 The Wisdom of Teams
Authors: Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith
Achieving high performance in the 90's and beyond requires companies to possess a whole new array of characteristics. Two such characteristics - agile competition and empowerment - depend upon the very roots of today's companies, the employees.
Many companies and individuals view the concept of empowerment as the power to say "no". In reality, empowerment is the ability to say "yes". Saying "yes" means a company is committed to providing the time and resources necessary to build and manage teams; teams of agile, empowered individuals that will enable companies to survive and succeed. Although more difficult to establish, team-based organizations prove to be more effective than the traditional customer interface structures.
The Wisdom of Teams, by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, addresses this need for empowered teams and approaches the concept of teams differently than the majority of books on the market today. Rather than stressing the "importance of teams" or providing a "how-to list" on building and managing teams, the authors take an in-depth look at actual team and non-team situations, providing an understanding of teams through a case study approach. Companies striving to improve performance in an environment of constant change can benefit from the lessons gleaned from these studies.
The authors define a team as:
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.
To perform effectively, it is important for a team to find the right mix of skills. The three categories of skill requirements presented by the authors include: technical or functional expertise, problem-solving and decision-making skills and interpersonal skills. Team members should be selected based on the complement of their skills, and a common, meaningful purpose should be developed to give identity to the team.
A first step for the team trying to form their purpose is to set measurable performance goals. The integration of the team's purpose and performance goals is essential to its success. It may be difficult for a team to get past personalities and work habits, however, the team that focuses on performance, rather than personal chemistry, communications or feelings, is the team that achieves its goals.
The Wisdom of Teams also provides the reader with a set of detailed questions relative to the six basic elements of teams. These questions can help a company to assess its own unique situation. The basic elements include the size of the team, the level of complementary skills and skill potential, the team purpose, performance goals, the working approach and team or group accountability.
High Performance Teams
A group becomes a team when its members learn to depend on one another and share accountability. A team distinguishes itself as a high performance team when its members reach a passionate level of commitment to each other, the team's cause and its performance. These exceptional, or high performance teams, "outperform all other like teams by an order of magnitude and also outperform all reasonable expectations given its composition. It is identifiable by its results and by the individual members' commitment to one another, a commitment that transcends the team situation." The authors illustrate the value of high performance teams using real life examples, team experiences and results. Companies need to understand that high performance teams are rare and not created on purpose. Acknowledging this will help executives to recognize and take advantage of a high performance team.
Top management's role relative to teams is to focus on the teams that contribute most to performance. The endeavor to improve performance has changed top managers' priorities, placing team creation and support closer to the top. Teams are becoming the building blocks of performance in high-performance organizations of the future. The authors' new book, Teams at the Top, addresses the questions and issues relative to the operation of leadership teams.
The company considering a team-approach to performance improvement should consider The Wisdom of Teams as the fundamental requirement in reading. Based on the authors' research and experience with teams, they developed a helpful Question and Answer Appendix that includes frequently asked questions and common issues.
At NYF, we operate as customer-focused teams in support of our focus on customer success. Each of our key customers has the benefit of an entire team working to ensure their success. We have adopted The Wisdom of Teams and continue to move along the team performance curve toward our goal of high-performance self-directed work teams.
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