Many teams "get busy" without knowing exactly where they're going and, more importantly, why they're doing what they're doing. As Henry David Thoreau said, "It's not enough to be busy; ants are busy too. The question is, why are we busy?" Before embarking on a new development project, clarify your team's purpose and goals. What's special about it, and how does it create value? What products or services does it produce far better collectively than its individual members could?

• Start by identifying your why. Make sure the team knows exactly why they're doing what they're doing. Take the time to identify common goals and make them explicit. Why do the team and the organization exist? More pragmatically, why do you get up in the morning? And why is it important to others? As Simon Sinek says: it all starts with the why. In the face of adversity, that why will be a solid anchor and serve as the glue that holds the group together.
• Make your reason alive, visible, audible - even tangible. Drive the point home by using various means to communicate it internally and externally. For example, by formalizing your "why" in a charter, a video, a mission statement - or any other collective achievement likely to give it substance and substance.
• Make your vision as clear, precise and attractive as possible. This will make it easier to motivate the team to work in the desired direction. A compelling vision enables you to anticipate an exciting future. If you convey it with confidence, you'll create a rallying motto that will energize people to achieve great things.
• Use your why to create a sense of commitment and attachment to a higher purpose. This is one way of making teams realize that personal contributions add up to a common interest. Even if objectives have been set, groups should not work in isolation. Instill a sense of interdependence and belonging: everyone must feel they're pulling in the same direction.
• Make sure your raison d'être and vision statement reflect the team's core values, aspirations and motivations, and check that everyone sticks to them. When like-minded people unite around a common vision, collective energy automatically intensifies. And success will also have a shared meaning.

• Develop a vision that seems too abstract or idealistic. If your vision prefigures a vague, nebulous future, people will probably find it hard to buy into it and put their trust in the leading forces.
• Thinking that a vision is just a concept that isn't really important, or that doesn't fundamentally add value to the organization. Leaders who focus exclusively on results (neglecting the why) fail to instill purpose in their teams. As a result, it is likely to be difficult to improve their performance.
• Do the exercise just to "put a cross in the box". You risk being out of step with your team's values and true purpose. Your vision would probably appear too generic.
• Choose the solo approach. Everyone has their own idea of what's important to them. If you defend an objective that only makes sense to you, you could "lose" a good part of your team. Taking only your point of view into account limits your thinking and will prevent you from creating real support around you.
• Defining the group's objective at the outset and then forgetting about it. This is what I call a reduction factor. Make sure you stay by your team's side to support them in their objective. Encourage the emergence of ideas on how they can continue to move in the right direction. Provide frequent reminders of the common objective to mobilize energies and reinforce the feeling of buy-in.