The Playbook Your Team Can’t See

A client recently told me, “I don’t understand why my team isn’t performing.  We have a weekly team meeting, and we review everyone’s tasks and metrics.  Yet, there is no real output.  No one is meeting their goals.”

Comments like that always make me pause.  It’s clear that time is being spent on communication and metrics.  Yet none of it is leading to results.

The leader quickly moved on to explain why he believed his team was struggling. One team member “lacked initiative.”  Another “needed a lot of direction.”  Others simply weren’t following through.

Those observations may have been true.  But I wasn’t yet convinced that they explained the whole story.  So, instead of accepting the diagnosis, I started asking questions.  I asked about the team’s weekly meeting.  I asked how people prepared, what accountability looked like between meetings, and how feedback was delivered throughout the week.

His answers were helpful, but they weren’t pointing me toward motivation or accountability as the primary problems.

At that point I asked if we could change course.  Instead of asking questions about accountability and motivation, I asked him to talk me through his process:

“Walk me through how you get from opportunity to a successful outcome,” I said.

“Start at the very beginning.  What’s the first thing that you do?”

He answered.  Then I asked,

"What happens next?"

"And after that?"

"Why does that step matter?"

“What happens if it doesn’t occur?”

"What should someone be thinking about at this point?"

For the next 90 minutes, I kept asking questions.

By the end of our conversation, my notebook was covered with handwritten arrows, decision points, conversations, follow-ups, and checkpoints.

That’s when it became obvious.  What emerged wasn’t a list of tasks.

It was an entire playbook.  But it only existed in his head.

The leader understood the system.

The team only understood the activities.

The leader wasn’t refusing to share his playbook.  He just didn’t realize that there was a playbook to teach.

This leader was seasoned and exceptionally good at his job.  As we talked, it became clear that he  “instinctively” knew which conversations had to happen first, what information needed to be gathered before decisions could be made, when follow-up mattered most, and how each step built toward a successful outcome.

He had outlined a set of activities and metrics for his team based on a system that he internalized.  It made perfect sense – to him.

His team, though, had never been shown that system.  They had the activities but not the playbook.

This is something that happens to a lot of experienced leaders – more often than they realize.

Years of experience compress complexity.

Repeated decisions become instinctive. Patterns become easier to recognize. Judgment develops. What once required deliberate thought begins to feel obvious.

That's incredibly valuable.

It's also what makes expertise so difficult to teach.

Because what feels obvious to you is often invisible to everyone else.

Your team can know the metrics without understanding the system that brings them together to get results.  They can execute your checklist but still miss the bigger picture.  Before concluding that your team lacks initiative or accountability, consider a different question: have you made the playbook visible?

Can your team explain not just what they’re expected to do, but why each step matters and how they fit together to create a winning outcome?

As an experienced leader, you have a playbook.  The question isn’t just whether it’s effective – it’s also whether you’ve made it visible to your team. Because teams can’t execute a playbook that they can’t see.