Welcome to the June edition of Sharpening the Axe.
In our recent article on The Apprentice I mentioned that teams are a key part of today’s business landscape. In this month’s issue I drill a bit deeper into this thing called teams, and explore how to make them work better for you and your business.
Before reading on, why don’t you do a quick temperature check on your own team? Click here to take a survey borrowed from our book of the month: The FIVE Dysfunctions of a TEAM by Patrick Lencioni.
Why businesses need teams
Let’s start with the important bit.
“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”
This statement by Patrick Lencioni says it all for me. He adds “If you could get all the people in an organisation rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
I could not agree more. Over the years, I have built my own and other people’s teams: in business and in sport. I do not believe there is a greater point of leverage than a highly effective team.
- The team is the greatest learning unit in any business.
- Teams outperform individuals acting alone or in larger organisational groupings. This is especially true when performance requires multiple skills, judgements and experiences.
Why teams don’t work - the busy fools syndrome
Now here’s the thing. While team work is arguably the elixir of business life, in most companies, it is as elusive now as it has ever been.
I’ll go further. Large companies woefully under exploit the potential impact that single, as well as many, teams can have on their performance. And if you don’t believe me, read the research carried out by team gurus Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith. You’ll find it in their book ‘The Wisdom of Teams’ which heavily supports this argument.
Now why is this?
The answer lies in the ‘busy fools’ analogy. Companies put a lot of emphasis on doing. You see it in our job titles: - director; manager; supervisor; controller etc. We are fixated by doing and by being busy. Just take a look at your planner for the next few weeks or months or even years. You know who you are!
Our hectic schedules often falsely reassure us of our status and dedication: still in the office late in the evening? Great. Got to travel five hours for a one hour meeting? No problem. Need to be involved in multiple projects at the same time? Super.
Teams are no different. We mistakenly think that team effectiveness is about getting on well together and doing lots of stuff. So our approach to team building often oscillates between an outward bound ‘team bonding’ afternoon of raft building and a set of tasks we assume will glue the team together and make it a finely honed unit.
It doesn’t work most of the time because we end up both busy and foolish. We don’t deliver any meaningful results that can be measured and the energy levels deflate faster than a Dunlop tyre impaled on a six inch nail.
The more the team goes astray, the more we focus on team work (as in getting along) and activities. You can see where this is going … more tasks, busier fools, more headaches and more problems. And that’s when I get a call asking for help with the team and its performance.
While there is no magic wand solution to effective team performance, many companies would benefit massively by focusing less on team work and more on team performance.
Here’s a hot tip. Review your team’s purpose and goals. Ask yourself whether they are clear enough to see your face in them. Can you measure your progress as a team? Can you own these goals completely as a team? If your team did not exist would the business really suffer?
Top 10 tips for building a high performance team
1. Build a culture of trust in the team. If your team members don’t trust each other they won’t open up and engage in an unfiltered debate of ideas.
2. Encourage healthy conflict. Without this they won’t passionately air and debate their beliefs. That means they are unlikely to commit to and buy into decisions.
3. Create a sense of accountability among team members. If they don’t buy in they won’t put the collective needs of the team before their own and so results won’t happen.
4. Give your team significant performance challenges. No team comes together without a clear performance challenge that is meaningful to those involved.
5. Ensure the team purpose is defined by output. All too often a team comes up with a purpose they feel good about, but which merely describes an activity or input, not an outcome. Here’s an example:
- ‘We will build a culture of innovation.’ This is an activity based goal.
- ‘Over the next six months, we will triple the number of product line extensions we bring to market.’ This is the same goal but expressed as an outcome which is much better. It’s more tangible, committed, and accountable.
6. Individualism does not need to get in the way of team performance. From an early age we are all encouraged to look after number one. But if people are recognised and addressed for what they are, individual concerns and differences can become a source of collective strength. This works especially well if it’s linked to meeting the performance challenge.
7. Discipline creates conditions for team performance. Any group seeking team performance must focus sharply on performance. Groups become teams through disciplined action. They create a common purpose, agree on performance goals, define a common working approach, and hold themselves mutually accountable for results.
8. Give people interesting tasks to do and make sure their contribution is seen and measured.
9. Don’t fret about psychological profiles or whether the team fits a Belbin profile. Get the team purpose and processes right. Underpin this with a good working environment and you won’t need to worry about whether you have a ‘plant’ or a ‘completer finisher’ in your midst.
10. Build trust in your team before you do anything else. It’s so important I’ve put it in twice. Trust me.
The FIVE Dysfunctions of a Team
by Patrick Lencioni,
isbn 7879-6075-6
I think I’ve made it clear throughout this issue that trust is the bedrock of high performing teams. This idea is at the core of Patrick’s book. It’s a book that has greatly influenced how I deal with team issues and challenges.
I came across Patrick’s work a few years ago and at first it seemed a little too simplistic. For example, he preached about the importance of getting team members to open up to each other about their childhood challenges and how they have influenced their approach to life. Patrick argues that, through this type of activity, people will gain an appreciation of each other they never had, even though they might have worked together for years.
He also explains that opening up a chink of their personal lives is the first step towards people being truly vulnerable with each other. Let’s be clear, this is not fodder for dinner parties. When team members reveal aspects of their personal lives to their peers, they learn to get comfortable being open with them about other things.
You may scorn: I know I did I at first. But I can tell you it works. I use this technique more times than I care to mention when working with teams to help improve their performance. It is often the simple things that work.
Whatever stage your team is at, you can learn a lot from what Patrick has to say. If you want to know how you can put these ideas into practice, please get in touch – I’d be happy to help.
Sharing can be so creative
Let us have two names and email addresses of colleagues, clients or friends you think will enjoy ‘Sharpening the Axe’. To say thank you, we’ll send you an exclusive article on how to run an effective creative thinking session for your teams.
The article won’t be available on our website or via any of our mailings. It guides you through the stages of running a session from focus to brainstorming, through to harvesting the ideas you’ve generated. It also includes 10 top tips to make sure the session is a success.
Inject some creative thinking into your teams: click here and
let us have those names.
Parting thought
As sweet as honey
Do you know what really effective teamwork looks like?
Consider
this highly effective team: they have a clear leader - the queen bee.
They have a common purpose – to ensure the colony survives the next winter.
They have clear performance goals – effective clustering in a tight ball to survive the winter; multiple egg laying in the spring; building the honey stores through the spring and summer; rearing of several daughter queens as a form of succession planning; establishing of new nest sites to develop more colonies; storing honey and pollen for the winter period.
They define a common working approach and hold themselves mutually accountable for results: worker bees do all the work in the hive; the queen bee regulates the behaviour of other bees by producing chemicals, and specialises in producing eggs; the drones fly from the hive and mate in the air with queens from other colonies.
They can’t do all this without each other. Their very survival is based on their interdependency.
And the end result? Honey bees are one of the most efficient, economically beneficial insects in the world.
The next issue of Sharpening the Axe will be out at the end of July.
In the meantime visit our web site
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