Know about the Fist-5 tool?

Heard how Fist-5 could have avoided a missed acquisition?

Wondering if your team are guessing each other’s opinions?

Here, red10 ‘s Will Sudworth shares the true story of how a governance group assumed what each other were thinking and only later discovered that they’d missed a golden opportunity.

Have you heard this true story?

The Chair of one of the Governance Committees reached out to us recently. They’re a relatively new client to red10 , only just starting to engage red10 team coaches with their Drug Project Teams and Senior Leadership Teams.

Like most Pharma, they are on the look out for potential new drugs to acquire or partner for their pipeline, and they’d been in Due Diligence on a very interesting project for a few months.

The key decision day arrived, and the Chair was surprised to hear the negative views of the committee, yet respectfully put into motion the steps to decline the business opportunity.

Something didn’t set well for her, and so in exploring the learning in one-to-ones afterwards, she was shocked to learn that the vast majority of the committee really wanted to do the deal, and it was only a vocal minority who had objections.

It also turned out that those objections, if listened to properly, could have led to an updated contract being proposed that would have been a much better deal all round.

Using red10 ‘s Fist-5 approach could have literally been worth millions of dollars to them…

Are people trying to mind-read their colleagues?

How much could opinion data be worth to you and your teams and committees?

Fist-5 gives other benefits too. It can be a key part in a team co-creating a psychologically safe climate in which diversity is included and people can speak-up.

It sounds so simple doesn’t it? Yet every week we meet one or more teams that need a coach to help them engage with this approach. It can feel awkward at first. And it takes early adopters to lean-in and help the team to practise it for it to become a habit.

It’s worth it, though.

Let us know if red10 can help you and yours adopt First-5.