When I’m asked what really holds teams back, my answer is almost never effort. Most people I’ve worked with are trying hard. The issue is usually that the system around them isn’t helping them succeed. Work is unclear, priorities are fuzzy, information is buried, and people end up burning energy just figuring out what’s going on. Over the years, across banking, defence, mining and large transformation programs, I’ve come to believe that high performance is far more about how work is set up than how hard people push.
Watch the whole recording here.
I’ve spent close to three decades delivering projects of all shapes and sizes, from short engagements to multi-year national programs. The environments were different, but the patterns were remarkably consistent. When teams were flying, a few simple habits were always present. When teams were struggling, those habits were missing. What surprised me most was how transferable these lessons were. You don’t need a massive budget, a bigger team, or a fancy framework. You need clarity, visibility and a bit of discipline in how you organise the work.
One of the most powerful habits I’ve seen is making work visible. I learned this properly on a large banking program where we were building a complex data platform to speed up credit risk modelling. The technical detail was enormous, and the senior stakeholders were smart, time-poor executives who didn’t need or want a deep dive every fortnight. What they needed was a way to quickly understand progress, risks, and where decisions were required. We created a single-page heat map that showed all the major components, logically grouped, colour-coded against the plan. Green was good, red wasn’t.
That one page changed everything. Steering committee conversations became sharper because everyone was literally looking at the same picture. We could flip between one fortnight and the next and instantly see what had moved. Even more interesting was what happened inside the delivery team. People started talking about “getting this box to green” and flagging issues before they escalated. What began as a reporting aid became a motivation and alignment tool. Years later, I ran into one of the executives from that program and, within seconds, he mentioned how useful that heat map had been. That stuck with me. When people can see their work, they make better decisions and feel more connected to the outcome.
Visibility on its own isn’t enough, though. The next habit is simplification. I don’t mean dumbing things down or losing rigour. I mean, removing work that doesn’t move the outcome. On another banking project, the traditional steering pack took days to prepare. It was beautifully structured and largely unread. We were already behind schedule, and the ambition was to beat competitors to market. I asked for permission to stop producing the pack and replace it with a simple whiteboard update in the project room. It showed what we were focusing on this week, what had happened in the last couple of weeks, and a handful of categories that mattered.
That whiteboard did in minutes what the pack did in days. It forced us to focus on what had changed and what decisions were needed. It also made priorities visible to the whole team, not just the executives. People could see how their work fed into the bigger picture. The project turned around and we hit the market first. The lesson for me was that simplification isn’t about doing less work. It’s about stopping work that doesn’t help you deliver. A good question to ask is, what decision is this report actually supporting? If you can’t answer that clearly, it’s probably clutter.
Sometimes, though, things are genuinely complex and can’t be simplified away. That’s where shared models come in. I saw this clearly during Australia’s real-time payments program. There were dozens of internal and external systems involved, and teams kept talking past each other because everyone held a different mental picture of how payments flowed. We built a simple, step-by-step visual model that showed the payment journey end to end. It took less than a minute to walk through, but it shifted conversations from opinion to fact. Bottlenecks became obvious. Disagreements were reduced because people were no longer arguing from different assumptions.
The form of the model didn’t matter. What mattered was that everyone was looking at the same thing. Models aren’t documentation. They’re thinking tools. They help teams ask better questions and align on what’s really happening. I’ve found the best models are built with the team, not handed to them. The act of building them creates the shared understanding you’re after.
As work scales, structure becomes critical. I learned this the hard way on the Anzac Frigate program, building naval ships with millions of parts, suppliers all over the world and years-long timelines. When I joined, the program was late and over budget. The root cause wasn’t effort or capability. It was poor work organisation. We introduced a clear structure that broke the build into logical units, modules and stages, with explicit ownership and sequencing. That structure didn’t slow people down. It freed them up. Work became achievable, rework dropped, morale lifted, and the program clawed its way back.
Structure is the antidote to complexity, but only if it’s used thoughtfully. Over-planning leads to paralysis, and structure should never become bureaucracy.
The aim is to organise work so people know what needs to be done, in what order, and by whom. Even a simple now, next, later view can make a huge difference.
Finally, and often underestimated, is fun. In high-pressure environments, fun isn’t frivolous. It’s fuel. I led a team setting up a digital front door function under intense demand and scrutiny. We were under-resourced, and everything was urgent. To keep people sane and connected, we deliberately created moments of levity. On May the Fourth, one team member turned up dressed as a Star Wars character and ran meetings in costume. Others joined in. It was ridiculous and memorable, and it reminded us we were human.
Fun isn’t about forced activities or ignoring the work. It’s about celebrating effort, not just outcomes, and creating rituals that build resilience. Different people enjoy different things, so it has to be inclusive and authentic. When the foundations of visibility, simplicity, shared understanding and structure are in place, fun feels earned rather than fake.
I’ve come to see these habits as a sequence. Visibility creates clarity. Simplification removes friction. Models align thinking. Structure enables execution. Fun sustains the team. You don’t need permission to start applying any of this. If you’re leading a small business, you’re already in the driver’s seat. If you’re inside a larger organisation, start within your circle of influence.
If any of this resonates, I’d love to keep the conversation going. Grab me for a coffee, or come along to the Masterclass and we can explore how to make work work better for your team.