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WE'RE ALL ON THE TEAM

By the by, just to intrigue you a bit, this article may not end up where you think it will, given how it begins.

Some years ago, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith wrote a landmark book entitled THE WISDOM OF TEAMS. They distinguished, in particular, between groups and teams.

Whenever 'vision takes root', whenever a collection of people come together and deliver more collectively than any of them could possibly have, individually, we are in the presence of a team.

I work with and on teams as a part of my obsession, art, focus, and passion. And all over the world I have found these identified 'disciplines' to ring true. What is often heart-rending is how rather than expend the energy and engagement to really create teams, what are essentially 'groups' are often just called 'teams because it sounds better, or because we hope it will be energising and motivating to provide that label. However, empty semantics can only take you so far.

Just as it is wrong to call groups of individuals, who produce largely independent outputs and then 'cobble' them together, a team, so too is it wrong to call a society or even community a team by itself. A community in its best sense, is a collection of folk who have committed to each other in authenticity and have learned to increasingly transcend their divisions and disparities. Extraordinary as this is as an achievement, and as life-altering as such membership in a community can be at a personal level, there is no necessary link between this and performing exceptionally together at some 'task' or better yet a 'cause'. Teams and great performance are inseparable. We become a team when our connection translates into productive synergy.

Moreover, even 'teamwork' as a set of values does not by itself produce a team in this 'actualised' sense in which we are referring to them. Common team values are indeed attractive for all interactions, including group interactions. These usually include behavioural nuggets like: listening and responding constructively to others, assuming the best from others' ideas and intentions, being supportive, recognising each other's achievements, etc. These values certainly enhance and enable the creation of teams, but by themselves are like oxygen to a fire -- 'necessary but not sufficient'.

A real team is distinguished by working collaboratively to generate both individual results as well as collective performance outputs in a way that harnesses both individual and mutual accountability over a period of time.

Here are some key differentiators as Katzenbach and Smith have identified them between 'groups' and 'teams':

1. Groups: Clear Leader

   Teams: Overall leader, but situational and shared leadership roles as well.

2. Groups: Individual accountability.

   Teams: Both individual and shared accountabilities.

3. Groups: Derive their purpose as a derivative of overall organisational priorities.

   Teams: Serve the organisational priorities, but also sculpt their own sense of purpose that they commit to delivering on.

4. Groups: Efficient meetings to share information and provide updates.

   Teams: Ongoing, open-ended discussions, in small and large groups, with active problem solving and creativity interactions (which can include meetings).

5. Groups: Measure success by impact on others, e.g. financial performance of the business.

Teams: As above PLUS the quality of interaction and its productive outcome...ie. assessing the quality of what was produced THROUGH collaboration (as opposed to what could have been generated otherwise).

Let's explore a few of these differentiators highlighted above.

Teams realise they will only produce championship performance if they are bound together by an exceptional purpose. Hence they spend time exploring, intuiting, shaping, discerning and co-creating a purpose that has both shared and individual resonance and vitality. This gives the team a rallying cry and makes it more than just a generic offshoot of the larger organisation.

Such teams then translate this sense of co-created purpose into invigorating, challenging but highly meaningful (benchmarked against both their own sculpted purpose and their overall organisational mandate as a team) performance goals that score high both in SPECIFICITY and URGENCY.

When you combine team purpose with exciting and relevant performance goals, embarked upon with an ongoingly nurtured and vigorous team commitment -- that's when true magic happens!

For this to kick in, however, such performance goals need to be highly specific (as indicated above). Only then do they lead to clarity of communication as well as to constructive challenge and creative conflict en route to translating these goals into vibrant realities. Without these last two, we don't have the 'community' aspect of being a team. We instead have pseudo-politeness, lack of candor, and fakeness. What this produces is not the sizzling excitement of high performance, but rather the boredom, burnout and futility of organisational wheel-spinning.

So whether it's reducing average machine changeover times to two hours, to responding to all customer complaints to the customer's satisfaction with 60 minutes, to market introduction of a new product to certain specifications within a certain time period, to improving retention of top talent by 25% by the end of '05, all such specific and compelling goals help to produce the clarity and immediacy and stimulus that real teams require for kindling.

Such goals have one other team benefit. They militate against silly hierarchies and turf divisions. We've found that when we are facilitating team development in outdoor settings for example, and give a team a challenge to get over a wall say, the challenge takes over, and the titles, perks or whatnot, just evaporate. Take a real-life team with a similar metaphorical 'wall', like reducing cycle time by 50% within 6 months, and a similar dynamic is catalysed.

We always recommend that such teams publish their goals within the organisation. This is particularly true of projects that are high priority but seem less 'precise' or 'objective', and so run the risk of becoming marginalised. One of my top clients has created a group, that is seeking to evolve into a team, whose job is to help grow awareness and commitment to a 'coaching culture' throughout their organisation. One of my suggestions to them, relative to the key activities they have embarked upon, is to 'publish' their commitments -- to actually broadcast them loudly and proudly in as many company forums as possible. That visibility and self-chosen accountability by 'time x', creates the drama, urgency, motivation, and even healthy FEAR, to deliver decisively. Nobody but that team can then make it happen. They are forged by that very challenge.

The centrality of performance and credibility showcases another important aspect of this. How do you decide who gets to be on the team? There are three interlocking criteria. First, is a variety of technical and functional expertise, as well as some people who are there to provide a 'sanity test' by NOT having that precise background. Second, problem solving and decision making skills -- people who can 'connect the dots' and imagine solutions. Third, interpersonal skills, the ability to build bridges across ideas and perceptions and feelings. Not everyone has to have each of the above in equal measure, but we need a 'critical mass' of ALL of the above if the team is both going to come together, and yet also focus together to provide a landmark result.

So, you want to build exceptional team performance. Taking clues from all of the above, what should you and I do, to make sure our teams in 2005 vastly outperform what our 'groups' produced in 2004? How do we rise from bland satisfaction to the upper reaches of powerful impact? Here it is in essence.

1. Create a compelling context, urgency, direction. The more urgent and meaningful the rationale, the better.

2. Select people with a mix of skills, abilities, temperaments, but with a desire to win...together.

3. Kickoff well! Let everything communicate how you mean to continue. Endow the beginning with all the excitement, panache and imagination you can. Let every encounter contain at least an 'element' of that initial experience, let it become part of the personality of that team and its interaction.

4. Create a 'code of honour' or mutually agreed 'rules of engagement'. Some of these can be 'hygiene' issues as they are called...about attendance and attention. Others can relate to how we will treat each other and what we can count on from each other.

   Here are some examples:

   • Everyone is on time, each time. We let each other know early if we can't be there.

   • Team time is sacred. There are no interruptions for phone calls or incoming messages.

   • Everything in this room relates to making our commitment happen.

   • Confidentiality is an absolute 'must' until we all agree that we're ready to share outside the team.

   • We consider facts as friendly, we face them as early and as unambiguously as we can.

   • We're in this together, there is no scapegoating or finger pointing.

   • Everyone gets assignments and delivers them without needing follow up.

   • Everyone is responsible for our success and does real work towards that.

   • If we have issues, we come up with them early, and deal with them together. Once we deal with them, we move on. No lingering in the past, we all have better things to focus on.

   • Anyone can constructively 'call' anyone on any or all of the above.

5. Create short, sharp milestones, that have immediacy and which can create the 'quick wins' necessary to sustain enthusiasm and momentum. Get into value-producing action FAST! The sooner we get some results, the sooner the team gets truly inspired.

6. As new information or perspective comes in, challenge the team with it. Ensure the team doesn't get too inward-focused. Have it frequently interact with others and gather ideas, feedback, input. Have it invite in new ideas.

7. The team has to have time to interact adequately -- in person, e mail, phone. Meetings need to be known well in advance and at reliable intervals. In addition, a team should have time to laterally drift. Some social time, or time just exploring without a pre-set agenda, a chance to 'knock ideas around. Team members should also have the ability to seek each other out as needed and form informal 'buzz groups' within the team.

8. Teams need to spend time appreciating what's gone RIGHT, and recognising each other's contributions. This should happen before the team faces what needs to go better, or accountability issues, etc. This way, no one feels that the team only carps and takes efforts for granted. This way the appreciation produces the confidence to courageously tackle areas where we have to improve and come through better for each other.

Okay, all well and good, are we done? Not quite. Why is this article called 'WE'RE ALL ON THE TEAM?' Innovator, inspiration and polymath, Buckminster Fuller once pointed out that on this spaceship called Earth, there are no passengers. 'We are all crew.' In other words, we're all on that team.

Reflecting on elements of powerful team performance, it's hard to not think on our very real global challenges. Perhaps it's high team a 'global team' was put together, representing world regions, and tackling the key issues that challenge and divide our world. Perhaps the G-7 should create such a team, or the U.N. But the team would have to be empowered to come up with something that its members would commit to acting upon.

Too pie in the sky? Perhaps. But that's not because it's been tried. Paraphrasing a comment ascribed to Gandhi, "Civilization is an interesting idea. We ought to try it."

If a global team given urgent, compelling goals; bound together by a 'Code of Honour'; made accountable for collective global results only possible through collaboration; seems impossible, how about this?

What if transnational companies, who have work teams across cultures that are embattled and at odds, created 'global teams'? They could ensure people 'show up' for these discussions. What if these global teams generated various scenarios and used the transnational's clout to enroll other influentials within their countries in the dialogue? What if these teams made up of influentials and company team members came up with recommendations and ideas that the company could get behind, that would help advance the causes and actions that would add value to that national landscape?

Transnational teams between the US, Europe and various Middle Eastern countries. Such teams between India and Pakistan. Teams reflecting the environmental concerns of the countries from which they hail. Teams made up of employees from the developed as well as developing world to explore sustainable development and the responsibilities and opportunities on both sides. After all, transnational companies have a strong stake in these outcomes, and in the stability and prosperity of their operating theaters. Their employees are also citizens, and presumably care as well. Still too outlandish?

Okay, how about starting dialogues across cultures and across divides, within our own society or even neighborhood, by building real teams as described above, not just collecting groups to banter together, or to shout at each other? What about looking to Rotary Clubs, universities, chambers of commerce, interfaith organisations, wherever we happen to live to bring together teams of individuals that can build understanding and collaboration where today there is just animosity and misunderstanding?

Since some initiatives already exist like those described above, how about each of us offering ourselves to such efforts as a contribution? What if we added one more heartbeat, one more voice, one more brain, another pair of hands, and ensured these efforts got extended, instead of dying down? From such epicenters, amazing things can happen.

It has been said, 'Never doubt the ability of a group (we now know they meant 'team') of committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.'

The world as a team? Would we have the vision, the chutzpah, the spirit, the heart, the conscience, to go for something so audacious? Could we start small and build up, until we realise how inescapable indeed how 'pragmatic' this effort really is?

A story was told by Adam Kahane that relative to moving beyond apartheid, people said they could either do the 'sensible' thing and just get down on their knees and pray for divine intervention; or else they could go for the 'miraculous option' and try to listen to each other and talk things through!

South Africa went for the 'miraculous option'. It takes a lot of energy and faith to make that attempt. But as I've argued elsewhere, communication and love are today the only things 'radical' enough to work.

So, why don't we each start where we can, with and through whatever teams we participate in, and/or teams we can help start, influence or contribute to? Why don't we try and live this hope in whatever way we can through our own personal leadership? Why don't we try and ignite real teams of diversity, connecting together (even if haltingly at first), working to collectively create something that works for more of us? Why not entrust ourselves to that possibility? The madness of the alternative shrieks at us from the newspapers and television screens every day.

We know the greatest human capacity we have is to re-invent ourselves. A new year is dawning. We have everything to gain here, nothing to lose. In our own circles of influence, let's just stay on the look-out for every way in which we can get some leverage here.

Too much to ask for? Can we actually afford to ask for any less?

Whatever we can do in this regard, helps us become part of the solution. It's better to fail at certain things rather than to succeed in just giving up.

At stake is the very future of the human adventure.

Let's give it a try. Let's each of us help to build a few teams this year and see where that takes us.

Happy New Year everyone.

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