Assets & Liabilities: My go-to method for taking inventory with teams

Assets and liabilities is an exercise I often facilitate with teams to take an inventory and drive a shared understanding of what’s working for and against the team. It’s also an excellent way to capture inputs from people who don’t typically work together (where competing perspectives may be at play).

Whatever the altitude, this exercise is super straightforward and something I include in many endeavors, from strategic planning workshops and idea-generation sessions, to prototyping workshops.

The Process:

Have one person own the whiteboard (it’s probably you if you’re the facilitator), writing the words “assets” and “liabilities” at the top with a dividing line drawn vertically between them.

Next, capture the contributions that others share. I like to crowdsource items for the assets column first because they tend to be positive and help maintain an optimistic energy in the room. Ask the group for examples of things that are known strengths, notable efforts or proof points, and anything that’s working or has worked in the past that the team could leverage or learn from.

From there, move on to liabilities; the things that might get in the way, opportunities for growth, what to watch out for, things that could harm the team’s efforts, or things that didn’t work before. I always like to note that something can be both an asset and a liability, and is worth examining from that lens.

At this point, you may see a natural 1:1 ratio across columns, or you may not. That part isn’t as important as getting the team to align on the lists laid before them, and creating a shared understanding for the state of the state.

Laying this foundation is an excellent jumping-off point for the work ahead, so this can be a useful method early in your workshop or even pre-workshop if you want the info before you’re in the room.

This method is attributed to my time at GoKart Labs where the idea was cultivated and refined by a group of makers (and probably the best set of colleagues I’ve ever worked with ❤).