“I never saw that coming. We are now able to provide prototypes in the time it used to take us to get an approved order in the system…” (manufacturing client)
Have you been on or led that team? The one that worked – that not just “met,” but collaborated and built something that none of them saw coming. It’s the result we all hope for, but it doesn’t happen on its own. In fact, in order for success to occur, it takes an extraordinary amount of team effort and the right structure. Miss the structure and you may become part of the 88% of projects that don’t deliver on their goals.
In today’s post, we consider the importance of having the Right Team. The question we’re asking is this: if you could only lay three foundation stones for a Growth Team in your firm, what would they be?
In my decades of doing this work globally, I’ve come to center on a framework with three essential elements: Right Project, Right Team and Right Plan. Each of these has three must-have items associated with it, which together, I call the Top Nine.
This is the second post in a series highlighting the nine essential elements for building successful growth efforts within complex organizations. (You’ll find the other two articles here and here.)
First Some Straight Talk About Teams
If you only take one thing away from this article today, it’s that way too many teams are teams in name only. They are a group of individuals who have been randomly placed in close proximity to solve a specific problem without having done the work to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, preferred communication styles and mindsets. Nor have they talked about how to make quality decisions with one another.
These issues have big consequences and cause the teams to wander from strong viewpoint to strong viewpoint, making it very difficult for them to get centered on serving the client’s big problem. Without the structure and tenacity to develop a far better solution than they could have done individually, they actually coalesce to mediocrity. Decisions are begrudging consensus, instead of powerful, collaborative and fresh.
The Big Three
Every person has a set of skills that when activated in the right way, can add to the success of collaborative work (i.e teaming). The sad truth is that in the many firms I have a chance to work in, those strengths and insights go largely undiscovered.
Doing the work of Growth Leadership in a firm demands way more than teams in name only – they must be built intentionally to be strong, flexible and resilient. This enables them to discover, make decisions and carry the firm to its next opportunity.
Let’s now unpack the three non-negotiable characteristics to build powerful teams. At a high level, a team that’s going to perform needs to be Chartered, Curated and Equipped.
1) Chartered
This refers to how a team forms and is governed. Very high-performance teams are put in place with intention and a clear mission. Strong firms go out of their way to not tell their teams how to accomplish their goals, but instead set clear expectations for the results and path-dependent values like respect, stewardship and quality.
How it Moves Results Forward: By giving the team both a clear mission and firm guard rails, it allows them to be incredibly creative and empowered to move towards the goal line. The clear decentralization and lack of micro management makes team work very agile and adaptive.
How to Make it Happen: Putting some rigor in the team launch process takes some effort up front, but pays big in momentum once things get rolling. Start by writing out the “why” for this effort, which is typically a problem statement and medium-term future state that is challenging and compelling. Who will be the sponsor? How will this team report to and who will resource it? Will it be collocated or virtual? What is the first deliverable and when is it due?
2) Curated
Curated refers to recruiting team members with great intention based on their skills, leadership styles and team chemistry. Building a team without working through the quality of match can create efforts with large blind spots and the missing elements of insight that is needed to maintain momentum.
How it Moves Results Forward: In our work with clients we use the Complete Growth Leader styles model to be sure that in addition to the subject matter expertise, we have a strong team interaction and natural balance. When we have all four leadership styles present, we see teams that can work through conflict and hard issues well.
How to Make it Happen: Once the charter is on paper, think about who comes to mind as the best possible team members. These are always busy people who “don’t have the time,” but suspend that objection for the moment. Look at the Complete Growth Leader roles and make sure you have all four styles present. Now make the asks and be sure to include those top picks – you’d be surprised at how often they will find a way.
3) Equipped
Equipping refers to the work of investing in training and education to prepare a team to move from initiation to high performance. The above work might be completed well, but without work at the team leader and peer level, there will be unneeded conflict and a much slower path to high performance. Additionally, a team needs to have line of sight to get the adjacent resources needed including time from subject matter experts, budget for necessary experimentation and research and access to assets within the firm.
How it Moves Results Forward: Over and over we see small investments in equipping pay off in the rapid meshing of teams in challenging high stakes projects. Without this work, high performance decision making can be hampered and results can be very mixed. Here are a few examples of this: I worked with a transportation team that cut the implementation time down for a large-scale test project from 12 months to six weeks, as well as a financial services group that moved their time to management insight report from six weeks to ten days. This allowed real-time interventions that save millions.
None of the individuals on these teams had these expectations going in. They all discovered more than they anticipated by working together.
How to Make it Happen: Effective teams don’t just happen, they are built. This is usually done with some workshop time. First unpack and repack the charter as a team, building understanding and buy in. Do the work to identify the Complete Growth Leader styles and what areas of synergy and tension you have as a group. Decide how exactly you’ll make decisions. Make a plan for what your cadence will be and how you’ll maintain schedule.
These three areas are table stakes for teams that will move a firm forward. If a team is not chartered, curated and equipped, it’s not a question of if, but how much resource will be consumed before it is rescoped or stopped.
If you think you have a gap in your team structure that is threatening to stall your project, be sure to use a thorough and structured approach to fill it. And if you’d like help with it, I invite you to give me a call at 847-651-1014, or to set up a 20-minute chat using this link.
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