High-Performance Teams – Why bother?
Management and Teams
“I couldn’t wait to get to work each day; we did fantastic things, couldn’t believe I got paid to do it.” A high-performance team member.
Why bother?
Generally, people are interested in High-Performance Teams (HPTs) because they aspire to something greater than what they are a part of today, they also want to know if it’s something they could create themselves. But the main reason is that they are currently managing a team that suffers from common team dysfunctions:
The manager has an ineffective management style.
Lack of respect for the manager.
Poor management communication.
Low morale and job satisfaction.
Recurring problems and failures.
Poor productivity.
Lack of purpose and direction.
Repetitive work, boredom.
Lack of professional growth.
Difficulty handling a high workload.
High staff turnover.
Another reason is to uplift the skills and knowledge of a team in preparation for:
Downsizing.
A corporate merger/acquisition.
Outsourcing.
Team mergers.
Managers want a team that:
Has a fast start-up/reaction time.
Can handle significant workloads.
Has high morale and job satisfaction.
That respects them as their manager.
Can self-manage and quickly adapt to rapid change.
Promotes professional growth for all.
Good team member relations with no conflict.
Why aren’t High-Performance Teams more common?
Using my own criteria, they probably exist as 1:50 teams (an estimate based on experience, not quantifiable data). In the 1980/’90s when they were first experimented with, they produced poor outcomes mainly, as we know now because little was known about their particular dynamics and the need for a progressive, transformational management style to build and manage them.
Today, the main reason for their rarity is that most managers use a traditional management style that does not easily lend itself to the building of an HPT. (The vast majority of managers are not trained on progressive styles this includes anyone who has completed an MBA in the last 30 years). The training industry then muddies the waters by offering training on how to build them, but the training and course design are by people who have no experience of them. You can teach adults new skills in a week but not new behaviours or the embedding of fundamentally new ways of working. It takes months to establish an HPT followed by continuous team moulding and shaping to achieve a good outcome.
Much of the publicly available information about HPTs is misleading, it predominantly describes better performing teams but not actual HPTs, at least not according to my criteria. Unless you have been a member of an HPT or have built one yourself, I believe you are not in a position to comment about them. I have built eleven HPTs and have been a team member of two (as against the manager). That adds up to considerable experience, much more than anyone else I have personally read about or encountered. Even the best academic studies and books on HPTs have been written by people who have researched them but who have no actual experience of them, and I also doubt that many if indeed any professional trainers have any real experience of them either.
Benefits
What's in it for you?
Significantly increased job satisfaction.
More expansive career opportunities.
Working with loyal, supportive, trustworthy people who over time, become increasingly better at whatever is being done.
Becoming an employer of choice.
A lifelong experience.
What's in it for the staff?
Happiness stems from spending time with people we like and High-Performance Team members care and support their colleagues like no other team members.
They can expect significant job satisfaction, more expansive career opportunities, comradery, being the best in their chosen field and a good lifestyle.
Professional development and acquisition of new management skills.
Over time becoming increasingly better at whatever is being done, and the ability to overachieve in comparison to others.
What's in it for the organisation?
Profits, ability to rapidly expand, market growth, having a team that focuses on business needs.
Staff loyalty, being an employer of choice, reduced costs and vastly improved product quality and service delivery.
The benefits to the organisation are becoming an employer of choice, staff loyalty, increased competitiveness, profits, ability to expand rapidly, market growth, and having teams focussed on business needs. Add to these: reduced costs, improved performance, efficiency and productivity, improved services and products quality, as well as better service delivery and technical capability.
Ordinary Teams versus High-Performance Teams
The use of teams has become commonplace driven by the need to be more competitive and driven by changes in business technology. Current team organisational structures have not changed for over 20 years and have limitations, they tend to be silo-based, hierarchical, facilitate only existing skill sets, are almost exclusively project-driven, are sometimes chaotic and do not make good use of process. They are unable to rapidly respond to changing business technologies and the need to be more competitive and they do not employ progressive or transformational management styles, team behaviours or working techniques. They are largely incapable of genuine innovation due to their inability to constructively harness conflict and they do not practice advanced communication methods. They are poor at creativity and their contribution to corporate growth is rarely defined and is therefore difficult to measure.
Most teams exist with little understanding of why they exist, what their actual purpose is in terms of how they contribute to the larger organization. For example, a team needs to define a meaningful, measurable common goal, something that acts as a target and gives direction to all of the team’s activities. Such a goal needs to consider likely changes in the organisation’s business environment, competitors’ movements and the future behaviours of consumers, combined with the team’s aspirations. It needs to answer the question of why the team exists. High-Performance Teams define their own common goal, just one of the things that differentiate them from ordinary teams.
A good description of a high-performance team comes from an excellent work by Katzenbach, J. R. and Smith, D.K. (1993), The Wisdom of Teams. They state: “A high-performance team is a small group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they are mutually accountable.”
Steve Jobs understood the power of HPTs, how do you think we got the iPhone and how do you think they kept it a secret for the five years of its development? Organizations like Kraft Foods, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Newcrest Mining, Exelon, and the US and British governments also understand the power of High-Performance Teams. They are making a comeback within progressive organizations (and in departments within traditional organizations) that know they need to be more competitive, more masterful of technology and much more service oriented. HPTs have the following features:
They are consistently aware of the broader organisational aspirations and needs with everything they do.
They focus on issues such as customer and staff satisfaction, they know how to do more with less, they actively listen as a matter of course and they have fast start-up/reaction times.
They use conflict as a way to invoke innovation.
They create new skill sets.
They know their jobs, goals and competitors better than any team did decades ago.
They understand that it is a partnership where team members actively work to ensure everyone's success.
Their capability and productivity are substantially higher than ordinary teams.
They make better decisions and solve more complex problems.
They thrive on change; excel at nearly everything they do and are true innovators.
They are objectively more focused than ordinary teams in the way they work together.
They measure their performance, self-correct as needed and welcome any opinion of how a team member or the whole team can do better.
They are highly disciplined with a focus on mutual accountability and selfless collaboration.
They support and motivate all around them with equal measure.
Their organizational loyalty is exceptionally high.
They are more creative than any other type of team.
HPTs do not suffer from the restrictions of ordinary teams. Team members have complementary skill sets and can change roles and leadership positions within the team. There have robust methods of resolving conflict, shared norms and values, a strong sense of accountability and high levels of mutual trust. The team shares a collective consciousness and has clearly defined roles and responsibilities, team rules and behaviours. Team members are fully empowered and are held accountable. In a High-Performance Team, the manager acts as the role model who aligns commitment with a common goal and individual performance goals.
Teams also need the right mix and number of members, optimally designed tasks and processes, and norms that discourage destructive behaviour and promote positive dynamics. High-performing teams include members with a balance of skills. Every individual doesn’t have to possess superlative technical and social skills, but the team overall needs a healthy dose of both. Diversity in knowledge, views, and perspectives, as well as in age, gender, and race, can help teams be more creative and avoid groupthink. Martine Haas. The Secrets of Great Teamwork.
In a market in which change is speeding up, the incentive for business to review their approach to teams has never been greater.
Team Building and Maturity attributes
Becoming an HPT is achievable by almost any team, but it takes effort and discipline because you get nothing for free. I have taken some of the worst-performing and culturally bankrupt teams you have ever seen all the way through to high-performance with outstanding results. Building an HPT is a relatively straight forward process that any competent manager who is willing to learn and adopt a progressive, transformational management style, can achieve. The team building process involves three-team development stages (Good team, Great Team and High-Performance Team) that progressively instils team maturity attributes into a team. A team does not become a Good, Great or High-Performance Team after completion of training, they only achieve one of those stages after 3 to 6 months of post training attentive management and discipline by the team members. The team maturity attributes that make up a team, work like this:
Team members are a tight-knit cohesive unit because they share a common goal.
Team members understand their contributions because their performance goals are aligned with the common goal.
Team members selflessly support and motivate each other because they know that at some point, they all need help, and this is how the whole team wins.
Team members are mutually accountable to each other because they have agreed to share each other’s failures and successes.
Team members have significantly higher job satisfaction levels because they achieve more than ordinary teams.
Team members do not have confused accountabilities, position description conflicts or overlaps because they have a clear definition of who owns what, who decides what and who is both responsible and accountable for what.
Team members handle significantly less email traffic because their roles and responsibilities definitions mean all information is shared on a need-to-know basis only.
Team members are motivated to do their best because they individually establish a set of measurable, personal and professional goals.
Team members evaluate themselves and their staff because it provides new insights into individual management needs, strengths, weaknesses and mutual opportunities for growth.
Team members analyse their current management style because it allows them to create new management styles that focus on professionalism, management and people leadership qualities.
Team members create a personal definition of professionalism for themselves because this then establishes and baselines their professional standing.
Team members have a specific way of conducting meetings because it keeps them focussed on what matters, enhances their management effectiveness and creates meetings that have real value.
Team members accept being mentored and mentoring of others because it builds relationships, improves the management of others, creates the first stage of open and honest communication and because it helps to develop themselves and their staff to their fullest potential.
Team members provide motivation and support because it makes them feel closer to those whom they are helping, it builds trust and inspires others to achieve higher levels of performance.
What makes an HPT work?
As we know, busy people do more and do it in less time. The secret to an ordinary team transitioning to high-performance is the application of a consistently high workload in conjunction with the use of high-performance methods and techniques.
Without a consistently high workload, an HPT will simply not perform as expected. Like Formula 1 cars, the fuel for an HPT is a consistently high workload.
We know from our own experience that when we have a lot to do and are pushed for time, we focus on the essential elements of the activity or task at hand. We often accept that having completed 80% of the work (80/20 principle) that this is usually enough to finish, and we then quickly move on to the next piece of work. Take a well-planned and managed project as an example; 20% of the expended project effort can produce 80% of the project deliverables.
HPTs work this way. A high workload motivates team members to focus their efforts on the 20% of the workload that can produce 80% of the desired results, meaning greater efficiency and higher productivity.
This approach is then supported by high-performance methods and techniques which include time management skills and new ways of working. When workload, methods and techniques are combined, this causes all of those involved to become more reliant on each other, more trusting, more committed and mutually accountable for the whole of the team's workload. The higher the workload, the more the three elements come into play, resulting in high-performance operation.
This approach enforces adherence to due process, facilitates true collaboration, gets more people involved with a task when necessary, each of whom is committed to its success, and it forges closer work bonds and a prevailing attitude of 'all for one and one for all' (mutual accountability). As more work is undertaken, the new methods and techniques become normalised and new levels of performance emerge. Performance and productivity receive an added boost when multiple team members or whole teams are focused on the same activities which works exceptionally well for businesses that require more than one team to be involved with the same activity such as IT Departments or Engineering works.
As more work is processed, and as more successes and fewer failures are realised, the team's confidence increases, and the ability to manage an ever-increasing workload result. Things start to change. Morale significantly improves, job satisfaction goes up, quality improves with fewer errors and failures, innovation emerges, and a feeling of actually being a contributor to business growth becomes tangible. The team is no-longer ordinary, it is now an HPT, and its team members know and feel it. It is addictive in nature which is why team member loyalty to each other and to the organization is so high.
End
“A unique experience that connects people for the rest of your life.” - Chris Judd, AFL Premiership Team.