#03: Accelerate behavior change through a 5 min warmup

I will present a concise approach to guide your team in adopting a new behavior using strategic warmups. I will share a real-world example that I used last week with a product team. 

The killer prompt we are going to break down in 4 steps below.

[I want to shift my audience from {old behavior} to {new behavior} but {blocker} is getting in the way. How might we design a 5 minute warmup activity focused on {deliverable} that showcases the {new behavior}?]

Typical icebreakers don’t work

You know the moment. You finally get important stakeholders together in one place to make important decisions and the meeting leader says: “OK, before we get started…let’s do a quick icebreaker.”

50% of you just rolled your eyes.

I don’t blame you. Some icebreakers, while fun at first glance, waste time. They are meant to loosen people up but can create an opposite effect making people feel alienated at best and lose trust in the facilitator at worst. Here are a few other reasons why typical icebreakers don’t work:

1. They don’t connect to the purpose of the working session or the desired behavior change
2. The facilitator doesn’t own it fully to push through uncomfortable moments
3. Poor activity instructions that causes confusion

Last week, I tested a different kind of icebreaker with a cross-functional product team that enabled them to let down their guard and brainstorm team metrics without fear.

Why strategic team warmups for behavior change?

Cultural change inside organizations can be massive, daunting undertakings and they usually involve some sort of behavior change with their employees.

The benefits of strategic team warmups to enable behavioral change:

• safe space to practice a new behavior
• low time commitment from the team
• creates team engagement while keeping productive in their day jobs
• introduces vibrancy into a meeting
• not needing permission from senior stakeholders
• create buy-in for a new way of working by showing, not telling.

Here’s how to create these types of warmups, step by step:

4 steps to design a strategic team warmup

Step 1: Decide on the change

I am working with the product leadership of a large organization and a key workforce change they want is the adoption of a more lean/agile way of working.

I like to use a From/To framework to understand where my audience is today and where I want them to head. A few examples:

• From siloed to integrated
• From nervous to confident
• From disheartened to hopeful

Our shift was from being linear to working iteratively and experimentally.

This helps anchor to the desired behavioral outcome you want to see as a result of your warm-up.

Step 2: Identify the blocker

Our hunch, from experience, was that the fear of failure was the primary reason for not adopting an iterative and experimental way of working.

This is an important point.

Declare the assumption and move on. Don’t spend lots of time conducting interviews or sending out surveys for 100% certainty. Take a stance and move into testing your hunch as soon as possible with your team to get some early signal if you are headed in the right direction. There is no better feedback than your team getting to experience your warmup. It goes from theoretical to tangible.

Step 3: Anchor to a deliverable

The team we are working with is piloting a new digital product in 6 weeks and they are looking to develop their Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for their product rollout.

Perfect. We have a near-term deliverable that is important and urgent for the team.

This also becomes an easier sell to try your crazy warm-up idea because it isn’t a separate meeting to do some wacky HR activity that leadership is making you do. Be clear about your intention so folks don’t come guarded. Here was the start of the message to my team:

“Hey team, we want to practice our new ways of working that [senior leader] is asking of us while also accelerating progress on our KPI development for our pilot product launch…”

This is about de-risking the KPI creation and integrating a new way of working at the same time.

Step 4: Brainstorm with a prompt

Let’s put steps 1-3 together in a brainstorming prompt to create your custom warmup:

Prompt: I want to shift my audience from {old behavior} to {new behavior} but {blocker} is getting in the way. How might we design a 5 minute warmup activity focused on {deliverable} that showcases the {new behavior}?

My example: I want to shift my audience from {being linear} to {working iteratively and experimentally} but {the fear of failure} is getting in the way. How might we design a 5 minute warmup activity focused on {Key Performance Indicators} that showcases {working iteratively and experimentally}?

Let your creativity fly to design your warmup activity!

• grab a teammate to brainstorm ideas
• throw the prompt in an async chat thread to generate solutions
• copy and paste the prompt into chatGPT for suggestions

My warmup:

My product team was looking to create new KPIs focused on the retail and convenience store market. Here was the activity and facilitation instructions:

The Activity: The KPI Karnaval.

"Your team owns a convenience store and you are organizing a 'Shopping Cart Ballet' competition, where customers choreograph routines with their shopping carts. As a team, brainstorm customer-centered Key Performance Indicators (deliverable) to measure the success of this new program."

The Facilitation:

"As the facilitator, I am going to call on someone and they are going to give me the first ridiculous KPI (deliverable) they can thinking of. Then, I will call on someone else and and they are going build off the KPI idea of that previous person (new behavior). If I call on you and you can’t think of anything…GREAT! We are all going to celebrate you, give words of encouragement and then move on to the next person. (blocker).

The Outcome

After a little fun and games for 5-10 minutes, we moved directly into the meeting agenda topic: Developing KPIs for their actual product. This time, the team was more at ease, warmed up thinking about KPIs and in a more generative and iterative mood. Success.