From Molly Graham (founder of Glue Club, former early Google/Facebook). She credits the framework to NOLS, where she learned it leading 75-day wilderness trips in Patagonia and Alaska.

A team is a boat on the ocean trying to reach its goals. The waterline model asks: what’s going on under the water that’s making it harder or easier to get there?

The Waterline Model

Four layers, top to bottom:

  1. Structural - goal setting, vision, roles, expectations
  2. Dynamics - how the team works together: culture, decision-making, conflict resolution
  3. Interpersonal - relationships between two people
  4. Intrapersonal - within one person

The key rule - snorkel before you scuba. When something goes wrong, most leaders jump straight to the bottom (people problems). But 80% of issues are actually structural:

“Your only goal as a manager, if you do nothing else, is clear roles and clear expectations. That’s it. Because honestly, I’ve taken over a lot of teams in my life and almost always I show up and it turns out that no one knows what their job is and no one knows what success looks like.”