Work East-West Before You Go North-South: John Donahoe's Team Social Contract

John Donahoe tells the story of how his leadership team kicked him out of the room during an offsite and came back three hours later with a self-authored social contract -- a set of operating principles they wrote for themselves, not for him, not because of him, but because they believed in holding each other to a higher standard. The first line: "We commit to work east-west before we go north-south." Translation: solve problems with your peers before escalating to the boss.

The Offsite

Donahoe organized a team offsite specifically for storming and norming -- building trust and developing collective operating principles. He hired a facilitator. During a break, the facilitator came back with an unexpected message: the team would like him to leave the room.

He left. For three hours. His internal monologue was somewhere between confusion and concern -- "I think there's a coup going on." But what happened next was something far more powerful than anything he could have engineered.

The Social Contract

The team came back and presented their social contract. It was a set of seven or eight statements that defined how they would work together. The critical framing was that they built it without him deliberately. This was not a top-down mandate. It was a self-organized commitment.

The opening principle -- "we commit to work east-west before we go north-south" -- is a compact, powerful statement about peer accountability. It means the team commits to trying to solve problems laterally, with each other, before escalating vertically to the leader. It shifts the default from "run to the boss" to "figure it out together first."

Other commitments in the contract included having each other's backs, debating freely when in the room, and supporting each other outside of it.

Making It Public

The team did not keep the contract private. They told Donahoe that the following week, at the company all-hands, they planned to present the social contract to the entire organization and invite every employee to hold them accountable to it.

Donahoe's reflection is that this was far more powerful than anything he could have created or encouraged them to create. A self-organized team commitment, born from genuine internal motivation, carries a weight that top-down directives simply cannot match.

Key Takeaways

• The most powerful team agreements are self-authored, not leader-imposed
• "Work east-west before going north-south" -- solve problems with peers before escalating to leadership
• Making team commitments public (presenting at an all-hands) creates genuine accountability
• A leader's willingness to leave the room can be the catalyst for a team taking real ownership
• Self-organizing teams with shared principles outperform teams that depend on the leader for every decision

Resources

• How Leaders Lead -- Leadership content featuring executive interviews
• John Donahoe -- Former CEO of Nike, ServiceNow, and eBay