Volume 6, Issue 3
A3 for Effective Teams
L
eaders trying to build and
manage teams in the past had
numerous advantages on their
side, including a robust economy, more
resources and greater room for trial and
error.
No longer. Today’s market is unforgiving. Resources are scarce. Critical
needs abound. Many leaders intuitively
recognize that they need a new
approach to team effectiveness that can
accelerate learning and change, but are
not sure what that approach might be.
We suggest A3. It represents the
following:
Accountability
Alignment
Agility
Effective Teams
As the enclosed table outlines, A3 is
designed to help teams significantly
accelerate their pace of learning,
change and productivity to address
important issues in today’s rapidly
changing environment.
We express A3 as a linear model, but
it is also circular: As a team proceeds
through accountability, alignment and
agility, it will need to revisit one or all
of these elements to stay on track and
achieve its goal.
Hard Choices
If a team is not working on issues
that truly matter, how it operates is
irrelevant. This may seem obvious. But
when leaders are trying to respond to so
many pressing needs, making hard
choices among them is essential before
any team can drive organization-wide
learning and change.
If a team is not working on
issues that truly matter, how
it operates is irrelevant.
Selecting the issues on which to focus
should start with what is most relevant
to your customers. Answering the
following questions can help you
prioritize:
1. What are our top three to five
opportunities to become more relevant
to current and potential customers?
2. Which stakeholders do we need to
influence and be influenced by to
leverage these opportunities?
3. What are our top three to five
obstacles to becoming more relevant to
current and potential customers?
4. What major strengths can we
leverage to increase our relevance and
work more effectively with external
stakeholders?
5. What significant weaknesses must
we mitigate in working with those
stakeholders?
Think Outside the Box - Literally
Today’s challenges demand thinking
outside the box – literally – when forming a team. Look beyond your group,
division or organizational structure to
ask, “What talents do we need to
achieve this goal?” In other words, team
composition should reflect the
difference-making talents required to
tackle the problem. Do not let organizational structure drive team structure.
Break out of your functional hierarchy or silo: Consider the entire
organization’s resources and talents, and
select from among them to construct a
team whose varied talents, abilities and
perspectives are best suited to the
challenge at hand.
Once you are confident you have
chosen the right priorities and
organized a team with the right
difference-making talents, it is time to
put A3 to work.
Accountability
In our A3 framework, accountability
helps a team maintain a customer and
external market perspective. Its key
components are:
• A clear, relevant customer focus.
• Building and aligning differencemaking talents to impact customers.
• Institutionalizing methods that
foster collaboration and working from
the outside in.
The importance of a team’s customer
orientation cannot be overstated. It
allows a team to continuously analyze
outside forces and helps the organization
address emerging challenges and opportunities to stay relevant. Keep your focus
on the end user rather than internal
stakeholders. Because in today’s globally
dynamic market, you are either improving your relevance to customers or you
are losing ground.
Alignment
The alignment component of A3
promotes clarity – at least, as much
clarity as is possible today. Team members often want certainty before beginning their work. They will not get it.
Instead, teams must be able to think
and move simultaneously and work
effectively with as much clarity as they
can create. Teams can achieve clear alignment by:
• Defining and achieving a significant
goal in terms of customer needs.
• Ensuring that each individual’s top
difference-making talents are recognized
and used by all team members. This
helps build the trust and respect a team
needs to work effectively. It also helps a
team assign tasks to the individual(s)
with the appropriate abilities.
Applying the right difference-making
talents and work methods to an
externally based goal helps a team quickly
synthesize new ideas and information to
speed the pace of learning and change.
• Agreeing on collaborative methods
for assigning work, sharing new learning,
keeping people informed, negotiating
conflict and assessing progress.
Don’t Sacrifice “What” for “How”
Agreeing on the collaborative processes
a team will use is important to its smooth
functioning. But achieving such alignment can also become a time-consuming
negotiation that keeps a team more
focused on how it will operate rather than
on what it needs to accomplish.
Avoid this pitfall by reinforcing the
team’s objective. Asking team members
to consider their processes in light of that
objective and with an external orientation should help, as should an understanding that the most effective processes
support collaboration rather than
legislate it. Outside facilitators can also
help a team come to quick and substantive agreement on important process
issues.
A3 is designed to help teams
significantly accelerate their
pace of learning, change
and productivity.
Agility
The agility portion of A3 is meant to
unleash a team’s creativity and innovation. In this context, agility means that:
• Every team – be it permanent,
project-based or ad hoc – has a clearly
defined purpose and goal. When the
objective is achieved, the team identifies
a new, customer-relevant goal. As the
external environment changes, the team
needs to evaluate its goal for relevance.
• Teams are formed with the intention
of leveraging their difference-makers
against significant goals that are important to customers. Teams continuously
strive to better leverage their strengths to
achieve the goals or they disband.
• Teams consistently practice and
continuously improve agreed-upon
methods of collaboration.
Continually striving to improve
collaboration to effectively apply
difference-making
strengths
to
customer-relevant goals opens the door
to higher levels of shared learning, which
fuels innovative solutions.
StraightTalk in a Starring Role
Commitment to StraightTalk is critical
to the success of every team in every
business climate. StraightTalk’s direct,
open, respectful dialogue helps teams stay
focused on important issues and goals. It
also makes collaboration more productive.
StraightTalk encourages individuals to
put their issues, information and
concerns on the table and advances
productive conflict and airing of diverse
perspectives. It also helps team members
listen actively to ensure they hear and
understand all the information and
perspectives offered.
In addition, StraightTalk builds trust
that supports effective collaboration. It
helps people understand others’ issues
and opinions before presenting their
own; consider others’ rights while standing up for their own; and respect others
and be respected in return. Above all,
StraightTalk accelerates the pace of
shared learning and helps teams reach
better understanding and better results.
The A3 Checklist
The A3 framework can be a valuable
checklist to help a team transition from
preparation to progress. If a team reviews
the enclosed table and has completed
each step of accountability and alignment, the team likely has as strong a
foundation as it will get. It is time to stop
preparing and begin actively working on
its mission, using the agility guidelines
each step of the way.
The problems facing organizations
today are difficult, complex and urgent.
This environment is creating demand for
newly effective teams that can address
significant issues and accelerate the pace
of continuous learning and change. That
is a tall order – but one that A3 can help
fulfill.
© 2009 Higgins Kreischer & Associates
A3 Team Effectiveness Framework
ACCOUNTABILITY
(To foster Customer Focus)
ALIGNMENT
(To foster Clarity)
AGILITY
(To foster Creativity)
All missions should have a To define and achieve a
clear and relevant customer major goal.
focus.
All teams (permanent,
project, ad hoc, etc.) need
a clear purpose.
Difference-Making
Talents Optimized
To be difference-making,
the talent must have
customer impact.
Each member’s top
difference-making talents
are known by team
members and the team.
Teams are formed to
leverage difference-makers
to achieve their goals.
Non-Negotiable Rules
for Collaboration
Common methods work
from the outside in to
ensure outcomes are
relevant to customers.
There is a common
method for:
- Assigning work
- Continuously learning
- Keeping people informed
- Negotiating conflict
- Measuring progress.
Common methods are
consistently practiced and
continuously improved.
Common Purpose
(Mission)