Would you build your family a house without ensuring that there is a safe, solid foundation?

The answer to this question is obvious. Yet, many team leaders bet their paychecks on the performance of a team without ensuring that they have put in place solid fundamentals. These team leaders give many reasons for taking shortcuts in building their teams — from too little time due to competing priorities and their company’s obsession with quarterly results, to believing that they can drive the team to perform though some magical mix of inspiration and coercion. While some teams may deliver results in the short term, as the pressure mounts for ever greater performance, cracks in their foundation quickly grow into a performance crevasse.