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"Most teams are ineffective – it is a problem of both focus and function. Putting a group of smart people together does mean you gain a smart team. We need to do better.”
Michael DeVenney
To call most teams a team is a stretch. What I see people calling teams are generally just groups of individuals who meet regularly, bring their own agendas, and make the pretense of listening to and working together. In fact, a recent Harvard Business Review study surveying executives reported that only 21% of senior teams are assessed as effective – a further 37% are viewed as mediocre and a frightening 47% as being dysfunctional.
There is no real surprise at the statistics. We see it all around us at all levels of all organizations and industries. Most teams do not work as teams. They are simply groups of people who bring their functional responsibilities to a regular meeting wanting attention and support for their priorities with little, if any, perspective on what is needed for the overall entity. They are solely tactical and not strategic. The organization suffers from tactical busyness as a result and misses the opportunity of strategic focus for a bigger and better future.
We need to do better! Building and working effectively as a team is a critical leadership competency now and for the future. Millennial employees are pack animals used to working collaboratively and demand a greater level of teamwork than is existent now in organizations. Team leadership is one of our leaders’ lowest performance ratings at the present time. The Conference Board of Canada reports again this year that working effectively with the senior team is a top challenge for CEOs.
It is critical for business productivity and competitiveness that we get teamwork right – particularly at the senior team level. Think of those manager committee meetings at accounting and law firms, senior management team meeting at healthcare organizations, and leadership team meetings at corporate offices and government departments. Everyone needs to make their point, protect their projects, and sigh loudly at their neighbor’s new idea.
At the senior executive or management level I think we fail as teams and wallow in our dysfunction. We feel important being at the senior table but don’t bring our best play. We use hope as a strategy – hoping that people will actually come together and work as a team. We take pride in achieving 63% of our potential performance (as reported by Harvard Business Review)!
Hope is a nice inspiration, but it is not an effective strategy.
We need to work differently as teams and that starts right at the top. If the senior team can’t operate effectively as a winning team, what hope does the organization have to be productive and competitive?
The critical question is why can’t a group of sophisticated, experienced, and intelligent professionals or executives come together to create a solid, high-performing team?
We need to see a shift in thinking. Success is not a solo sport. The critical challenge for achieving effective teamwork is complexity. Problems take much longer now than ever to resolve. Clients and stakeholders have higher expectations, competition is much greater, the pace of innovation is much faster, and resources are fewer. We need each other’s expertise and perspective to create better solutions.
Senior (and all) teams need to define the best way to work together and be the catalysts for change.
If we are going to break through that ceiling of complexity that holds our Canadian organizations back from a bigger and more competitive future, we need senior leaders to work more effectively together as a team.
We need to enter the senior team meeting as a member of a strategic leadership team and leave our position as Vice-President of Marketing or CFO at the door. We need to leave our function behind and focus on being a strategic team player for what is right for the priorities of the organization. Only then, can we be smart executives and professionals that focus on building the competitive advantage of our business and make decisions that will make a sustainable difference working together across the organization.
How do we bridge the gap between potential and performance for a team?
There are five conditions of an effective and successful team.
- Condition One – It has to be a real team. We cannot just convene a group of people with the required titles or positions and call them a team. We need to bring the right people together to work to answer key questions – what do we need these people to do that can’t be accomplished by any other group of people, what are the critical challenges we face together, and what do we need from each other? More than any other factor, what makes a real team is interdependent work. If we need each other to achieve our best results, we need to be a real team.
- Condition Two – it has to include real people. The people we bring together as a team need to have the right skills, knowledge, and experiences necessary to succeed in achieving the strategy. Title and position should not entitle membership – being on the team should be more about what a person brings to add a strategic part of the equation. It is key that members of the team can separate their two roles – the responsibilities of his or her own position and the needs of the common enterprise.
- Condition Three – it has to be based on a compelling direction. There needs to be a clear, shared, and agreed strategy and direction. True teams need to share information essential for judgment, consult and provide perspective for decisions, coordinate complex initiatives and interdependent operations, and decide together about critical issues. Clarify what are the critical challenges and the collective strategy for addressing these challenges.
- Condition Four – it has to be based on a solid structure. Meetings can make or break a team. The work of a truly effective team should be focused on the key strategic and tactical issues that affect the common enterprise. Meetings need to support this focus. We need to decide how often to meet, how long we need to meet, what to meet about, how to take action, and how to measure success. Meetings need agendas – no matter how intelligent, well-mannered, and knowledgeable team members may be, every team needs an agenda to be on track. If we want meetings to work, we need to invest in the right structure and support their success. We all have other things to do but the strategic success of the organization should be most important – that is what the meetings should be about.
- Condition Five – it has to have a supportive context. Each team member needs to commit to some simple rules of engagement – what do team members contribute, how are team members accountable, and how are team members expected to behave both in and out of meetings.
For teams to be truly effective there must be an investment by team members in four universal norms – commitment to treat the role of each team member as important, transparency in bringing items to the agenda if the issue affects more than one person, participate as each person’s voice is welcomed and needed, and have the integrity to be who you are both on and off the team.
Decide as a team four things to start the process:
- What are the two things we must always do as we work together if we are going to be a great team?
- What are the two things we must never do – behaviors that keep us from using our talents, skills, and experience?
Each team will have unique answers to those critical questions.
The bottom line – being an effective team is a learned skill. We can – and must – do better to work as effective senior teams (whether called a partner team, management team, executive team, or any other epithet) to reach our potential.
Leave your function at the door and commit to the strategic success of the enterprise, or you shouldn’t be on the team. We need leaders at the senior level – leaders then can separate strategy from personal agenda and do the right things to make our organizations more productive and competitive and put Canada back on top.
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