The Shelter: What Real Team Buy-In Looks Like

What does a team with real buy-in look like?

A team with real buy-in has clear objectives and everyone’s fingerprints on the plan. You set the destination. The team builds the route.

I call it the Shelter. Think about how a shelter runs. There’s one number everybody knows: animals adopted. Nobody is counting dogs walked or kennels cleaned as the goal. Those jobs matter because they lead to adoptions, and every person there can tell you how their job moves that number.

You’re running a Shelter team if:

• Anyone on the team can name the two or three objectives without looking them up.
• People raise problems early, including problems with your ideas.
• Meetings end with decisions, owners and dates.
• You know whether you hit the goal, because you measured it.

The Shelter also runs on honesty. Kim Scott’s Radical Candor says it better than I can: care about people enough to tell them the truth. People can’t own a plan they aren’t allowed to question.

What does team buy-in look like in a real company?

One of my strongest clients shows what this looks like. I was their fractional chief product officer for three years, and I’m still active with them today. The leader was excellent at bringing everybody together and listening to all opinions. In annual planning we’d whiteboard things out, sticky notes all over the room. By the time we left, we knew what the next six to nine months looked like as a business. That’s rare, in my experience working with clients.

Part of our strategy was to build an ecosystem. Our technology director raised a tech debt problem that stood in the way. Tech debt is the pile of technical shortcuts a product collects over the years. One user couldn’t log in to more than one account. That mattered because our customers were franchise networks, and every franchise is its own business, with its own P&L and its own software license. Owners often buy up each other’s territories. So someone who owned three franchises needed three usernames and three passwords.

It was a very technical problem with zero sex appeal for a prospect or a customer. It was also foundational. Our system had to mimic how our customers’ businesses were structured before it could integrate with their accounting, HR or CRM systems. We all left the room understanding that the work had to be done.

In parallel, our marketing started preparing customers for what was coming on the roadmap. We talked about the potential we were unlocking, more than the problem we were fixing. It was an excitement builder. Everybody in the company could speak about it. They didn’t know every step that had to happen, but they understood the purpose of a very difficult, long road of work.

What did buy-in do for the business?

It took us nine months to finish the technical work, and it was much harder than anticipated. But we unblocked years of tech debt and opened up a far faster development future for the business.

We retained customers, because we were solving problems they’d been asking us about for several years. We attracted new franchisors who wanted one system of record to recommend to their whole franchisee network. And we’re now closing deals because of all of that work.

How close is your team to the Shelter?

The Puppy Syndrome Team Check takes about ten minutes. It scores your team on direction and ownership and gives you one place to start.

Take the Team Check

Next in the series: how many objectives a team should have, and the five steps that keep everyone aligned.

Frequently asked questions

What is team buy-in?

Buy-in is when people understand the purpose of the work and had a say in the plan. They push it forward without being told to.

Does buy-in mean everyone has to agree?

No. It means everyone was heard and everyone understands the purpose. The leader still sets the destination.

How do I get buy-in without slowing everything down?

Ask for input on how to reach the goal, and set a date for the decision. One working session at the start costs less time than months of chasing work nobody believes in.