The 'Pulling-Together-Energy
It supercharges team decision-making
Strategic Thinking in Real Life
Great start-ups are famously focused. Debates are clear, everyone contributes, options cohere into a bigger picture, and you can feel the collective pull toward the goal. That group energy motivates people and raises the quality of decisions. Why? Because a genuine willingness to act together unlocks decisiveness. As organisations grow and fragment into functions, the view of the whole often blurs and with it the drive.
Where does that pull come from and how can we reconnect with it in later phases of a company’s life?
From “against each other” to “with each other”
When a real WE exists in a team when the work matters more than self-promotion, the key decision criterion becomes: Does this option serve our shared goal? Not: Who proposed it, and what’s their status?
That shift moves attention away from impression-management (“How do I come across?”) toward significance (“What are we here to achieve?”). Robust decisions emerge when thinking can stay open: options are welcome, opposing views are treated as a resource. The stance that enables open, substantive conversations sounds like: “Interesting what can I learn here? I hadn’t seen it that way.”
Signs of that stance in a team:
Curiosity replaces one-upmanship: “Say more.”
Shared risk over fear of losing face: “We’ll own this together.”
Contribution logic beats ownership logic: not “my topic” but “my contribution.”
Clear criteria over snap judgements.
Completion not defence: “What’s still missing for this to hold?”
Accountability over blame: “What will I take on and by when?”
Hypotheses over templates: “If X, we expect Y, let’s test it.”
These guardrails don’t just make collaboration healthier, they measurably free up energy for decisions.
Valves to concentrate team energy
Applied to teams, the four fundamental motivations (after A. Längle) act like valves. When they’re open, momentum builds; when they’re blocked, energy stalls. Designing the conditions to open these valves accelerates and improves decisions.
How open and free may we think? What gives us safety and hold? Teams need a protected space for thinking and for mistakes, plus clear roles and mandates. Then brave, open contributions follow almost automatically. Without that, withdrawal, tactics and box-ticking take over; discussions turn defensive.
What do we actually like? Where is liveliness, where’s the energy in the team? Where resonance is felt, pull emerges: “This makes sense, let’s go.” Without liveliness, things turn sticky: decisions get deferred, agreements crumble.
Am I allowed to be myself? Do team goals fit my personal goals? Welcoming divergence as contribution unleashes creativity, provided the team can hold conflict constructively. If person and position get conflated, ego-chess begins and good arguments lose weight.
What do we want to be effective for? What feels meaningful and how do I contribute? Purpose turns goals into direction. Revenue is a means; meaning answers: What gets better and for whom?
What strengthens decision power in teams
To make this energy operational day in, day out adopt a few crisp practices:
Set a WE-frame before debate: “Our goal is X, this decision should enable Y.” Purpose before metrics, direction before detail.
Make the decision design explicit: Who decides how/when (advice, consent, veto)? This clarity also speeds up the decision making process.
Operationalise psychological safety: divide into clear mandates and accountabilities, explicit protection for dissenting views.
Sense before you calculate: A quick mini-check, does this feel coherent in me, for us, with us? Gut feel as an early indicator of robustness.
Keep the strategy visible: Which Goal (top) do we want to achieve → which Strategies (middle) are the best ways to reach these goals → which single Activities (bottom) need to be done to build up strategies.
These aren’t “extra tasks” they are the work. Lived consistently, they reduce friction in decisions.
How to re-access “start-up energy” later on
Instead of nostalgia for “back then,” we can recreate the underlying dynamic even in later stages:
Map the energy hotspots: Where is liveliness now? Build strategies on those nodes. Don’t just close gaps; amplify what already pulls.
Practice contribution logic: In meetings, make contributions visible: “Who contributed what to which outcome?” Pride grows and people want to own responsibility.
Conflict hygiene: Open conversation requires a healthy way of holding conflict.
Ritualised pausing: Regularly check the fit of goals: Are we still aligned? Brief, periodic touch-ins surface goal conflicts early.
Better brainstorming with “Blind Gather”
The quality of decisions depends heavily on the breadth of arguments considered. Hierarchy and conformity pressures narrow that breadth and distort outcomes. A short, structured process helps. In our work with StrategyFinder (a software tool for problem solving in groups), we call it “Blind Gather.” Ideas are contributed independently and weighed by importance for solving the shared problem. Blind Gather works without a tool as well and should be used whenever the decision is significant.
How to run it in 10–15 minutes:
Pose the core question (e.g. “Which option moves us fastest toward goal X and why?”).
Silent capture (2–4 min): Everyone notes contributions without seeing others’.
Anonymous input: Arguments appear in a shared view, anonymously.
Cluster & derive criteria: What patterns and evaluation criteria emerge?
Only then discuss and decide: Anchor the decision in content, not in the messenger.
With StrategyFinder, contributions are auto-anonymised, visually organised and made comparable against the jointly derived criteria. Without the tool, the flow is the same.
If this resonates, try one shift this week: open one valve (safety, liveliness, self-fit, purpose) by design—and watch how the team’s decision energy changes.
Three questions for the week
1. Where do I currently feel real resonance in my team, and how will I nurture it this week (for better or for worse)?
2. Which decision needs a clarified “why” before we talk about the “how”?
3. What small contribution could I take on to make the shared pull toward the goal tangibly stronger?
Strategic work rarely starts with more speed it starts with more coherence. Strategic thinking and teamwork require consistency. Regaining access to this start-up energy is a worthwhile way to focus on the task at hand and rediscover the joy of working together.
