Tribal Know-How

A brief history in Tribe Research Planning Expeditions.

The wonderful thing about having our Planning Expeditions is that we can see how concepts at Tribe Research were developed and grew into key parts of our business today. Do you have a brief history for your organisation?

Planning Expeditions enable our whole team to get a clear-head and know we’re heading in the same direction.

Every six months the Tribe Research team heads out on an expedition to review the last six months and plan for the next six months.

We get to know our Tribe. We believe that you need to have a feedback cycle [ download booklet ]:

• Seek feedback from your tribe, about what you are doing well and ideas you can grow. Explore & Uncover
• Review their feedback at a planning day with the insights from your own team and develop strategies to drive change in the business. Clear-Head
• Feedback to your tribe what others say you do well and plans to implement the ideas. Drive change.
• Communicate back to your tribe about how you’ve listened. Tribal Voice

How we explore, uncover, get a clear-head, drive change and communicate back

We practice what we believe through our bi-annual Planning Expedition. They’ve led to the creation of our alumni TRX.

They generally follow this focus

• First half being about the past
• Second half planning for the future
• Activities based on a business book

The history of our Planning Expeditions

• 2004
• 2005
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• We still have bi-annual Planning Expeditions in January and July.  Although, the history is updated a little after them.

2008

Our mid 2008 Planning Expedition.

A range of tribal groups attended – our team (Kate, Naheen, Christine, Will, Adrian & Rebecca), board member (Judy) and ex-employees (Carissa and Steve – TRX members). This time the book was Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright. In the morning we were also joined by Ken Hudson, creator of The Speed Thinking Zone for our early group sessions. In the morning, we covered:

• Our perceptions of ourself and how to look outside the box (after defining what the box is) so we could think creatively about ways to grow. The session, led by Ken Hudson, was an amazing asset to the day.
• Our clients’ feedback on our performance
• A summary of our projects completed
• Assessing the achievement of our goals in many areas of the business
• Our core values
• Our culture and how we can drive change via tribal leadership, the language we use and our definition of what we’re in service of

In the afternoon, we discussed our desired outcomes, our assets, if we have the assets required to achieve our outcomes and the behaviours we are performing and should perform to achieve those outcomes. Finally, each team member was asked to provide an update on their life goals – giving everyone a chance to hear about exactly what motivates and drives our team mates.

The January 2008 Planning Expedition.

In 2007 we decided the end of year Planning Expedition should be moved to January the following year to take advantage of the fact that our business is seasonally quiet in January. This allows us to use January for business development (especially when December is so hectic!). The Tribe Research team (Carissa, Will, Christine and Naheen) attended along with most members of the Advisory Board (Judy, Graham and Mark). This was the first Planning Expedition in which the Advisory Board attended. We also had two Discoverers, although they were in handover. The Expedition was based on the book How to Grow your Business by taking 3 months off by Louise Woodbury and William de Ora. The morning was spent reviewing 2007:

• We talked about the goals we reached after the last Planning Expedition:
  • changed the website text to reflect our “Hedgehog Concept”
  • changed our report format to increase customer satisfaction
  • installed a wiki and filled it with our procedures
  • utilised the CRM for projects
  • developed products for the identified need of our target
• Carissa presented our customers’ feedback and we discussed the results.
• We went through the Litmus test (How to Grow your Business by taking 3 months off, pg. 9) to identify the areas in which we need to improve.

The afternoon was spent developing and setting down goals for 2008:

• The idea of a clarification session (How to Grow your Business by taking 3 months off, pg. 22) was discussed as a way for our clients to establish if their organisation is ready to undertake research to know their tribe and what they could implement in their business to improve their understanding of their tribe. This has been developed to our Orientation.
• We looked at ways to reduce Kate’s responsibilities and found three staff priorities to be goals for the next Planning Expedition:
  • A person to help with book-keeping, administration, marketing and part of the opportunities process.
  • A person to help with maintaining the office computers and other information technology
  • A person to help with opportunities and sales.
• Another goal was to develop a club for previous staff which we called TRX.
• Everyone set out their personal goals for 2008 and talked about how they went with their last ones.

2007

The mid 2007 Planning Expedition was in the Blue Mountains over 2 days and the whole Tribe Research team attended (Kate, Carissa, Steve and Will). This was the first Planning Expedition with a Discoverer as well as Explorers. The Expedition was based on the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, and partly drew on Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Maubougne. Day one was about the past six months, since our last Planning Expedition and look at Disciplined People and Disciplined Thought.

• Kate presented a summary of the last six months.
• We discussed the concept of Level 5 leadership.
• We went through who sat in the different seats on the Tribe Research bus (each seat representing a skill required at Tribe Research), and discussed whether our team are sitting in the right seats.
• Carissa presented our customers’ feedback and we discussed the results.
• Steve presented an economic forecasting analysis and we discussed the results.
• Everyone was asked to prepare a list of issues at Tribe Research before the Planning Expedition, which were recorded and discussed.

The afternoon and evening was spent developing our “Hedgehog Concept”:

• We could be the best at enabling organisations to change through usable data about their stakeholders
• Our economic engine is charged dollar / total hours worked
• We are passionate about research that improves peoples lives

Day two was about the future, looking at ideas in the Blue Ocean Strategy; and Good to Great’s Disciplined Action and Building Greatness to Last. We briefly discussed and experimented with the tools of the Blue Ocean Strategy. We discussed our systems and procedures – whether the existing ones fit with our Hedgehog Concept, and what else we need to develop. It was decided that our procedures would be implemented into a Wiki so they could be continually updated and annotated by all staff. We introduced 10 Accountabilities developed by Love Your Business and everyone on the team adopted one or more of these:

• Inspire and unite the team (leadership)
• Generate business opportunities (entrepreneur)
• Look after the money (financial)
• Turn prospects into customers (sales)
• Plan, organise and deliver (manager)
• Nurture the team (human resources)
• Create loved products (product technology)
• Delight the customers (customer service)
• Streamline processes (information technology)
• Attract prospects (marketing)

We wrote a “stop doing” list and developed goals for Tribe Research and each individual. We also discussed how we were going at reaching the goals each team member said they had at the last Planning Expedition.

2006

The end 2006 Planning Expedition.

As our team were all new Explorers (Steve, Will, James, and Chirine), the key focus was two fold:

• The day was part training day. We discussed how Tribe Research operates, our philosophy and procedures.
• The day was also about getting to know our tribe. Kate explained who Tribe Research’s customers were, key suppliers, and activities were focused on staff getting to know each other.

At the Planning Expedition, the Explorers ventured into the city in pairs with cameras to take photos of our Tribe Research bags being out and about.

The mid 2006 Planning Expedition included the whole Tribe Research team (Kate, Alexia, Owen, Jimmy and Carissa). 
The theme of this planning expedition was to define what it is like to work at Tribe Research so Kate could build a new team with a similar philosophy to work and research. We worked out the characteristics we wanted in our staff and how the job advertisement should be written to reflect this. The Explorer team were all going to leave Tribe Research for various adventures:

• Carissa had started at Tribe Research at the end 2005 Planning Expedition. She was going on a holiday to New Zealand and South America from November 2006 to February 2007. She would then come back to Tribe Research as a full time Discoverer.
• Alexia had worked with Tribe Research from 2002-2003, then started again in 2005 and was leaving in October to travel around South America then move to Canberra to start a role at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
• Owen had worked with Tribe Research since mid 2005 and was leaving in November to travel around South America then move to Canberra to start a role at the Defence Department.
• Jimmy had worked with Tribe Research from mid 2005 and was leaving in October to travel around Korea and then start a role at Zurich in 2007.

2005

The end 2005 Planning Expedition included the whole Tribe Research team (Kate, Josephine, Alexia, Owen, Jimmy and Carissa). There were three themes to this planning expedition:

• Discussed the characteristics of our team including our HOTS profile from One Minute Millionaire by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G Allen
• Review the developments in the last year:
  • we reviewed the changes to the procedures
  • presented our re-branding which included
    • The new website
    • Introduction to staff being called Explorers
    • Tribe Research’s focus to explore, uncover and drive change
    • Tribal Voice
    • New Year card
  • discussed how to build on our re-branding investment
• Developed our first specific research based product from reviewing our contacts (a key part to any organisation’s tribe) and how we can serve them better. This resulted in the development of Tribal Know-How workshops in the following six months. Tribal Know-How has expanded to be about education and getting off-site to clear your head and drive change.

2004

The end 2004 Planning Expedition was our first, and was held over four days, with the full team which was Kate and Josephine. Over the four days we:

• Documented all our procedures
• Discussed a re-branding strategy to undertake in 2005 which included:
  • Josephine undertaking telephone interviews with our customers
  • Developing our vision and mission
  • Developing a running tag that uniquely defines who we are
  • Redeveloping the website to communicate Tribe Research

Developing a communication strategy, including a new look to Tribal Voice and the introduction of New Year cards.