Editor’s Note:  Team Formation, the topic of this article, is the sixth of the Six Engines of Entrepreneurial Ascent®, which are detailed at https://mulkernassociates.com/leadership/six-engines-entrepreneurial-ascent.

Everyone in business accepts without question the critical importance of teams and teamwork.  The terms are treated almost with reverence.  Yet much of the time, I respectfully submit, we do not seem to know what we are talking about.  Some examples:

  1. President Trump has said repeatedly in speeches that all Americans are “on the same team.” Really?  All 320 million of us?  That’s one heck of a big team!
  2. But not big enough for National Geographic! They ran a TV ad after the February 2019 Super Bowl to promote a new program, saying that all living things on earth are “on the same team.”
  3. A fad starting in the 1990s and apparently still active suggests you call all of your employees “team members.” For some organizations, this can include up to several hundred thousand.
  4. Some definitions suggest that a team is a group of people making or supporting efforts to reach the same objective or destination. Are the 5,000 tourists on a super-sized cruise liner all team members then?

The serious point is that muddled thinking leads to muddled action, and effective, purposeful action is virtually impossible without clear thinking.  The term “team” has become so diluted and distorted that it is no wonder that business leaders continue to struggle with creating effective teamwork and to bemoan the presence of “silos.”

The purpose of this article is not to define “team” or “teamwork.” Whole libraries of books and articles have attempted this. Rather, the purpose is to address some of the false comparisons and misconceptions that confuse the already difficult task of developing high-performing teams. Some pragmatic suggestions for effective team formation are also offered.

UNHELPFUL COMPARISONS—It is natural and appropriate that we admire and praise our great military generals and heroes as well championship coaches.  What is not appropriate, and may undermine your credibility, is to uncritically generalize their methods and principles to a business setting, which differs significantly.

The Military is unique.  The U. S. armed forces provide a level and quantity of training, preparation, education and readiness that is unprecedented in history, from basic boot camp, to the military academies, to the accredited war colleges for senior officers.  Enlisted inductees are closely supervised, stripped of individuality, indoctrinated, and moved away from everything familiar during months of basic training.  The unfit or undesirable can be discharged virtually without question, compared to the HR regulatory maze corporate managers must navigate.  Once basic training is completed, personnel are on duty, call or under supervision 24/7, while undergoing further specialized training, sometimes for years.  Disobedience can result in court martial and military prison.  Desertion under fire can theoretically result in execution.  In the military, the organization both supports your development and virtually owns you.  In fact, during times of the draft, this is one of the few remaining legal forms of involuntary servitude.  These specific conditions that can provide remarkable results both in war fighting and prevention apply to few if any other organizations.  Business comparisons with dedicated, patriotic warriors run the risk of being ridiculously self-serving and/or insulting to those who make the total commitment that military service calls for.

Sports analogies and lessons from former coaches abound in management conversations.  Yet as with the military, much of athletic team activity is devoted to training, practicing, and preparing.  Furthermore, different sports require radically different performances. During a baseball game, most of each team member’s time is spent literally doing nothing but watching and waiting, even for defensive players on the field when the ball is in play.  A first-rate “closer” in major league baseball may pitch only the last inning of a game, and even then not in all games.  For this he receives a multi-million per year, multi-year contract.  During actual play in a football game, all players on the field are active in different ways, and everyone on defense can potentially score.  Yet most of each team is benched, doing nothing but watching, and the kickers’ total time of play is minimal.  College team members typically live together in the same dorm to enforce cohesion.  In a rowing race, all crew members are silently doing exactly the same thing in unison, with the exception of the coxswain who is shouting tempo or commands.  U.S. track athletes at the Olympics are said to form a team, but how can this be when they perform individually and frequently in competition with each other?  How do any of these sports or others provide good analogies for work life at your company? 

WHAT A TEAM IS NOT

 A team is not the same as a community, a state, a nation, a church, or political party, nor is being governed by the same laws and principles sufficient to create team membership for everyone in a group where most people are strangers to each other.  These affiliations may be among the most important in your life. To label them as “teams” not only adds to confusion over the word.  It also debases the importance of those commitments which may rightfully command your greatest loyalties.

A team is not something you are irrevocably born into, such as a particular family, the human race or all living things, but something you decide to join.

Team membership is not once and for all.  Teams are formed and dissolved for various special projects, and you can change teams, as when an NFL player is traded, or an employee leaves for another job.

Team membership often lacks clear, unambiguous boundaries.  The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl.  This organization consists of offensive and defensive players, special teams, large coaching staff, trainers, medical staff, on-field water carriers, and administrative office staff.  Are they all members of the team that won, or are most of them members of sub-teams that support the main team?  Is the owner part of the team?  These would not be abstract questions if the Patriots were planning a team-building retreat. Who would they invite?

Your most important team is the one at the top.  How is your leadership team functioning?  To find out, the Mulkern Associates Team Assessment® provides executive clients with a highly detailed and specific profile to answer that question.  Team members are interviewed individually, and all feedback remains anonymous.  An extensive and confidential report, both quantitative and qualitative in nature, is provided that is without exception an eye-opener.  Its findings and recommendations lead to significant change that will contribute to the enterprise value of your firm and provide a significant return on investment.  Call or email to discuss, with no obligation.

TO FORM EFFECTIVE TEAMS

  1. Be cautious about drawing hasty lessons from books such as Good to Great by Jim Collins. While an outstanding study, the book is exclusively about major, publicly-traded companies, well capitalized with years of experience, subject to quarterly review by analysts and rigorous annual audits. How many of these conditions describe your entrepreneurial venture?
  2. Establish the norms of the company. This means clear, honest decisions on Mission, Vision, and Values, as well as the top three to five priorities for each of the next two or three years.  For a discussion of Mission and Vision statements, see also https://mulkernassociates.com/leadership/clear-english-company-make-money.
  3. Look for natural groupings of those who interact frequently, such as senior-level leaders, functional departments, or those assigned to special projects. Team development will not clearly always improve performance.  Among inventors, sales reps in competition with each other, physician specialty leaders at a hospital, or members of a Board, it might do the opposite.
  4. Be alert for dysfunctional competition and put a stop to it. I have seen executives who have more loyalty to their department members than to the senior team or company as a whole.
  5. Similarly, peer pressure in teams is often mentioned as a particularly effective way of motivating group performance. It can also be a two-edged sword.  On more than one occasion I have seen members of senior teams attempt to pressure their peers to undermine the CEO.  Peer pressure can also be utilized to influence certain team members not to work “too hard” and make the rest “look bad.”  As the leader of the team, do not abdicate your responsibility for enforcing accountability.  See also https://mulkernassociates.com/leadership/accountability-commitment-or-lip-service.
  6. Make clear that results, not team satisfaction, are the priority. It seems that every year a new article—usually authored by a “free-lance writer”—appears in an HR journal or blog implying that if you make your employees happy they will produce greater profitability.  Consider the possibility that the causal relation works the other way around—company success produces happy employees.  A thriving company that can pay well and provide career growth will likely have employees with better morale than a company on a Spartan budget.
  7. Put realism into the practice of accountability. Even the otherwise excellent book by Patrick Lencioni The Five Dysfunctions of a Team disappoints here.  Where accountability has been consistently evaded, you are dealing with habits that will take a long time to change.  In a global marketplace, we are all dealing with different cultures that may see accountability, feedback and rewards in dramatically different ways.  Ask the team members how they want to see it enforced.  Accountability may have been avoided due to fear of devolving into public shaming or mutual, revenge fault-finding.  Develop alternatives and commit to them.
  8. Do not overdo being a “strong” team leader. Remember the importance of style flexibility.  The supervisor of a group of new interns may need to be very directive and more vigilant than trusting.  The manager of a group of Ph.D. researchers, by contrast, should probably leave them alone and just make sure they have the infrastructure and resources necessary to do their jobs.  Most teams are in between.
  9. If you consider using a team-building consultant, ask what they think about the “dark side” or downsides of teamwork, some of which are mentioned here, and how to avoid them. If you receive a blank stare or it is implied you worry too much, find another consultant.
  10. To underline again the significance of cultural diversity—not everything that is recommended for high-performing teams will apply in the same way outside the U.S., or even with all groups within the U.S.  Cultures differ along numerous dimensions, such as communication style, thinking style, and sense of self.  For more information you can Google the extensive work by Joerg Schmitz on this subject.

Your most important team is the one at the top.  How is your leadership team functioning?  To find out, the Mulkern Associates Team Assessment® provides executive clients with a highly detailed and specific profile to answer that question.  Team members are interviewed individually, and all feedback remains anonymous.  An extensive and confidential report, both quantitative and qualitative in nature, is provided that is without exception an eye-opener.  Its findings and recommendations lead to significant change that will contribute to the enterprise value of your firm and provide a significant return on investment.  Call or email to discuss, with no obligation.