of unknowns. we think about the collaboration maturity model that we use. visibility and participation are the 2 top things that you need to the 2 starting foundational points that you need. This helps to generate both. It's starting that journey for this group as a group down the road and to your point as a facilitator. If you're a coach or if you're an internal employee that you're gonna run this with. We have a lot of internal employees now that run this with their teams. They run this around their organization. They, you're learning a lot. You're getting a kind of a head start to be able to really understand where is this group starting from? What what is their starting point? Where where are their strengths and opportunities? Right? What what types of things do they see? And the other thing that I I Chris, I'm sure you've seen this before too is people start to get uh-huh's around the room. They they start to go really. I I didn't even know that was Is that really something we could do? Right? So and and the strengths, it's a little bit of this. We don't spend enough time doing this. And so it's a lot of positive momentum, a lot of positive energy. And gets this team kind of looking at each other like, hey, this this could be not only really productive. It might be fun to to work together on this thing together. You know, the scenario you just laid out right. You got a new team starting up. They're unfamiliar with each other. It also as you were talking, I couldn't help but think about the fact that the new team starting together by having them look go through this exercise there and talk about their strengths and opportunities. They have to start thinking about the you're putting them in a situation where they're thinking about the team and not themselves. Yes. Right. So you you move that. You kind of elevate that from a me to a we, which I I hadn't thought about it. You know, as effective as it's been. I hadn't thought about it in that fashion. I'm using it that early. Yeah. It definitely is a great team building activity. and and I've used it as as such, like, like, you know, to help a team come up with their charter. And and the and the way I've run it is actually have them acknowledge each other's strengths. You know, it's not it's not about me saying, I'm a great multitasker and, you know, so on and so forth, which I'm not. but it's it's about about my teammates, my colleagues, you know, Chris, you and and Michael, you know, acknowledging something about me that that I may not even see as a strength. Right? And that really builds, the sense of team. And and when you're talking about teams, I'm assuming, Mike, that you're when when you use this with with with our clients, I'm assuming you're talking about this is this is a group of people that weren't a team before. They they represent different areas of a of an organizational structure and they're being put together in this DRI sort of structured DRI being directly responsible individuals. So They're each responsible for for some area in their organization. They're being put here together to represent different aspects of of the team, the department, the company. Right? Yeah. That's where I think it can have the greatest lift. it is it is a valuable exercise for an existing team, especially 1 that might be struggling. This could be a way to kinda get over some hurdles. Because it's not only going after the procedural and the the work, the procedural issues, processes, tools, technology, the how things, that the tactical things is really getting around a lot of the social things, the cultural things. And the interpersonal things. I've seen a lot of interpersonal, 1 eighties in a lot of these things with folks that, even in new team structures where some of the individuals in the new team, interacted prior to being in this team, but the interactions were not necessarily great. In fact, there was a lot of hesitancy when this team was, I've got a couple teams in particular that told me after they were doing so well about a year in. They said, you know, we had a lot of a lot of concern about this. We looked around the room and this was These were all the folks that we thought were the troublemakers in in the company. Right? They were the the folks that were the the fire starters. They were always kind of stirring things up. I said, but yeah, that's that but you put all that together in a structure where those folks have an environment where they can make change together and and team format and take that all that knowledge and put it together. It's a powerful thing. Yeah. That's what and I I suppose this is something you can run multiple times as well, right, to kind of assess where the team is as the as the deck or This is not a 1 and done. You're not creating a poster that you're gonna put up or, hey, this is us. Right? You know, go go check it out. It's really meant to be a working, document. There's when these exercises happen a lot of times, and we'll we'll we'll get into this in a little bit because we'll talk about the other side of this. but you find that certain, certain of the 4 categories are filled in very easily and a couple of them are really difficult for a lot of folks. That's right. So speaking of the other side of this, we've got the so, the strengths, the opportunities And then we have the risks and impediments. And, at least in my experience running this, you know, this This can be a little confusing for people. Like, what is a risk, what is an impediment, and sometimes they kind of blend together in some ways. but it's still very valuable. And for me, this is at least in in the times that I've run it is what's our current state? What's holding us back? Where do we see risks arising or or already exist? And and so while the strengths and opportunities are more future focused, the risk and impediments is current state and what can we peel off now in hard to get us closer to our future state. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Yeah. The risks and impediments side are kind of really figuring out and looking out what are the things that are keeping us where we are today? and what are the things that we should be concerned about, both in terms of things that we're committed to, and things that we probably should be committing to. Those are the opportunities that might be missed. Because of the things that we're dealing with today. Mhmm. So you're kinda looking at that. It is a little more current state. Although, you use both sides, back and forth, together, repeatedly. but I think Chris, I think back to when you and I worked together in Florida. And, you know, when we were doing a lot the work there. There were a lot of risks out there that we dealt with, and a lot of impediments and people knew them, but we never really went through an exercise to do this back then. Think about it. And I think back to man, what could we have done? If we had done something like this and we had to put that on everybody's because we had a We had a group of many, many multiple teams, what 80 people, I think in that entire kind of sub organization. All of that knowledge had been put up and put together and been visible. And and collaboratable across, all of the different subteams. It I think we could have had an a lot quicker impact than what we did when we do that. Absolutely. You know, we don't all the, you know, a lot of risk and impediments that are out there. Are known. You know, I think you said that earlier. Right? They're all known. It's not a secret. It's just if it's not visible and they don't see it, we don't deal with it. And put it up there, then suddenly If it's visible, all of a sudden, now people have to do something with it. Right? They can't it's staring them in the face. And so it's important. I think that that we do that, that we get visible about it. And the other thing I would just suggest is as important as well as from a risk standpoint, right? IV risk is being longer a little bit longer term, but what are we gonna do about Right? You don't just wait until I mean, it's you just don't wait till you run into a risk. If you know it's there, you try to fix it before you get to it. Right, or to mitigate it somehow. And and I think it's important to get that up and get again visible so people can see it and Right? They at least acknowledge that it's there. Right. absolutely. As many techniques to do that, there's a raid log, there's the roam method and so on and so forth. But but just I think you're right. Getting invisible, that's the first step, in acknowledging that these things exist. And maybe what the current state of that risk is, you know, who who owns it, or is it is it being mitigated, or are we just accepting it, whatever the whatever it is, right, and and having a conversation around that. Well, this sounds like a really, great I mean, obviously, our experiences is our experience. We've used it. I think most of all, Mike has been using it for for years now, and we've started using this technique. And, we facilitate a lot of our sessions using this, and it's very powerful, very useful. I think where it shows the most promises is anytime you're kicking off some kind of a change initiative. Yes. right? Absolutely. And and, you know, we're it can be a it can be a measuring stick to success as well. Typically when these are run, people are very much, and and we mentioned this earlier, they're they're very used to they understand all the impediments. They're dealing with them every day. They could probably that that that column gets filled usually has more in it than any other column when you first get together with a new group. Right? Mhmm. The second, largest thing are are the opportunities usually. So those things people are always looking at all the time. Right? The things that folks typically don't get as much time or aren't culturally used to doing is looking at the risks, and other risks of not only current risks to current deliverables. That's pretty well known, but what are future risks? What are some of the opportunity cost type that if we don't. So we don't do that. Or risk that you don't even see yet because, you know, there's competition out there that you're not aware of. Or we're not even we're not even spending much time thinking about it because we're so into the impediments. That's right. That that that it just consumes our whole day. Yeah. And the strengths side. We're not used to doing this and petting ourselves in the back and recognizing what a true strength is and what the power of those strengths are. So the first time we do these things, they tend to have A lot of things in the opportunities because it's things that people really wanna see that they haven't seen in a long time. Those impediments because they deal with them every day, those columns are very full. Typically the strengths and the op and the risk side don't have as much in it. But our ideal here is as we move over time because this is a living document, If we can start to reduce the things on the right side with the risks and impediments, start to increase the cards on the sides of strengths and opportunities We are we are moving our organization towards its goals and our missions. We are making forward progress. We are making ourselves future proof. is is an organization and as individuals, and as a team. that's the that's the transition. We wanna see that movement happen over time. So we want we do wanna go back and revisit it. but it can be very powerful for that as well. And that's that's not an immediate gain. The immediate 1 of the immediate gains is really this idea around emptying your glass and getting visibility and participation together for a new team to collaborate. The future opportunities are really about How do you see those things move from the right side to the left? That's awesome. Chris, any any parting thoughts before we close our Ashley Short? No. It's a great conversation. made me go back and think about how we've run those events in the past, and I've got some ideas about some different way things I can try. So I yeah. I don't have anything else to add. Great. Well, for the viewers out there, if you're interested in learning more about Sori and and how to facilitate it, just reach out. our contact information is in the show notes, and we'll be happy to help. it's a great technique. I think, it can really help jump start your any change initiative or, or or a team charter type session. You know, whatever it might be. If you think about a team charter, chartering session, that is in a way a change initiative because you're getting a bunch of bunch of people that don't know each other or have worked together in a team but it really worked as individuals. And you're trying to sort of figure out, okay, what binds them, what connects them, and how can you make this team greater than the sum of its parts. So, sorry seems like a great way to do that. And, with that, thanks for watching. See you next time. Thank you, everybody.
