The concerns framework is an effective tool for discussing and resolving things that are worrying your team members. Often the discussion itself resolves many of them, and for the rest you can agree short-term or long-term actions.
When to use it?
When many team members seem to worry about things, are feeling low or you notice other indicators, such as low score on motivation. Try this once, see how your team feels about it, and decide how you can best use it in future.
How long does it take?
1 hour.
What roles are there?
1 person is the facilitator (this is probably you, the reader), others are equal participants, each talking about their own experience.
What are the pitfalls of this framework?
The discussion may take a too strong turn towards negativity – you can then bring up some earlier successes and favorable outcomes, but never sugarcoat people’s concerns.
There may be temptation to outsource the responsibility to others (the executive team, HR, other teams etc). Welcome those thoughts but steer the focus to things your team can control or influence. Give people responsibility for taking action and follow up on actions.
Preparations
In-person meeting: Book a room with a white board or use a large paper sheet, get some post-it notes and markers, prepare the white board with the three columns.
Remote meeting: Create a collaboration document similar to the white board picture (a Google Spreadsheet, Trello board, etc.) and share the link, share your screen during the session.
Here are templates you can copy for your use right away: Jamboard, Google Sheet
How it works?
Set the context: “Everyone makes valuable observations. We work in a fast-paced, changing environment, and there may be many things we are (and should be) worrying about. We’re going to talk about them now.”
Have everyone write down their main concerns in 3-5 minutes, one idea per post-it note or a spreadsheet cell. Post the notes one by one, briefly (1-3 sentences) explaining what the note means
Group similar thoughts together. Talk about each emerging theme briefly as a team. If there are a lot of themes to address, discuss which are the most important 2-3 themes to prioritize.
Have everyone think for 5 minutes and write down their ideas on actions that can be taken for different themes. Then categorize them into short term (quick impact) and long term (slow but larger impact). If your team is used to brainstroming together in an inclusive manner, you can jump directly to group discussion.
Once all ideas have been presented, discuss to identify which actions could be most impactful and weed out the the ones which are not high priority right now.
Assign each action an owner who is responsible for ensuring progress is made. Agree on how to follow up on actions.
Thank everyone for sharing their ideas.