USI 2008 Session

Great technology comes from getting your team's best ideas into your products and services. Jim and Michele McCarthy, who led the legendary turnaround of the Visual C++ group at Microsoft, left Microsoft in 1996 to create a team dynamics laboratory to figure out how to get any team into a state of shared vision. Their laboratory and real-world work has focused extensively on this challenge, and has produced rich interpersonal protocols for making unanimous decisions, supporting quality thinking, strengthening design iterations, and incorporating emotions, nobility, and passion into products and services. Do you notice too much discussion and arguing and would prefer the best ideas would just get implemented now? –Learn about the Decider Protocol which guarantees unanimous team decisions with accountability and moves the team forward with a bias toward action. Do you accept that it is vitally important that you get the opinions of others about the quality of work products but notice that it is consistently painful to give and receive feedback? – Learn about the Perfection Protocol which exploits the opportunities inherent in critical thinking. Do you notice that dumb things consistently happen on your team and everyone seems to lack self-awareness to some degree, including you? – Learn about the Core Commitments which provide a team constitution about commitment and accountability to the team. And learn about the Personal Alignment Protocol which allows each team member to address self-awareness around courage, integrity, passion and other virtuous behaviors.