Have you poured months into a strategy your team couldn't bring to life? Or watched capable people work harder than ever, and still struggle to pull together as a team?
High performance isn't about a better strategy, more talent, or longer hours. It's about how your team works together, every single day.
Karina Mangu-Ward, author of Teams That Meet the Moment, has spent more than a decade helping complex organizations redesign the messy day-to-day of how people actually get things done together. Her belief: good everyday teaming habits are both good for people and good for results. You don't have to choose between them.
Making this real doesn't require a reinvention. You just need the right structure and the intention to show up differently. In this episode, Karina shares simple, tangible practices you can use in your very next meeting or strategic project.
You’ll Learn:
The three lies leaders tell themselves about teamwork, and why believing them holds your team back
How the framework of the "Even Over" ends the swirl when your team is stuck choosing between two competing options
Why creating a "Safe to Try" process gets a team unstuck when you're chasing consensus and certainty
What a steady team cadence unlocks when everything around you feels like an emergency
The instinct nearly every high performer has to unlearn before they can build a team that thrives
ABOUT MY GUEST:
Karina Mangu-Ward is a partner at August Public, an organizational change consultancy that helps large, complex organizations build more human-centered ways of working, whose clients include PepsiCo, Planned Parenthood, and Sundance. She's the author of Teams That Meet the Moment: 9 Practices for Unlocking Performance and Growth in Uncertain Times. Karina's passion is helping groups navigate complexity, gain insight, and unlock highly complex challenges.
TIMESTAMPS FOR THIS EPISODE: 03:01 Why great strategy still fails 04:13 The hustle culture myth that's burning teams out 05:20 Everyday habits drive extraordinary teams 07:11 Meeting the moment in uncertain times 09:13 The "Safe to Try" mindset that breaks gridlock 11:18 Setting guardrails without limiting innovation 12:06 Why small bets outperform big risks 13:29 Unlearning the need to have the answer 15:17 Why sticky practices beat complicated frameworks 17:16 Simple retrospectives that strengthen learning 20:19 The surprising cost of treating everything like an emergency 22:09 Using "Even Over" to make better trade-offs 25:28 Intention over reaction in decision-making 30:32 When perfection becomes procrastination 31:53 Why working in public accelerates learning 34:22 The power of stories over instruction 37:08 Intention + practice = better leadership 39:14 What trade-off do you need to make?
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