Discover the keys to creating standout teams and the DNA of great business teams.
A great team is one on which every player is a leader.
What makes such a team ‘great’ is that it is riveted on business results – not just on achieving the goals it has been given, but on continually raising the bar. A great team is anti-status quo.– Howard M. Guttman
Insights on Great Business Teams
Congratulations on your latest book, Great Business Teams: Cracking the Code for Standout Performance. In it, you have examined the inner workings of over 30 business teams, at top-management, business-unit, and functional levels, to offer a radically new vision of the emerging horizontal organization and of the high-performing teams that are the cornerstone of its success.
What are the insights from this book on great business teams?I think readers will be struck by how deeply people change when they are exposed to this model. There is a fundamental difference in the way they view themselves vis-à-vis the other players on their team, their leader, and, ultimately, the organization.
Functional and self-interest take a back seat to “winning for the business.” Responsibility and accountability are no longer avoided but embraced. Every team member behaves as though he or she were an owner of the business.
There has been a lot of talk about how to improve performance at both the team and the organization levels, but you rarely hear first-hand stories from companies who’ve done it. Great Business Teams provides lots of them—along with proven ways to overcome the challenges that inevitably arise.
The Research Behind the Book
Can you take us through the background research for this book? What was the trigger point for this book? What was the tipping point of this book?
After almost 30 years of consulting with senior executive teams throughout the world, we realized that there is a code for standout performance: one that applies to every organization, regardless of size, type, or industry affiliation.
We wanted to share this code with organizations that were trying to change their game. Cracking the code will help them acquire a sustained competitive advantage and the ability to excel in a very difficult marketplace.
What Makes a Great Team?
What, according to you, are great business teams? What is ‘great’? What are the differences between ordinary business teams and great business teams? What are the classic behaviors exhibited by non-high-performing teams?
A great team is one in which every player is a leader. What makes such a team ‘great’ is that it is riveted on business results—not just on achieving the goals it has been given, but on continually raising the bar. A great team is anti-status quo.
Underperforming teams, on the other hand, are teams made up of followers. They generally defer to the leader, whom they see as the one primarily responsible for results. They view themselves first and foremost as functional ambassadors to the team. Their behavior is characterized by inter-functional rivalry and competition for resources.
They are often wary of one another, and conflict may be expressed either overtly—in unproductive confrontations—or covertly—as subterfuge and underground behavior.
Aligning Teams for Success
In the book, you talk a lot about “aligning” teams. What is this process, and what does it accomplish?
When an organization is properly aligned, its parts move in sync to achieve results. There is a straight line of sight that goes from the organization’s strategy to its customers. Scarce human, financial, and capital resources are deployed along that line of sight so that value gets created and added quickly, consistently, and cost-effectively.
This makes the aligned organization fiercely competitive and an ultimate high-performance entity. And you can’t have an aligned organization without aligned teams.
The first step in moving a team to higher performance is “aligning” it, or making sure that all its members reach agreement in five key areas:
Business strategy.
Business deliverables coming from the strategy.
Roles and responsibilities.
Protocols, or ground rules, for decision-making and conflict resolution.
Business/interpersonal relationships.
The resulting clarity and congruity eliminate a large part of the conflict that keeps teams from resolving issues and achieving results.
Example of a Great Business Team
Can you give an illustrative example of a ‘great’ business team? What specific lessons can be learned from it?
When Catherine Burzik became president of Applied Biosystems (AB), the company had been stagnant for several years, with little revenue growth and falling stock prices. Despite significant R&D expense, there were few new products in the pipeline. Both Wall Street and AB employees had lost confidence in the company.
Burzik quickly moved to push decision-making down from her office to her EVPs. She created subteams and gave them the authority to deal with issues that didn’t require the full participation of the team. Speedy decision-making and implementation began to replace bottlenecks and impasses. She was able to focus on the strategic issues facing the company.
As a result, business accelerated. AB’s stock price nearly doubled, as did its market cap. Revenue began to grow, and the bottom line saw double-digit performance. After several years of no acquisitions, two significant ones were successfully completed.
The lessons:
The CEO—or any other team leader, for that matter—has got to let go. Decision-making power needs to be distributed, not hoarded.
Burzik’s predecessor had become so entangled in the day-to-day operations of the business that he lost sight of his strategic responsibility. By creating a team that could be trusted to deal with the tactical, she was able to refocus on the strategic.
The DNA of Great Teams
What is their code for standout performance? What is their DNA?
All great teams have five characteristics embedded in their “DNA”:
A unique kind of leader:
Willing to distribute power.
Puts a premium on open, honest communication.
Insists that team members hold them accountable for commitments made.
Team members who play for the team, not themselves:
Willing to accept the power and responsibility entrusted to them.
Willing to accept accountability for their performance and that of their peers.
Willing to give and receive honest feedback.
Rules for decision-making and interpersonal behavior:
Clear and consistent guidelines ensure focus and cohesion.
A continual drive to raise the performance bar:
Teams do not settle for past achievements but consistently strive for higher goals.
A performance system that rewards both outcomes and processes:
Recognition for what is achieved and how it is achieved.
Creating Great Teams at Every Level
You have outlined five requirements for successfully creating great teams on every level. For the benefit of our readers, can you please elaborate on these?
Keep it simple:
Create an atmosphere of mutual trust, respect, transparency, accountability, and agreed-upon rules of engagement.
Adapt to what works:
Moving to this model isn’t a rigid, step-by-step process. Tailor the approach to fit the organization.
Leadership commitment:
The organization’s leaders, starting from the top, must provide the vision and passion to drive the initiative forward.
Clear communication:
Leaders must clearly articulate their goals and the process for achieving them to gain buy-in from all levels of the organization.
Create a high-performance culture:
Reinforce positive cultural values (e.g., focus on results, accountability, transparency).
Identify and eliminate inhibitors like excessive politeness, over-analysis, and risk aversion.
The Role of Leadership
What is the role and importance of leadership for great business teams to achieve standout performance?
Leaders must:
Provide vision and passion to drive success.
Role-model the desired behaviors, including openness to critique.
Demonstrate a willingness to act on feedback and change unacceptable behaviors.
Avoid cutting off dissent or pulling rank in decision-making situations.
As Chuck Nesbit, EVP and COO of Chico’s FAS, Inc., puts it, “If a lieutenant in Iraq doesn’t have the courage to ride the Humvee down the road, he can’t expect his troops to do it.”
High-Performance Teams in Crisis
The world is in the midst of an unprecedented crisis created by a few greedy investment bankers. What is the importance of teamwork and high performance in such troubled times?
In challenging times, great teams are more critical than ever. One international beauty products company we work with experienced a dip in sales during 2008. All seven brands in its Professional Products Division suffered, but one declined far less than the others.
The general manager in charge of that brand attributed its relative success to its horizontal, high-performance model, implemented over a decade ago. He explained, “If you have an organization where strategy, business priorities, and roles and responsibilities are clear, and people are held accountable, you will have a relatively stronger business.”
Lessons from crisis times:
Teams and organizations aligned in key areas maintain a competitive advantage.
High-performing teams adapt quickly to new opportunities when the market rebounds.
High-Performance Teams: Characteristics and Examples
What, according to you, are high-performance teams? What are their unique characteristics? Can you give examples of companies that have created and nurtured high-performance teams?
A high-performance team operates like a miniature managing board of directors. Members behave as though the team’s salary were coming from their own pocket.
Unique characteristics of high-performance teams:
They resolve issues quickly, openly, and effectively.
Each member accepts responsibility for the overall team performance.
Members hold each other and the leader accountable.
Examples of companies with high-performance teams:
Mars Incorporated: Developed great teams globally under Paul Michaels’ leadership.
Colgate-Palmolive, John Hancock, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oréal USA, Novartis, PepsiCo, Schering-Plough: Successfully implemented high-performance team models.
Sustaining High-Performance Teams
How important is it to sustain high-performance teams? How do you think these teams have to be kept focused? What should companies do to maintain their tempo and temperaments during tough times?
High-performance teams provide a company’s best chance of weathering tough times better than competitors. They:
Stay aligned with clear goals and roles.
Remain free of internal conflict, maintaining a distinct competitive advantage.
To sustain focus:
Leaders must role-model high-performance behaviors, including candor and transparency.
Employees would rather hear the truth than have leaders sugarcoat reality.
The Role of Business Schools
What is the role of business schools in equipping students with the necessary skills and attitudes to be part of either virtual teams or high-performance teams?
Business schools must:
Stop perpetuating the myth of the “Superman” senior executive.
Focus on developing teamwork skills rather than individual achievements.
Equip students with the mindset and skill set to thrive as team members in high-performance environments.
Insights from When Goliaths Clash
A word about your other book, When Goliaths Clash: Managing Executive Conflict to Build a More Dynamic Organization.
The book examines a critical attribute of high-performing teams: the ability to manage conflict. It delves into:
Sources of conflict.
Skills to defuse conflict effectively.
Real-life examples of teams that turned conflict into a positive force for business success.