Good Teams, Bad Outcomes with Martina Ziegenfuss and Jim Elvidge
In this episode of drunkenpm radio, Martina Ziegenfuss and Jim Elvidge of Clerv.io join me for a conversation about a frustrating but common pattern in organizations: smart, capable teams still end up delivering slow, messy, or misaligned results. The conversation looks at how team performance is shaped by the surrounding system, not just the people on the team. They also unpack how AI can speed up delivery in some places while exposing bottlenecks, governance gaps, and operating model problems somewhere else.In this episode, Dave, Martina, and Jim explore what makes a team “good,” why good teams can still produce bad outcomes, and how leadership choices often create the very friction teams are blamed for. They also discuss Clerv.io’s diagnostics and playbooks, designed to help organizations see systemic problems more clearly and work through them.
Key Topics
- What defines a good team
- Systemic challenges in organizations
- Impact of AI on team performance
- Creating a culture of empowerment
- Diagnosing organizational health with diagnostics
- Experimenting with team structures
- The role of leadership and management
- Overcoming systemic resistance to change
- Tools for assessing organizational health
- The future of team design and AI
Chapters
00:00 — Why good teams can still produce bad outcomes
04:19 — Why Clerv.io started and what its playbooks are for
06:49 — Good teams, bad outcomes, and the impact of the system
11:37 — How team design depends on the broader system and architecture
14:22 — How organizational history, silos, and fear create friction
19:36 — The cross-functional team experiment and what it changed
27:05 — What AI can and can’t replace in team roles
33:06 — Theory of constraints: why faster tools don’t fix the bottleneck
35:43 — AI exposing governance and approval delays
47:03 — How to contact Martina and Jim and follow Clerv.io
Links from the Podcast
Clervio: https://clerv.io/
2026 PMI WDC Conference: www.pmiwdc.org/conference-2026-pmi-wdc
PMI SWVA 2026 Fall Symposium:
Digital PM Summit: thebureau.community/2026-digital-pm-summit
Connect with Martina Ziegenfuss
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinaz/
Connect with Jim Elvidge
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimelvidge/
Connect with Dave Prior
drunkenPM Radio: soundcloud.com/drunkenpmradio
LInkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6E6lOSFg21gfyMmjHUH1yw
