Let's (not) Go Crazy

At gravitytank and Salesforce our project teams use a great tool for getting along and making the most of their time working together.

It's called an 'Alliance' and was introduced and developed by my friend and colleague Clay Stelzer.

It’s a simple enough exercise - at the start of the project the team members sit down and describe ‘how they want to be together’ during the project and the kinds of behaviors and approaches to teamwork they commit to as a group - but the teams I worked on found it profoundly helpful.

Essentially you build a set of commitments to each other which you can use as guide posts for how the work is going.

Jess, Willa Marie and I adopted the same approach for the Jubilee. We created a list of ways we wanted to be together while traveling. We sat together and talked about what we wanted and what we wanted to avoid.

It’s helped. We’ve managed to make it through so far without any major arguments, disappoints or unarticulated resentments.

But we do have articulated resentments. We do find each other annoying.

We do, occasionally, look up from our books or our meals and go “really? you again?” We are noticing very detailed peculiarities about each others faces and habitual expressions and we are expounding on those quirks at length.

And, of course, Jess and I are driving Willa Marie ‘CRAZY’.

But we’re also laughing a lot, learning more about each other, negotiating our varied interests well, and keeping the balance of learning, sight seeing, relaxing, and communicating with friends back home essentially well-balanced.

We’ve had one review of the family alliance so far - just after Florence and Venice and upon arriving in Assisi.

We added a few new things to it. And we’ll keep adding and adjusting it as we learn how best to be together while away.

- david