THE WISDOM OF TEAMS :
CREATING THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE
ORGANIZATION
Based on the best selling book
By Ron R Katzenbach & Douglas K Smith
Harper Collins – 2003
INTRODUCTION
A team is a small number of people with complementary
skills who are committed to a common purpose,
performance goals and approach, for which they hold
themselves mutually accountable.
TEAM BASICS
Six basics define the discipline required for team performance:
Small number – usually less than 12
Complementary skills
Common purpose
Common set of specific performance goals
Commonly agreed upon working approach
Mutual accountability.
• Teams are much more about discipline than togetherness.
• A strong and balanced performance ethic underlies a team
culture.
• Teams remain the most flexible and powerful units of
performance, learning and change in any organization.
• Teams can be more quickly assembled, deployed, refocused
and disbanded, without disrupting more permanent
structures and processes.
• In any situation which demands the real-time combination of
multiple skills, experiences and judgments, a team gets
better results than a group of individuals operating within
confined job roles and responsibilities.
• At the same time, pseudo teams and other compromise units
that have not imbibed the discipline and performance across
on organization ethic of high performing teams must be
systematically weeded out.
• A distinction also needs to be made between a
performing team and a single leader unit.
• In the single leader unit, someone takes control, makes
the key decisions, delegates and monitors individual
assignments and chooses when and how to modify the
working approach.
• But teams are different. Members share responsibilities
and accountability and complement each other. The
team leader is seldom the primary determinant of team
performance.
THE THREE LITMUS TESTS
Any performance situation that warrants a team effort must
meet three litmus tests:
 The need for collective work products to be delivered by
two or more people working together in real time.
 Leadership roles that need to shift among the members.
 The need for mutual accountability in addition to
individual accountability.
BECOMING A REAL TEAM
• A group of people working together does not equate to
a team.
• Working groups: Unlike teams, working groups rely on
the sum of “individual bests” for their performance.
They pursue no collective work products requiring joint
effort.
– Unlike teams, working groups come together to
share information, perspectives and insights to make
decisions that help individuals do their own job
better and to reinforce each other’s individual
performance standards.
– But the focus is always on individual performance and
accountability.
• Pseudo team: In this case, there could be a significant,
incremental performance need or opportunity.
– But choosing the team path means people commit to
various risks - conflict, joint work products and
collective action necessary to build a common
purpose and mutual accountability.
– People who call themselves teams but take no such
risks are at best pseudo teams.
• Potential team: There is a significant incremental
performance need. The group is really trying to improve
the performance.
• Real team: This consists of a small number of people
with complementary skills who are equally committed
to a common purpose, goals and working approach for
which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
• High performance team: This group goes beyond a real
team in that members are also deeply committed to one
another’s personal growth and success.
BUILDING TEAM PERFORMANCE
• Establish urgency and direction: The more urgent and
meaningful the rationale, the more likely that a real
team will emerge.
• Select members based on skills, not personalities: Teams
need complementary skills to get the job done. Of
course a balance must be struck between getting
members who already have the skills and investing in
skill development after the work starts.
• Pay particular attention to first meetings and actions:
Initial impressions always mean a great deal.
• Set some clear rules of behaviour.
• Rules must be laid down with respect to attendance,
discussion,
confidentiality,
analytic
approach,
constructive confrontation, etc.
• These rules are needed to promote focus, openness,
commitment and trust, all oriented towards
performance.
• These rules need not be written down but they must be
enforced seriously.
• Set and seize upon a few immediate performanceoriented tasks and goals. It makes a lot of difference if a
few challenging goals are achieved early on.
• Challenge the group regularly with fresh facts and
information -- New information helps a potential team
to redefine and enrich its understanding of the
performance challenge.
This helps in shaping a
common purpose, setting clearer goals and improving
upon the team’s common approach.
• Spend lots of time together – The most successful
teams always find a way to spend extra time together,
particularly when things go wrong.
• Exploit the power of positive feedback, recognition &
reward: Positive reinforcement can work wonders.
TEAM LEADERS
The functions of team leaders can be listed as follows:
• Keep the purpose, goals and approach relevant and
meaningful – Leaders must help their teams gain clarity
about their mission, goals and approach. But they must take
care not to impose themselves on the team.
• Build commitment and confidence – Leaders must work to
build the commitment and confidence of each individual as
well as the whole team. Positive and constructive
reinforcement improves mutual accountability and
confidence levels.
• Strengthen the mix and level of skills – Leaders must ensure
that the team has all the skills needed to succeed.
• Manage relationships with outsiders, including removal of
obstacles – Leaders must manage much of the team’s
contacts and relationships with the rest of the organization.
Leaders must have the courage to intervene on behalf of the
team when obstacles are faced.
• Create opportunities for others – The leaders must be able to
provide performance opportunities to their team members.
• Do real work – Leaders should not just sit back and make
decisions. They must contribute in whatever way possible.
They should take care not to delegate the nasty jobs to
others.
• There are two things that team leaders never do:
 Blame/allow specific individuals to fail
 Excuse away shortfalls in team performance.
DEALING WITH OBSTACLES
• All teams face obstacles. Real teams face obstacles
squarely and do not give up easily.
• The authors recommend five ways of dealing with
obstacles:
• Revisit the basics: The team must reflect on its purpose,
approach and performance goals
• Go for small wins: Nothing galvanizes a struggling team
as much as tangible achievements.
• Inject new information and approaches - Competitive
benchmarks, internal case histories, best practices and
customer interviews can provide fresh perspectives that
can help a team to redefine its purpose, approach and
performance goals.
• Take advantage of facilitators or training - Successful
facilitators can bring problem-solving, communication,
interpersonal and teamwork skills to teams who lack
them. Training programs can highlight the importance
of key skills, common team purpose, good teamwork,
clear goals and the role of the leader.
• Change the team’s membership including the leader Changing members or sometimes the leader may
sometimes help in circumventing the obstacles faced.
• Real teams thrive on obstacles. Each time they tackle an
obstacle, they become stronger. The high performing
teams constructively and energetically try to get around
barriers.
TEAM PERFORMANCE AT THE TOP
• For various reasons, generating team performance at senior
levels is difficult.
• The most practical way to build team performance at the top
lies not so much in emphasizing good personal chemistry as
in finding ways for executives to do real work together. When
they succeed, the following pattern emerges:
• Carving out team assignments that tackle specific issues
which are narrower and more concrete than leading the
organization as a whole.
• Assigning work to subsets of the team – Senior management
groups have a tendency to spend nearly all of their joint time
as a full team reviewing the work of others, discussing issues
and making decisions. Instead, work must be given to smaller
groups.
• Determining team membership based on skills, not position
– It is important to be clear about skill requirements and not
to assume that the formal position of a member defines
his or her skills.
– A skill specific approach allows a number of smaller teams
to be formed to address particular issues and match up
different skill profiles.
• Requiring all members to do real work
– Each member must do real work, as opposed to
delegating and reviewing the work of others.
• Breaking down the hierarchical pattern of inter action.
- The work assignments and contributions to be made
should not be based on position in the hierarchy.
- Non hierarchically oriented assignments provide
fundamental building blocks for team performance.
• Setting and following rules of behaviour similar to those used
by other teams.
Those behaviours must be encouraged that provide
focus, avoid hierarchical constraints and promote
openness, commitment and trust.
TOP MANAGEMENT’S ROLE
• The authors predict that teams will be the primary
building bock of performance in the high performance
organizations of the future.
• Top managers who aspire for high performance must
increasingly understand and emphasize teams.
• Top management must shape key policies that favour
team formation and performance.
• Team assignments must become an integral part of
normal successful careers.
• So long as individual accomplishments overshadow team
accomplishments, people will remain cautious about joining
teams.
• More important than policies, however, is the way
management sends signals by devoting time and attention to
foster team performance.
• Top management must identify which teams will most affect
performance and help them move up the performance curve.
THE ROAD AHEAD
High performance organizations of the future will be
characterized by the following:
• Balanced performance results – focus on employees,
customers and shareholders.
• Clear, challenging aspirations – the company’s purpose
must reflect clear and challenging aspirations that will
benefit all the key constituents.
• Committed and focused leadership *** Through their time, attention and other symbolic
behaviour, leaders can express a relentless focus on where
the company is headed, and an unrelenting dedication to the
communication, involvement,
measurement and experimentation required to get there.
*** These leaders can inspire the organization by making it
clear that the pursuit of performance is the single best path to
economic and
personal fulfilment.
• An energized workplace dedicated to productivity and learning
– People should share an eagerness to ask questions, to
experiment with new approaches, to learn from results and
to take responsibility for making changes happen.
• Skills based sources of competitive advantage
– Skills are what matter in an environment characterized by
innovation, customer driven service, total quality and
continuous improvement.
• Open communications and knowledge management
– Shared values and behavioural norms that foster open
communications and knowledge management hold the key.
• Organizations of the future are likely to have simpler and more
flexible structures, with work organized around processes instead
of functions or tasks.
• They will all emphasize teams as the key performance unit of the
company.
• Teams are uniquely suited to apply the multiple skills and
perspectives required by any truly cross-functional process.