High Performing Teams

by Muhammad Ally, Norman Blunden, Michael Groenewald, Sigi Kaltenecker, Chris Reyneke

What you can find in this article: A management model for mapping high performing teams // Practitioner´s guidelines to enable these kind of team s// The story behind these guidelines

The model was the result of a breakout session in the Agile Leadership Training which took place in Johannesburg on 2011, May 26-27. Facilitated by Michael, this session started with individual brainwriting by all group members aka authors of this article: What do we see as characteristic properties of high performing teams?

In the first round, we brought up our 3 most important ideas and clustered them in order to find out typical patterns. While we were still in the middle of our second round, focusing on missing parts and further links, Chris provided us a quick sketch of a model to help us discover the bigger picture. We tested this picture by mapping our initial ideas according to the basic structure of Chris´ model (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

During both the following debriefing phase within our small group and during the presentation phase together with the other breakout groups, we found out that the outcome of our session was not just a nice picture. On the contrary, we were more and more convinced that this picture could serve as a kind of practitioner´s guidelines for effectively supporting high performing teams. Besides, it adds a manager´s point of view to the well-known concepts discussed in several articles (see, for instance, “The Seven Characteristics of a High Performing Team”)”>)

However, this is what these guidelines highlight, consisting, as shown in HPT Grafik 0911, basically of 4 different areas:

1. 1. Direction
2. 2. Structure
3. 3. Teams
4. 4. Space

What is covered by these areas?

Direction, in terms of strategic focus, is driven by organizational expectations. In other words, all teams need a sense of purpose and a clear cut mission. Direction is about a compelling objective, that has the potential to generate business value. http://www.teambuildingportal.com/articles/team-performance/qualities-high-performance-teams

Structure means creating enabling conditions for team work, such as

• the right staffing,
• an optimal mix of skills,
• a clear system of recognition and team rewards.

In line with J. Richard Hackman´s concept of “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances”, () , one might add

• the right team size (usually not more than 7 members),
• team norms such as a committed team charter explicitly clarifying mutual expectations,
• mutual commitment on decision authority, and
• regular opportunities for addressing the quality of collaboration within the team (inward looking) as well as the relationships between the team and its performance context (outward looking).

Teams, the third area and kind of heart piece of our model, start their journey to high performance by

• taking ownership,
• doing what they do best,
• holding themselves and one another accountable,
• open communicating, and
• big picture thinking in terms of a clear strategic view (see “Direction”).

For sure, this collection reminds us of the well-known success factors, sponsored by Katzenbach and Smith and Patrick Lencioni´s “Five Dysfunctions of a Team“. However, HPTs typically reflect strong extensions of the basic characteristics of teams. In line with Katzenbach &Smith´ landmark research, this extension is nurtured by intense commitment, a deeper sense of purpose, mutual accountability and a complementary skill set.

Space is to be generally defined as supportive organizational context. As opposed to structure and direction, this context is more about the broad as well as “soft” area of culture rather than “hard fact” skills or techniques.  Although we know that we have to be context specific in order to appropriately identify an organization´s culture, there is a specific collection of cultural elements that have proven to be generally helpful when it comes to supporting HPTs. In our discussion we identified:

• an open climate where it is easy to promote ideas
• the opportunity to experiment in order to encourage innovation
• an atmosphere of trustful communication not only within the teams but between teams and different hierarchy levels as well
• the ability and willingness to address and work on conflicts in a solution-oriented manner
• last but not least, a sense of importance to deliver real business value.

As experience shows, HPTs  are based on a broad range of effective team work and shared leadership. There are, nevertheless, specific ways how line managers on higher hierarchical levels can foster the right space. To create a supportive organizational context, they should think about:

• starting to grant trust: let them do their own thing;
• stopping to micro-manage: macro-manage by creating committed forms of control instead;
• continuing to communicate — not only with the teams but with their customers and stakeholders as well;
• providing the right information system: give the team all the data that members need to competently plan and execute their work within the bigger picture of the company´s strategy (aka “big picture”)
• giving and explicitly asking for feedback on a regular basis: Commit on opportunities where you can gather first-hand data by silent observing.
• allocating dedicated resources in terms of equipment, money,  staff time and physical space: help them to focus on joint performance as well as on sustainable team building.
• Redefining roles and responsibilities, e.g. by creating new job descriptions for Managers 2.0 (link);
• Ensuing consistent attention and support form all management levels, including TOP management´s commitment to Agile transition,
• Creating a reward system based on team performance. rather than on individual performance;
• Providing an educational system: make training and expert coaching available to work teams for any aspects of the work in which members are not already sufficiently knowledgeable or skilled;
• Being a role model for whatever behavior you want to see in place. As experience shows, walking the talk as to your own learning efforts is of specific importance in an agile environment.

The Authors:

• Muhammad Ally, Manager, RMB
• Norman Blunden, Head of Projects, Investec Private Bank
• Michael Groenewald, Head of Retail IT, Allan Grey
• Chris Reyneke, CIO, Momentum EB