How can you, as the team facilitator, create a collaborative team environment when the organizational culture does not foster collaboration? I am experiencing this very environment on a new project that I have been asked to coach the leaders at the helm. What struck me most from the Gratton and Erickson article was the idea around “how complex is the collaborative task?” This particular change is over two years old and is still not complete. The ownership of the change and all activities around it have completely fizzled out and no one seems to know why. Over a period of about one work week, a new, very large team of resources have been brought together to “figure it out” and “complete the change process” for the department. The challenge we are facing is that there are many unknowns and that has created a poor working culture. Executive support is quiet, the working team is large and many of them have voiced their frustration for “being tapped to fix something they did not break.” Most importantly, the change is not complex and ultimately will be complete and successful once we can create a behavior and reinforce that behavior. So what I am doing as a coach and facilitator to foster this environment? I am first trying to re-build the team trust and rally the engagement of what success looks like and WHY we are doing this. Second, change champions – we once had these for each team, but they dissolved at some point. Not important to ask why that happened at this point (can do that when we retro), but it is critical to get our positive change champions up and running to lead the charge. Lastly, we need a timeline – when this change MUST be done by. This is part of what is causing dis-engagement and allowing our culture to suffer. We need senior leadership to give us a firm date for completion. The entire division needs it – folks won’t change and learn the new system, until they know the old one is going away. I am hopeful, but will admit that I feel their frustrations too. I am trying quite hard to coach candidly and guide the team to success.