Brainware Vault

For many organizations make-or-break projects have become the norm versus the exception. There are a variety of drivers behind this trend, including disruptive innovation, the need for speed across most every business function, and fierce competition in global markets that drives up buyer expectations. Organizations motivated to excel in this environment often respond by investing in and deploying expert teams – and expecting exceptional outcomes from them. For those teams, the pressure to perform comes from a combination of shared accountability, a high-level of scrutiny, and significant consequences of the projects outcome. These expert teams find the combination of high-stakes and elevated expectations to be strongly motivating. Yet, a paradox ensues. The same pressures that motivate these teams to perform, may also result in behaviors that undermine their performance.

All teams face challenges in their quest to be effective. The reality for virtual teams is that they face greater complexity and uncertainty as they strive to overcome the barriers of time, distance, and communications. When successful, virtual teams enable the best talent to come together to amplify energy, competencies, and creativity. But, the challenges should not be underestimated.

The common theme across the research (and my own experience) is that most leadership training fails to deliver because it is disconnected from the daily reality of team leaders and their teams—which is often akin to changing the tires on a moving car while navigating to a new location. Many training programs present good ideas, but few connect the dots between ideas and actions with the level of mindfulness, discipline, and perseverance required to make a measurable impact on results. Coaching, on the other hand, is typically less focused on big ideas and more focused on building skills, competencies, and confidence immersed within the messy day-to-day work of teams. Moreover, the best coaching is metrics driven, measuring the progress and outcomes.

Gender bias and a lack of equality on teams and in organizations is costly in terms of reduced effectiveness, productivity, and innovation. More significantly, it diminishes well-being and the human spirit. Bringing together the work of Warner and King, and Bear and Woolley, we've illustrated the importance of gender diversity and equality to team collaboration and performance, and identified ideas to establish the team foundations and behaviors that can change the status quo.

Every organization experiences growing pains as they take on the challenge of scaling small, highly-effective teams into a larger organization. Scaling multiple teams is complex, and ensuring the effectiveness of those teams as a business grows is not easy.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of working alongside an IDEO team on a project for a consumer audio company. Two learnings stand out from that experience. The first was the way the IDEO team balanced a disciplined design process with creative thinking. The second was their instinct to collaborate and learn, even from another team at a startup company. Seeing the results of their approach, we adopted those lessons into the practices of our own team. When I began my doctoral research into team performance, it was no surprise that IDEO consistently appeared among the companies that fostered high-performing teams. What lay behind those experiences I had with the IDEO team?

If you aspire to lead, then at some point in your career you will likely find yourself responsible for turning around a troubled team. The trouble may come from within the team, external forces, or both. For me, it was both.

My first GM role was leading the turnaround of a loss-making business unit, within a shrinking division, of a once-great company. This company had missed the next big wave in its industry and was now a takeover target. At the time, some people questioned the wisdom of that career decision; but, I knew that challenging circumstances can provide learning opportunities and personal growth. The first thing I learned was that in a turnaround, your degrees of freedom and options are very limited. You have to understand the context before you act, because there may not be a second opportunity—and, you have to act fast. In my first turnaround, while there was a serious team effectiveness problem, the broader context was a combination of a product portfolio that was too extensive, and a cost structure that was too high, all of which led to significant losses. Before I could address the team issues, I had to stop the bleeding.

Diagnosis, Treatment, and Recovery

With a reduced and focused product set, fewer people, and a return to profitability, my attention turned to the team. In the aftermath of the restructuring and downsizing, the foundations of the team had been badly fractured, so my first priority was to close the gaps and heal the wounds. Across the business unit, every team leader began holding weekly roundtable sessions to listen to people’s concerns, expectations, and ideas for addressing them. The notes and actions from each team leader were consolidated and tracked by my HR team, and my leadership team and I reviewed them weekly. Within a month, a pattern emerged. We had three big challenges:

* Team trust and inclusiveness needed to be rebuilt at all levels – between teammates, with team leaders, and across teams.

* In the aftermath of the shift in market focus and product portfolio reduction, the purpose of the business unit needed to be revisited.

* In the wake of the downsizing, gaps across key relationships needed to be mended.

Across the business unit, each team leader, along with an HR partner, developed a plan to address the top three team challenges. Over the next six months, we tried various approaches to addressing the challenges. We learned what worked and then adopted those practices across the business. Within a year, our focus on the three big challenges resulted in a significant improvement in the well-being of the teams, as well as their effectiveness in achieving their goals.

The Discipline of a Team Turnaround

A team turnaround is tough. It tests you as a team leader, as well as your team, in ways that you can not imagine. My experience, and later research, provide a few lessons that may prove useful when it’s your turn for a turnaround:

* Your best-laid plans will not survive the first contact with reality. Focus on understanding the context. Realize that your options will be limited. Be prepared to act quickly.

* As soon as you have stabilized the business situation, focus on the people. Actively listen and identify the top two or three big challenges that are getting in the way of team effectiveness. In particular, pay attention to team purpose, team values, and closing gaps across key relationships.

* Be disciplined. With a return to stability, you will be tempted to take on additional initiatives. Recognize that the new habits that lead to team success take time, and rarely can a person or team develop more than a few new habits at once. The more discipline you have, and the greater the focus on the few actions that matter the most, the greater your chance of building a winning team.

Exceptionally effective teams are a product of their habits.

Google's Project Aristotle provides data that demonstrates the importance of going beyond empirical analytics and understanding the messier, emotion based data that comes from relationships. In addition to fundamentals like clarity of purpose, Google's best teams focus on the norms and behaviors that team members expect from their team leader and team mates. The question left unanswered by the Aristotle Team was how to create that focus on norms and behaviors across the many diverse Google teams. My research into human motivation, engagement, and team performance supported the importance of key relationships. It also identified that closing gaps between what people expect of their key relationships, and what they actually experience, is the most important dynamic within and across those relationships.

Cross-cultural teams have become the norm in virtually every multi-national company and many smaller companies doing business globally. Building a highly-effective cross-cultural team can be one of the most challenging, and rewarding, opportunities for a team leader.

Despite the number of years, and teams I have led, since my first team leader experience, there are a few memories that come back as though they happened yesterday. I recall the feeling of satisfaction that came with my promotion to team leader. I was determined that we were going to be the best. And I was pretty clueless as to how to do that.

The transition from individual contributor to team leader / manager is a big step which requires new skills and, more significantly, looking at relationships differently. Ironically, few companies ensure that new team leaders develop the skills and habits they need to consistently deliver superior performance.