Do you remember Matsushita’s chilling ‘We are going to win’ interview?
Exactly twenty years ago, Matsushita outlined how competitive success now depended upon the day-to-day mobilisation of every ounce of intelligence within the organisation. Further, that this was a battle that the West was not equipped to fight, nor yet even to understand.
More and more businesses have come to realise that their success now depends upon on harnessing the energy and ideas of people across the broad base of their organisations. More and more businesses are equipping themselves to meet this challenge. More and more businesses are recognising that the primary performance unit through which they can best do so is the team.
But how well are we really doing?
Dramatic improvements in productivity and other benefits have been claimed from the move to team based structures by companies like GE, Ford and Proctor & Gamble. But study after study has found that, at the work-team level, groups that don’t interact usually still outperform teams that do.
In other words, we are still not reliably harnessing individual capability, let alone harvesting the rich potential of the team for mutual learning, innovation and growth.
What can be done to make team work more effective, more of the time, and to make it more fulfilling also?
Unlocking the performance of teams
Teamwork remains shrouded in mystery
All too rarely, moments of ‘team-magic’ occur when a group comes together to defy the odds and achieve an extraordinary outcome. All too often, ‘team-tragic’ strikes and a seemingly advantaged group fails to realise a rich potential. In both cases there is a strong tendency to associate what happens with a mysterious force called ‘leadership’.
Medieval insight is no way to run the 21st Century organisation, however.
What does determine team performance?
Just how much is now known by some about the performance of teams is itself uncommon knowledge. Models have been built that predict, with a high degree of accuracy, how well teams will perform based on whether and how well a defined set of conditions have been established.
The implications of this research are profound:
Leadership can be of significant benefit in getting these conditions established and in coaching the team once they are in place.
However, leadership cannot compensate for or be of material benefit where leaders have been unable to establish them.
Within a supportive context, some of these conditions may fall into place naturally.
Within an unsupportive context, it can be extremely difficult to get these conditions in place.
Leaders’ first obligation therefore is to create and maintain these conditions. They should then work to ensure that teams exploit their favourable situation.
The quality of the team is also critical
Favourable conditions assist teams in realising potential that they already possess. But no team can succeed if it is unable to acquire or develop all of the skills needed to meet its performance goal. And, other things being equal, a higher concentration of talent will result in more ideas, more energy, more creativity, and ultimately, in greater performance.
Creating the conditions for team performance
Different research projects have found that a few critical conditions explain 70-80% of the variation in the performance of groups dealing with ‘team tasks’. That is, with tasks that require groups to work together interdependently to produce a collective output.
These conditions are:
1. Compelling direction
Team performance depends greatly on how well those with legitimate authority step forward and provide their teams with a clear and compelling sense of direction.
Performance goals should challenge without being overwhelming. Leaders should also avoid being overly specific and leave enough space for the team to flesh out the direction and goals they receive.
The best leaders use stories and analogies to add meaning. They also maintain the perception of importance and urgency through their actions and over time.
2. An efficient team and task design
Work should be broken down into complete tasks that are meaningful to and manageable by small teams. On large programmes with complex interdependencies, efficient ways to stabilise work between teams are needed.
Team members should be selected to provide a strong range of complementary task skills, and at least adequate interpersonal skills. Teams should also be provided with clear boundaries and stability in membership over time.
Essential norms of conduct should be clarified, including ensuring that the team’s approach remains well adapted to changes in its environment.
3. Supporting systems
Teams need to be given, or have the ability to access or create, the information they need to complete their task and to manage their work processes and progress.
Group learning, training, knowledge, and advisory networks have value in helping teams to acquire knowledge and skills.
Teams should also receive recognition and reward for performance as a team. There are many ways to do so, however, eventually more will have to be paid in order to sustain excellence.
4. Expert coaching
Teams benefit most from coaching on issues that are alive at the time of the intervention.
At or near their launch, coaching should help teams to connect to their purpose and increase their sense of mutual accountability.
After some time with their task, teams benefit from interventions that ensure the approach they have adopted is appropriate and that help teams to avoid following routines without thinking.
After the completion of a performance cycle, teams benefit from interventions that help them to learn from their experiences.
Putting it together
When teams’ performance setting are unfavourable, team tragedies can unfold, and often will. When teams benefit from favourable circumstances, they really can perform superbly.
Teams and the organisations they work within form complex social systems – which shape behaviour and performance in ways that are not obvious to most observers. Knowledge of these systems is an essential first step toward making teamwork more effective, more of the time, and more fulfilling also for those who work with and within teams.
However, implementing these conditions can itself be very challenging. And once teams have settled into a set of behavioural routines it can be very difficult to correct their path, and leaders who attempt to do are quite likely to experience intense resistance along the way.
The key is to get teams set up right in the first place. When they do so, leaders still cannot guarantee that their teams will become great, but they significantly increase the likelihood of greatness occurring.
The more ways in which leaders are able intervene to create these conditions, the more likely they are to succeed. This is one of the reasons why great leaders never stop developing and refining their repertoire of intervention strategies.
