One of the most effective teams I worked with had a simple but powerful practice: they kept a “friction board”.
Everyday frustrations went up on the board. Each week, they picked one and solved it. Slowly, wasted effort disappeared, energy returned, and morale lifted.
The lesson? Innovation doesn’t always come from big breakthroughs. It comes from deliberate, continuous improvement.
Lean and Agile remind us of this truth: frequent, small iterations build adaptability, resilience, and performance. Research backs it up – teams with cultures of learning and experimentation consistently outperform those that chase efficiency alone.
What Deliberate Leaders Do
- Reward learning, not just outcomes.
- Create psychological safety for experimentation.
- Model curiosity – show it’s okay not to have all the answers.
What Deliberate Teams Do
- Share ideas without fear.
- Celebrate lessons – even the ones that come from failure.
- Build improvement into their routines, not just crisis moments.
The sharpest teams aren’t just efficient. They’re adaptive. They stay curious, learn fast, and keep improving together.
PS- If you want to build a team that learns, adapts, and grows stronger over time, explore our virtual Leader as Coach Program – where leaders shift from directing to empowering, and unlock the culture of continuous improvement that high-performing teams thrive on.
👉 Register now for our October Intake
Footnotes:
Deming, W.E. (1986). Out of the Crisis. MIT Press.
Rigby, D.K., Sutherland, J., & Takeuchi, H. (2016). Embracing Agile. Harvard Business Review.
Garvin, D.A. (1993). Building a Learning Organization. Harvard Business Review.
