Phase 1: Focus. Experience gathering.
Focus on and define what the team must jointly develop.

Phase 2: Understand. Collection of knowledge.
Gather knowledge about how the skill has previously been expressed in the team and the work of the individual team members. Describe successful episodes. And be sure to describe and explain the contexts that illustrate the team's best practices.

Phase 3: Imagine. What do we specifically want from the future?
Now focus on the future. And identify the team's desires and visions or notions of what the team's ideal practice looks like. What do we want to achieve?

Phase 4: Determine. Define concrete objectives.
By connecting the ideas from phase 3 and the situation descriptions from phase 2, the team sets concrete objectives for what it wants to work on next.

Phase 5: Release. Plan the development.
Define the first steps. Here, the team makes concrete action plans for how they will achieve the objectives they set in phase 4.

For each of the 5 phases, you can attach some tools to help the process start:

Tools for Phase 1

questionnaire

It can be difficult on command just to find out what to focus on for the meeting. Sometimes it is quite clear that this topic should be worked on, in other cases it is not so clear what will create the biggest change in the team. If you are in this situation, you can use a questionnaire that all participants fill out and hand in to the meeting leader before the meeting. In this way, the meeting leader gets an overview of the situation and can show an anonymized result of the investigation if deemed necessary.

The questionnaire can e.g. Ask about these topics:

• Well-being
• Cooperation and task performance
• Professionalism
• Improvement culture
• Relationship with office manager/management team

Have the team members rate on a scale of 1-5 how much they agree or disagree with a series of statements describing each of the five topics. Use e.g. The Modernization Agency's preparation form, which has been developed specifically for the TUS. You download the form by clicking on this link.

To flip the coin

If the team members get caught up in negative descriptions and problems rather than the positive examples of what works, you can use the method called "flipping the coin".

Rephrase the negative statements into positive ones. Eg. :

From "How do we avoid complaints about our customer service?"

To "What characterizes our best customer service?"

Tools for phase 2

Interview guide
To find the situations that are already working, you can ask the team members to interview each other in pairs and today's focus area. Ask e.g. each other about

• When have you experienced that X (today's focus area) has worked really well?
• What happened?
• What made it possible?
• What did the different team members do?
• What other factors made it possible?
• What can we learn from it?

Tools for phase 3

Make sure that for this phase there is an opportunity to write down the various ideas and visions on e.g. a flipchart or a whiteboard. Markers in different colors or a stack of Post It's can also help capture the group's dreams for the future.

Tools for phase 4

The scale in the room
If it is difficult for the team to narrow down to one topic, or if there is disagreement about which idea is the most important, this can be made visible by making a fictitious scale along one wall. One end of the scale illustrates that the topic is very important and makes a big difference to the team, while the other end of the scale shows that adopting and implementing this idea is a waste of time as it makes no difference to the team.

Ask the team members to stand where they immediately feel they belong and ask them why they are standing where they are. Ask what can be done about the measure to move it two steps further up the scale.

Tools for phase 5

SMART objectives
Make sure the team's objectives are SMART

p– specific
M– measurable
A– responsibility is shared
R- realistic
T– time-bound