Team Canvas Basic

Objective
Team Canvas Basic is a strategic framework that helps team members to
kick off projects and align on common vision. Based on our experience with
startups and creative groups, it is made to smoothly start collective
projects, let people learn about each other and accumulate enough
momentum to get going.

Team Canvas Basic works best at the following touchpoints:

 creating a team;
 kicking off a project;
 welcoming new team member (e.g. freelancer
joining the team);
 Basic team alignment meeting.

Example: Team Canvas Basic

 On boarding team members
It's a good idea to get team members on board before using Team Canvas
Basic. Here are few ideas of how you might introduce the framework:

Case:
Starting a team
Hey guys! We're starting a team and many of us have never worked with
each other before. I've come across this handy tool, Team Canvas Basic,
that helps team members to learn most basic things about each other and
get aligned on their goals and expectations. The meeting should take about
half an hour. Should we try it out?

Case:
Welcoming a team member
Hey guys, we have Marie joining the team this week. I thought it might be
useful for all of us to take Marie into details with a short Team Canvas
session, so we all are on the same page about our goals, roles and team
culture. What do you think?
Case:
Basic team alignment
Hey guys! I was thinking that we could spend some time to structure the
way we work together. There is a good tool for that called Team Canvas. It
might help us understand what we do and why, where we aim at and what
our guiding principles are, so we are more aligned as a team. What would
you say if we schedule half an hour meeting to quickly go through Team
Canvas steps?

Running The Session

Duration:
30-45 minutes

Participants:
2-8
Facilitation:
team lead or team member

Materials:

 Team Canvas Basic recreated on a

whiteboard, or on a big enough piece of paper
(e.g. flipchart paper or A0/A1)
 Blocks of sticky notes, one for each
participant, different colors
 Sharpies or pens to write on stickies (use thick
enough pens so everyone can see the writing)
 A device with a timer function

Running the session

Introduce the team canvas as a tool to align the team members and get
better at understanding goals, roles and values of your team.

Go through each step with the team, making sure you ask the questions for
each segment. Encourage people to write their answers on stickies and talk
about them with the team. Make sure to agree on all fields.

Use timer for each step to apply some time pressure so the team really
focuses on getting to the point in each section discussion.

If some conversations take rather long time or seem to touch upon bigger
issues, consider parking those questions them during the Team Canvas
session and planning a separate meeting to address them specifically..
1. Goals [5 minutes]
Ask the team members to agree on common goals and mention their
personal goals for the project.

Questions:

 What we as a group really want to achieve?

What is our key goal that is feasible,
measurable and time-bounded?
 What are our personal goals that we want to
share with each other?

Examples:

 Become the leading car sharing company in

our region by 2017.
 Create a 100M Company in the area of
Internet of Things by fall 2016.


2. Roles & Skills [5 minutes]

Ask people to put their names on stickies, as well as their roles. If a person
has multiple roles, use separate post-its.

Questions:

 What are our names?

 What are the roles we have in the team?
 How are we called as a team?

Examples:

 Max: CEO; Marie: Design & Programming

 Name of the team: BoldCar

3. Purpose [10 minutes]

Ask the team to go one step beyond their common goal, and ask them why
they do what they do.
Questions:

 Why are we doing what we are doing in the

first place?
 What is something more important, which
makes us pursue our common goal?

Examples:

 Create positive impact on people's lives

through social innovation
 Make people’s life easier and stress-free
through innovation in the field of Internet of
Things


4. Values [5 minutes]
Ask the team what are the core values - the most important principles - that
they want to share within the team. The team should agree on values, so
everyone accepts the final set.

Questions:

 What do we stand for?

 What are guiding principles?
 What are our common values that we want to
be at the core of our team?

Examples:

 Trust
 Creativity
 Quality
 Transparency
 Mutual understanding
 Equality
 Respect
5. Rules & Activities [10 minutes]
Ask the team to agree on common rules and activities. Think of this as of
outcome of the previous sections: a concrete set of rules and activities they
want to implement.

Questions:

 What are the rules we want to introduce after

doing this session?
 How do we communicate and keep everyone
up to date?
 How do we make decisions?
 How do we execute and evaluate what we do?

Examples:

 Keeping things within group confidential

 Weekly status updates
 Communication over Slack + Skype for calls
 Dinners together every second week (Max as
organizer)
 Workday: starting from 9 to 10, meetings start
at 10
 Keeping workday to 8 hours, except when it’s
needed to shorten it a bit towards more


Wrap up [5 minutes]
As you close The Team Canvas workshop, ask the team members to tell
about one single most important insight that they gained during the
workshop.

It is recommended to repeat the Teamwork Canvas session with each new

member joining the team.
 Strategy
Team Canvas Basic consists of 3 key areas:

1. What the team is: roles and goals

2. Why the team is doing what it's doing: purpose
and values
3. How the team is going to achieve what it
needs to achieve: rules and activities

As a facilitator of the session, you might be asked something like this: ‘How
are we supposed to answer this question? What is that you expect us to
say here?’, etc. It is important to understand that The Team Canvas
creates context for the team, rather then content, and therefore all answers
are valid. Gently reply to such questions: 'How would you answer if you
knew? What do you think the answer should be?'

Team Canvas Basic is working well with short-term projects and for the
purpose of kicking off a new team. If you want to align on common vision
and resolve conflict, or create great team bonding for a longer project,
consider using Team Canvas Complete.

Team Canvas Complete

Objective
Team Canvas is a strategic framework that helps bring team members on
the same page. Based on our experience with startup teams and creative
agencies, it is made to align teams, increase cohesion and performance
and to create productive team culture, fast.

Team Canvas works across multiple touchpoints:

 creating a team;
 clarifying goals and addressing overall team
performance (e.g. when you feel stuck as a
 team, or when you need to get a lot of stuff
done);
 growing and onboarding new team members;
 general alignment sessions (recommended
every 2-3 months).

Example: Team Canvas

 On boarding team members
Before you use the canvas, make sure to get everyone in the team on
board to do it. You might want to take a lead and suggest the tool to your
team. Here are a couple of ways to introduce the framework:

Case:
Starting a team
Hey guys! Since we are forming the team now, I’d like to propose to do a
session on creating our team structure and getting to know each other.
Each of us might have had one of those previous experiences with teams
when things didn’t really go that well. So why don’t we invest some time to
make sure we are aligned and ready for a kickoff?

Case:
Team adjustment
Hey guys, our work was a bit fuzzy lately, and I thought we could spend
some time clearing things up and getting on the same page. There is a
good tool for it called Team Canvas, which may help us get aligned and a
bit more structured as a team. What do you say if we use it for an
alignment session?
Case:
Onboarding new member
As you know, we are a small team and getting a new person on board is a
big decision. We want to make sure we all agree on core things and will
work great together. What do you say if we run a session with this tool, The
Team Canvas, making sure we are aligned on our vision and core values,
and have a match?

Running The Session

Duration:
90-120 minutes

Participants:
2-8
Facilitation:
team lead or external facilitator

Materials:

 Team Canvas recreated on a whiteboard, or

on a big enough piece of paper (e.g. flipchart
paper or A0/A1)
 Blocks of sticky notes, one for each
participant, different colors
 Sharpies or pens to write on stickies
 A device with timer function

Running the session

Introduce the team canvas as a tool to align the team members and get
better at understanding goals, roles and values of your team.

Go through each step with the team, making sure you ask the questions for
each segment. Encourage people to write their answers on stickies and talk
about them with the team. There are fields that all team should agree on: 1.
People and Roles; 2. Goals; 4. Purpose; 5. Values; 9. Rules and culture.
The rest of the fields can be filled individually, with no particular need to be
agreed upon.
1. People & Roles [5 minutes]
Ask people to put their names on stickies, as well as their roles. If a person
has multiple roles, use separate post-its.

Questions:

 What are our names?

 What are the roles we have in the team?
 How are we called as a team?

Examples:

 Max: CEO; Marie: Design & Programming

 Name of the team: BoldCar

2. Common goals [10 minutes]

Ask the team to agree on common goals.

Questions:

 What you as a group really want to achieve?

What is our key goal that is feasible,
measurable and time-bounded?

Examples:

 Become the leading car sharing company in

our region by 2017.
 Create a 100M company in the area of
Internet of Things by fall 2016.
3. Personal goals [5 minutes]
Ask the team members about their individual goals they have for the
project.

Questions:

 What are our individual personal goals for this

project?
 Are there personal agendas that we want to
open up?

Examples:

 Become more confident at iOS development

[Marie]

4. Purpose [10 minutes]

Ask the team to go one step beyond their common goal, and ask them why
they do what they do.

Questions:

 Why are we doing what we are doing in the

first place?
 What is something more important, which
makes us pursue our common goal?

Examples:

 Create positive impact on people's lives

through social innovation
 Make people’s life easier and stress-free
through internet of things innovation
5. Values [10 minutes]
Ask the team what are the core values - the most important principles - that
they want to share within the team. The team should agree on values, so
everyone accepts the final set.

Questions:

 What do we stand for?

 What are guiding principles?
 What are our common values that we want to
be at the core of our team?

Examples:

 Trust
 Creativity
 Quality
 Transparency
 Mutual understanding
 Equality
 Respect


6. Strengths & Assets [15 minutes]

Ask the team to share the key pieces of skills (both hard skills and soft
skills) and assets available within the team. Don't dismiss ‘insignificant’
stuff. You might find that the team has capacity for martial arts, running
marathons or persuading people. Encourage people to share something
about themselves, as well as note important qualities they see in their
teammates.

Questions:

 What are the skills we have in the team that

will help us to achieve our goals?
 What are interpersonal/soft skills that we
have?
  What are we good at, individually and as a
team?

Examples:

 Coding (iOS/Python/etc.)
 Design
 Being devoted and driven
 Being visionary
 Energy
 Sales & pitching

7. Weaknesses & Development Areas [15

minutes]
Ask the team to share the key weaknesses and areas for improvement that
they see in themselves, as well as obstacles they face as a team. Make an
accent on reporting what people can find in themselves, rather than
discussing other’s weaknesses.

Questions:

 What are the weaknesses we have,

individually and as a team?
 What our teammates should know about us?
 What are some obstacles we see ahead us
that we are likely to face?

Examples:

 Easily distracted [Marie]

 Can be arrogant [Max]
 Lack of structured communication [general],
etc.

8. Needs & Expectations [10 minutes]

Ask the team to express the needs they have in order to be successful.
Think of this as a follow up to previous two sections: once team members
expressed their strengths and weaknesses, they should be able to express
the needs they have to amplify strengths and be at their best despite the
weaknesses.

Questions:

 What does each member of the team needs to

be successful?
 How the team could help each member with
their needs?

Examples:

 Some «me time»

 More clear weekly status updates
 Help and coaching
 Trust
 Fun
 Stability

9. Rules & Activities [10 minutes]

Ask the team to agree on common rules and activities. Think of this as of
outcome of the previous sections: a concrete set of rules and activities they
want to implement.

Questions:

 What are the rules we want to introduce after

doing this session?
 How do we communicate and keep everyone
up to date?
 How do we make decisions?
 How do we execute and evaluate what we do?

Examples:

 Keeping things within group confidential

 Weekly status updates
 Communication over Slack + Skype for calls
  Dinners together every second week (Max as
organizer)
 Workday: starting from 9 to 10, meetings start
at 10
 Keeping workday to 8 hours, except when it’s
needed to shorten it a bit towards more

Wrap up [5 minutes]
As you close The Team Canvas workshop, ask the team members to tell
about one single most important insight that they gained during the
workshop.

Strategy
When using complete Team Canvas, it is good to keep in mind that it
consists of 4 parts:

1. What the team is: roles and goals (both

common and personal)
2. Why the team is doing what it's doing: purpose
and values
3. Who are the team members: their strengths,
weaknessess and needs
4. How the team is going to achieve what it
needs to achieve: rules and activities

As a facilitator of the session, you might be often asked something like this:
‘How are we supposed to answer this question? What is that you expect us
to say here?’, etc. It is important to understand that The Team Canvas
creates context for the team, rather then content, and therefore all answers
are valid. Gently reply to such questions: 'How would you answer if you
knew? What do you think the answer should be?'

It would be a good idea to to park conversations that seem to take too

much time of the team and arrange separate meetings to address these
issues.
We recommend to repeat Team Canvas sessions once in a while,
especially when a new team members join.