When you say the term "tactical," I immediately think of verbs, percent complete, and a script.
Idea 1 of 2 for you is the engagement piece – high-altitude.
What is no longer engaging in 2025: values and principles. Too squishy, too difficult to detect unaligned contributors, and difficult to remove insincere stakeholders and keep only aligned and sincere stakeholders.
What is engaging in 2025: metaphors. More tangible, easier to detect unaligned contributors, easier to manage, mentor, micro-mentor, or just remove unaligned stakeholders.
- Metaphors for good teamwork: symphony, improv team, factory.
- Metaphors for bad teamwork: traffic jam, bumper cars, whack-a-mole, and karaoke.
- Values and principles are a "cul-de-sac" (yawn) point-of-view – not engaging.
- Metaphors give you a pointy point-of-view – engaging.
Imagine a team asking,
- "What would a symphony do?" (synchronize, listen, blend, pace itself)
- "What would an expectation factory do?" (set expectations, meet expectations, rinse, repeat)
- "What would an improv team do?" (play Yes And, have each other's back)
Or the snarky versions …
- "What would a traffic jam do?" (bury the highways in moving vehicles)
- "What would bumper cars do? (double and triple book their schedules)
- "How would a two-year-old walk?" (aimlessly, but take delight in just staying on their feet)
Idea 2 of 2 for you is the tactical piece – low altitude.
What is not tactical: adjectives. RACI. Squishy. Ambiguous. Existed for many years. Not solving your problem (or anyone's biggest problems). Percent complete? No connection.
What is noise, reinventing the wheel, and a team that is "all over the place?" What is the opposite of a playbook? A project plan with dozens of verbs. Jagged, lumpy, and STILL harboring tons of ambiguity. "Verb Sprawl."
What is tactical: verbs that yearn for the label "100% complete." Verbs that are ruthlessly unambiguous about what qualifies as "productivity" in collaboration. Verbs that encourage muscle memory so that the team is no longer self-absorbed in mechanics and can elevate its brainpower to the collaboration space itself, the customer experience, and stakeholder empathy.
The framework is Five Verbs (instead of RACI's Four Adjectives). It's tactical since …
- It manages whatever work is worth the rigor of Five Verbs
- It shrugs at managing whatever work is NOT worth the rigor of Five Verbs
- It ruthlessly clarifies who is contributing, how, and when
- it's explicit – not rigid – and you can always change your mind
You cannot form a symphony out of whatever is infinite (meetings, emails, verbs)
You can form a symphony out of two dimensions that are both finite (Five Verbs and whatever is worth Five Verbs), scalable, and smooth.
Again, the two ideas for a tactical playbook are:
- Three metaphors
- Five Verbs
You asked about some formats – please see attached.
Work that doesn't fall under these is just a chat, that requires no keyboard, that no one will care about weeks or months from now.
- Activity = meetings & emails.
- Productivity = 100% on the Five Verbs.
What might be engaging for a stakeholder who is skeptical of Five Verbs: steer the project plan HARD into Verb Sprawl (or bullet points forming a completely unsynchronized task list). Tell the skeptic,
- "There's a time and place for your impressive vocabulary, and the project plan is that perfect place!" 😊 Instead of "smooth," this shapes a very lumpy, VUCA culture.
- "I thought your work might be worth documenting, but you're right. You've convinced me. Your work is not worth keystrokes."
- "AI scribing all of our meeting minutes! Why ... it's almost too good to be true! Imagine the library we'll build!"
Ouch. And "Doh!" 😊
What could be more tactical – ruthlessly disciplined – than an "elegant expectation factory?"
What could be more empathetic than a portfolio of documents that represent a company's collaborative advantage? Where the team demonstrated its IQ, EQ, and HQ (hospitality quotient). Where a high-trust team possesses high competence, honesty, dependability, and benevolence?
Execution's two best friends are simplicity and transparency. This communication symphony gives you both.
I welcome reactions, questions, ideas, pushback, concerns, etc.
Let's convert traffic jams into symphonies.
Let's convert frustration factories into elegant expectation factories.
Let's solve VUCA.
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Robert Snyder
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Original Message:
Sent: 2025-02-10 11:23
From: Gabrielle Maurice
Subject: Developing a Custom Integration Playbook
Hi everyone,
I am working with a client to develop an integration playbook for their company. As a consultant, most of our tools/frameworks are in PPT since we facilitate discussions, and then some of the outputs are translated into other PPT or spreadsheets. I want to create something very tactical for them, that is practical; not a narrative-heavy, hundred-page document that we often see as "playbooks". Does anyone have any interesting formats that have worked well for them? Any tips on how to make this tool engaging?
A big thank-you in advance!
Gabrielle
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Gabrielle Maurice
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