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THE FIVE CS OF TEAM PERFORMANCE
Albert Einstein once said: “What a person does on his own, without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of others, is even in the best of cases rather paltry and monotonous.” Einstein was simply recognizing that producing great things—whether it be new products, services, internal processes—requires the collective efforts of a team. Leaders of highly successful companies understand that business is a team sport—and they work to build an organization comprised of effective work teams.
As we begin our study of teams and team performance, you might start by thinking about your previous team experiences. Think about each team: How did that team perform and how did that team affect you as a member of the team? While we might not think of it as a team, the first “team” that we were a part of is our family. In a family we learn whether we can trust other people, how to work (or not work) together, how to help one another, how to communicate, and how to solve problems. Our family team is not one that we can typically choose—it's a function of fate—but nevertheless it has a significant impact on how we think about working together in a group setting and how to function effectively in a team. As we age and go to school we begin to function in other types of teams: sports teams, debate teams, study-groups, musical groups, and so forth. From our experience in these teams, we also develop our attitudes about whether we like being on a team and whether we feel that being a part of a team will help us achieve our goals.
After our schooling (and oftentimes during our years in school) we begin to experience what it's like to be on a work team within an organization. Whether it's a team preparing fast-food, managing inventory, developing new products, or even hoping to cure cancer, we bring our experiences from the teams of our youth and they influence us as we become a part of these work teams. Unfortunately, in today's world, many people have not had particularly positive experiences on teams: their “family team” didn't function particularly well, their sports teams had poor coaching leading to low morale and losses, or their study-groups ended up producing a poor product (and a poor grade), making them leery of being part of a team. Indeed, much of the current research on Millennials suggests that they don't particularly enjoy being part of a team, and don't have many of the skills needed for effective teamwork.1 One of the interesting findings from our research is that while many organizations give lip service to the importance of teams, few spend time or resources to ensure the effective performance of their teams.2 The typical excuses we hear are:
- We don't have time to spend “working on our team.” We've got more important work to do.
- Management doesn't reward good team performance. Individual performance is what matters.
- If we start looking at what is going on in our team, people will be uncomfortable. We don't believe a “touchy-feely” approach will lead to good outcomes for the team.
- Our team leaders don't really know how to develop an effective team, and we don't have the expertise internally to train them all. And outside consultants are too expensive.
The result of these types of attitudes is that little effort is generally made to improve team performance in today's organizations, and the efforts that are made are typically one-time training or other “band-aid” approaches to helping teams perform more effectively. The net result is that we have many dysfunctional teams today, and not much is being done to make them better.
Even though often little is done to improve teams, leaders are generally aware that team performance is important as much of today's work is team based; think of research teams, product development teams, production teams, sales and marketing teams, cross-functional problem-solving teams, and top management teams. One reason work is done more by teams now is that products and services have become increasingly complex, requiring a wide range of skills and technologies. No single person is capable of developing, manufacturing, and selling increasingly complex products, which means that teams of individuals with complementary knowledge must coordinate efficiently and effectively in order to be successful. This requires teamwork skills. A second reason teamwork skills are needed now more than in the past is that in a global economy, individuals must collaborate across cultural, organizational, and geographical boundaries to accomplish their goals. Hence, the need for cross-cultural, virtual, and alliance teams (teams that collaborate across organizational boundaries) has increased in recent years. Thus, high-performing companies in today's competitive landscape essentially require high-performing work teams. The two unavoidably go hand in hand.
High-performing teams are those with members whose skills, attitudes, and competencies enable them to achieve team goals. These team members set goals, make decisions, communicate, manage conflict, and solve problems in a supportive, trusting atmosphere in order to accomplish their objectives. Moreover, they are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses and have the ability to make changes when they need to improve their performance.
Thus, the primary purpose of this book is to give managers, team leaders, team members, and team consultants specific guidance on how to improve team performance. In particular, this book gives you “the essentials” of team building—those activities and actions that can help poorly performing or dysfunctional teams improve their performance. And for those who have adequately functioning teams, this book can help you transform them into great teams.
Determinants of High-Performing Teams: The Five Cs
Over the past several decades, as we have consulted with teams and conducted research on team performance, we have come to the conclusion that five factors—the Five Cs—must be understood and managed for teams to achieve superior performance (Figure 1.1):
Figure 1.1 The Five Cs of Team Performance
- Context for the team
- Composition of the team
- Competencies of the team
- Change management skills of the team
- Collaborative leadership style
We will describe each of these factors only briefly here. Future chapters are devoted to each one of the 5Cs.
Context for the Team
Team context refers to the organizational environment in which the team must work. Understanding context, and how it influences team performance, requires an understanding of the answers to the following two categories of questions:
- Is effective teamwork critical to accomplishing organizational goals? If so, are there measurable team performance goals around which we can organize a team?
- Do the following support teamwork in the organization?
- Senior management—Do they encourage teamwork?
- Reward systems—Is teamwork rewarded with financial or other rewards?
- Information systems—Do we have data on team performance that teams can access?
- Structure—Are teams organized in a way that allows the team to accomplish their goals?
- Culture—Do members of the organization value teamwork?
- Physical space—Are there spaces for teams to meet so they can accomplish their work effectively?
Experience has shown that teamwork skills are more important when the team must complete a complex task characterized by a high degree of interdependence between team members. Understanding the context—the nature of task interdependence required among team members in order to achieve a high level of performance—is a critical first step to building a successful team. For example, it's not enough just to train people on the importance of key team competencies, such as communication and problem solving, if they are not supported and reinforced by the specific context of the team. Low-interdependence teams need to be managed differently than high-interdependence teams.
Composition of the Team
The composition of the team concerns the skills and attitudes of each team member. You must to have the right people on the team to achieve the desired level of performance. To effectively manage the composition of the team, those staffing the team must answer the following questions:
- Do individual team members have the technical skills required to complete the task?
- Do they have the interpersonal and communication skills required to coordinate their work with others? (This is much more important for teams where task interdependence is high.)
- Are individual team members committed to the team and motivated to complete the task?
- Is the team the right size to complete the task successfully?
Teams saddled with members who are not motivated to accomplish the task or lack the skills to achieve team goals are doomed to failure from the outset. Team composition also refers to assembling a group of individuals with complementary skills. Effective teams use the diverse skills and abilities of each team member in a synergistic way to achieve high performance. The members of high-performing teams clearly understand their roles and assignments and carry them out with commitment.
Team size also plays a significant role in team effectiveness. A team that is too large may be unwieldy and cause members to lose interest due to a lack of individual involvement. Amazon employs a “two-pizza team” philosophy, meaning that teams should be small enough (five to ten people) to be adequately fed by two pizzas. Amazon finds that having small teams empowers team members and facilitates more effective coordination. However, having too few team members may place unnecessary burdens on individual team members, and the team may not have the resources needed to accomplish its goals.
High-performing teams manage team composition by (1) establishing processes to select individuals for the team who are both skilled and motivated, (2) establishing processes that develop the technical and interpersonal skills of individual team members as well as their commitment to achieving team goals, (3) removing those from the team who lack skills or motivation, and (4) ensuring that the team is the right size: a team that is neither too large nor too small to accomplish the task.
Competencies of the Team
We have found that successful teams have certain competencies that exist independent of any single member of the team. These competencies are embedded in the team's formal and informal processes—its way of functioning. High-performing teams have developed processes that allow the team to:
- Clearly articulate their goals and the metrics related to those goals.
- Clearly articulate the means required to achieve the goals, ensuring that individuals understand their assignments and how their work contributes to team goals.
- Make effective decisions.
- Hold individuals and the team accountable for performance.
- Organize and run effective meetings.
- Build trust and commitment to the team and its goals.
- Effectively communicate, including giving and receiving feedback.
- Resolve disputes or disagreements.
- Have mutual respect for one another.
- Encourage risk taking and innovation.
While the context and composition of the team set the stage, these competencies propel it to high performance. If the team hopes to be extraordinary, it must develop competencies for goal setting, decision making, communicating, trust building, dispute resolution, and so forth.
Change Management Skills of the Team
Effective teams must change and adapt to new conditions to be successful over time. Team context, composition, and competencies may need to change or be refocused for the team to succeed in reaching a new goal. A team that is able to monitor its performance and understand its strengths and weaknesses can generate insights needed to develop a plan of action to continually improve. Toyota, a company that we've researched extensively, uses the kaizen, or continuous-improvement, philosophy to help its teams identify the bottlenecks they are facing and then develop strategies to eliminate the bottlenecks.3 Toyota's managers are never fully satisfied with their team's performance because once they've fixed one problem, they know that to continuously improve they need to find and fix the next one. We have found that teams in most companies, unlike Toyota, are oblivious to their weaknesses. And even when they do recognize them, they do not have the ability to manage change effectively to overcome those weaknesses. It is possible to view change management skills as just another team competency, but this meta-competency is so important that it deserves special attention. In Chapter 8 we describe the key interventions that are often used by teams to change how they function and by so doing improve their performance.
High-performing teams have developed the ability to change by (1) establishing team-building processes that result in the regular evaluation of team context, composition, competencies, and leadership with the explicit objective of initiating needed changes to better achieve the desired team goals, and (2) establishing a philosophy among team members that regular change is necessary to meet the demands of a constantly changing world.
Collaborative Leadership on the Team
The final C in our model is “collaborative leadership.” Collaboration is the key to success for teams and team leaders. Team leaders are responsible for managing the other 4Cs of team performance. They must work with senior management and those responsible for creating the context factors, such as the reward system, to ensure that the team has the right environment to succeed. The team leader typically works with human resources or other managers to identify and assign members to his or her team and then provides for each team member's development.
While team leaders might be able to provide all the training needed regarding the competencies in the team, they will typically need support from others to provide this training. This is also true regarding the change management strategies that might be used by the team leader to improve the team. Hence, we see the effective team leader as someone who is a “boundary spanner”—someone who looks at the factors both inside and outside of the team and then garners the resources needed to help the team achieve its goals. In fact, we have created a ranking of the world's most innovative leaders that is published in Forbes (as the “Forbes 100 most innovative leaders list”), and the most important distinguishing feature of effective leaders is that they develop the capacity to bring resources to the team so that it can achieve its goals (see Innovation Capital: How to Compete—and Win—Like the World's Most Innovative Leaders by Jeff Dyer4).
Team leaders also need to recognize what type of leadership style the team needs in order to foster the appropriate type of collaboration with the leader and among team members. When team members are relatively inexperienced and need significant direction, leaders should use a more directive leadership style and follow up more closely with team members to collaborate with them in doing their work. In other instances, team leaders may have a team comprised of highly seasoned, trustworthy, and competent members. In that case, the team leader would likely play the role of a coach and allow the team to use a participative decision-making process. Team members could be given wider latitude in doing their jobs and would likely need much less direction. Leadership style is an important key to the success of the team leader. Thus, the organization needs to choose team leaders who (1) understand that their role is to manage the other 4Cs of team performance and collaboratively secure the resources needed to achieve team goals, and (2) are attuned to the maturity of their team so they can use the appropriate leadership style to get maximum motivation and performance from team members.
Notes
- 1. J. M. Twenge, W. K. Campbell, and E. C. Freeman, “Generational Differences in Young Adults' Life Goals, Concern for Others and Civic Orientation, 1966–2009,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102, no. 5 (2012): 1045–1062.
- 2. W. Dyer, J. Dyer, and W. Dyer, Team Building, 5th ed. (New York: Wiley, 2013).
- 3. Ibid.
- 4. J. H. Dyer (in press), Innovation Capital: How to Compete—and Win—Like the World's Most Innovative Leaders (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press).