How to align your digital team

The information in this article comes from the Charity Digital Strategy Accelerator (CDSA), a free and interactive course that helps you create a digital strategy. The CDSA leads you to greatness with all the guidance and practical tools you need to create a digital strategy that is impactful, realistic, and forward-thinking.

 

To begin the Accelerator, click on the link below and enter the code: CDSA.

 

Start the CDSA

 

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Team alignment is essential to success.

 

It provides speed and agility, allowing you to work without the risk of miscommunication or duplication. It ties up workflows, avoids siloes, and allows employees and volunteers across a charity collaborate seamlessly. It’s useful for onboarding tech, allowing teams to share knowledge and avoid competing solutions.

 

The benefits of team alignment are many. In this article, we explore how you can get your teams aligned quickly, efficiently, and in a few simple steps. Let’s start with a pledge.

 

 

Create a team pledge

 

Alignment relies on buy-in. It relies on charity workers feeling seen and heard. Creating a pledge is a great start, demonstrating a clear commitment to team culture. A pledge ensures that all members agree on the values and the responsibilities of any given project.

 

So, how do you create a pledge? You can use the following questions to define the pledge:

• What culture would you like to work in?
• What atmosphere do you want to create?
• What would help the team to thrive?
• What do you need from the team?
• What can each and every team member rely on from each other?
• What would help the team to accomplish what they set out to do?

Then consider these three final questions:

• What will we do when things are difficult?
• How do you want to behave together when there is conflict?
• What are the team’s conflict protocols?

Your pledge should create co-responsibility, with a list for what each team member will be accountable for. This will help ensure that the whole team owns and stewards the culture they want to work in. It will enable constructive conversations in difficult situations and will allow for a team approach to conflict and tension. 

 

There is no set way to create a pledge. It might just be a conversation, or you might want to sign a document, but either way it should be aimed at creating a sense of buy-in across the charity.

 

 

Share high dreams and low dreams

 

To create clarity within the team at the beginning of any given project, explore the team’s many varied expectations. Getting these thoughts out in the open in an initial team meeting can help you work towards the best-case scenario and avoid any problems that could arise. 

 

This process requires team members to listen and not judge each other’s comments, and everyone should feel free to share. Remember that any hopes and fears written down throughout the meeting are not real yet – they are just possibilities.

• Everyone share their “high dreams” about the project. That includes goals, ideal outcomes or outputs, personal feelings, and ideas around team health. Write these down so everyone can see them
• Everyone read through the comments and reflect together as a team, spotting themes
• Repeat this process for “Low dreams”. Low dreams can include any concerns, niggles, or worries that are coming up for people. It is normal for any team to have these thoughts at the beginning of a new project
• Move onto action. Ideate on how the team might design the project to achieve the themes of the “high dreams” and avoid the “low dreams” becoming a reality. This could be done in breakout groups or as a team
• You may wish to repeat this exercise throughout the digital strategy project, tracking the team’s hopes and fears as time passes, and continuing to align towards the best case scenario together

 

Think of new forms of alignment

 

The above are two examples of how to align your teams. The key is simply ensuring individual buy-in and making sure everyone feels seen and heard.

 

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Do you want to create a digital strategy for free? Join our Charity Digital Strategy Accelerator, which teaches you how exactly to plan, write, and deliver on your digital strategy.

 

To begin the Accelerator, click on the link below and enter the code: CDSA.

 

Start the CDSA