A Tool for What Comes Next

Every learning team wants to improve. But improvement takes more than a list of problems. It takes structure. The Iris Diagnostic, introduced later in this series, helps teams see clearly where their strengths lie and where support is needed. But once the picture is clear, what happens next? That is where Squads and Plays’ powerful, agile tool comes in. It gives learning teams a structured way to act on their insights and improve delivery.

What Are Squads and Plays?

Squads and Plays is a flexible method that helps learning teams deliver better results with shared ownership, clear roles, and a focus on outcomes. It is not a framework you apply on top of your team. It is a way of working that helps people align around the right identified improvements and move quickly with purpose.

A Squad is a temporary team formed around a focused improvement task. It brings together the right people to focus on a shared outcome at the right time. A Play is the method that the Squad uses to solve that task. It might be a design sprint, a user insight session, or a scenario testing loop. The power is in the combination. Squads create structure. Plays create flow.

Together, they shift learning from a collection of tasks to a shared rhythm of purposeful work.

Why Squads and Plays Matter

The Iris Diagnostic brings clarity. It helps teams understand where effort is working, where it is being wasted, and where improvement is most needed. But insight alone is not enough. What matters next is capability. That means teams need a structured way to act on what they have seen. Squads and Plays provide that structure. They offer a practical way to move forward with focus and purpose.

Most learning and development teams are not set up for adaptive working. Roles are fixed, tasks are handed off, and feedback arrives too late to shape the outcome. It is easy to lose momentum or repeat the same mistakes. Squads and Plays shift the rhythm. They create time-bound teams that focus on real improvement tasks and work collaboratively to solve them. They support a more agile way of working without needing a formal restructuring.

Squads and Plays are not a side project or an add-on. They are a way to build shared ownership, strengthen team habits, and respond quickly to what the Iris has made visible. Over time, they help teams deliver consistently stronger outcomes.

How Squads and Plays Work in Practice

A Squad is not a department. It is a small, time-bound group formed to address a specific improvement task. That might be refining an onboarding experience, strengthening feedback loops, or redesigning a learning offer that has lost impact. The Squad includes just the people needed to solve the problem. Once the work is done, the Squad disbands.

Each Squad uses Plays to guide its work. Plays are structured methods for solving particular types of problems. For example, a Capture and Curate Play helps shape content when subject matter expert time is limited. A Walk-the-Work Play observes real tasks to surface hidden friction. A Co-Design Sprint Play brings together voices early to reduce rework. These are not templates. They are shared working methods that support pace, alignment, and trust.

Most importantly, Plays are repeatable. When teams find approaches that work, they can use them again. Over time, they build a playbook that reflects their practice. Squads provide the structure. Plays create the rhythm.

Common Pitfalls and Shifts Required

Squads and Plays are simple, but they are not automatic. In many organisations, work is still shaped by handovers, hierarchy, and habit. Roles are fixed. Ownership is fragmented. Collaboration happens late, often too late to influence the outcome. These patterns make sense when teams are overloaded, but they prevent meaningful improvement.

The first shift is mindset. Teams need to move from individual task ownership to shared responsibility for outcomes. This means working across boundaries, scoping clearly, and aligning early. Squads give teams the space to do that. Plays provide them with a way to begin.

The second shift is rhythm. In many teams, how work unfolds depends on habit or individual style. One person starts every project with a call. Another jumps straight into slides. Some skip scoping altogether. Without a shared rhythm, the process becomes inconsistent and hard to improve. Plays help teams move beyond personal preference. They create a repeatable way of working that still allows for flexibility, but with clearer expectations and better results.

Finally, teams need permission to test and reflect. Squads and Plays are not about adding more work. They are about reshaping how work happens so that it supports clarity, pace, and learning. That shift does not require a restructure. It requires intent.

A New Way of Working Starts Here

Squads and Plays is not a new department or a restructuring. It is a practical way to help learning and development teams work with more clarity, purpose, and impact. It is how teams move from seeing the problem to doing something about it.

In six weeks, The Iris Diagnostic will launch. Alongside it, you will find the full Squads and Plays toolkit. You can explore how the method works in detail, see examples of Plays in action, and use the tools to strengthen how your team delivers.

For now, take a moment to reflect. If your team had to act on an identified improvement tomorrow, how would you start? Who would be involved? How would the workflow go? If the answer is unclear, Squads and Plays can help.