Team Performance Improvement
It’s not the team members! It’s the system!
What’s the secret to successful teams? What can a leader do to encourage success? And what should they not do to so that they are not encouraging failure? What’s the role of the leader vs. the organization (system).
All of my teams have been successful, even in organizations where success was challenging. Why was that? In my entire career I’ve been helping teams be successful. Some were extremely challenging: Y2K and post-9/11. The future of the organization was in play. For those who doubt it, we did have some issues but were ready to respond. Not having done the work, though, would have significantly impacted the organization.
Others required new approaches: the Intel Inside® Program system need for a new no-waterfall approach and technology, and a program at Symantec when we could not use agile approaches. Some required a complete transformation of my organization, from ad-hoc, home-grown software development to structured agile-based, cloud-centered. What did I do to make them successful? I may have some of the secrets.
I already coach and consult on project/program planning and execution (e.g., luxury EV company, railroad company, defense contractor, medical institute. Others that have attended my Commitment-Based Project Management training). I’ve also been a leadership coach for more than 15 years. I’ve helped organizations develop and align mission and vision. I consult and coach on OKRs. Let’s share some of the insights here. If you want to know more, let me know.
So, back to what made my teams successful and what impacts other teams negatively. While the team members are key in the success or failure of the effort, they are not the problem or the solution. In my experience, with very, very few exceptions, the team members do the best work they can. So what gets in their way? It is the system, which leaders are responsible for establishing and improving.
There are two ways to go about this: figure out what makes team struggle or figure out what empowers and makes teams successful. These are two sides of the same coin so I’ll focus on what makes a team struggle.
While I could come up with my own list of what made teams struggle, I figured I would ask the newfangled AI tools for their assistance.
I asked Gemini (nee Bard) what it thought about it. It gave me the following list:
- Lack of clarity
- Poor leadership
- Dysfunctional teams
- Unrealistic deadlines or resource constraints (this one is two things!)
- External factors
All of these, including the dysfunctional team one, are system-created.
ChatGPT gave me a longer but similar story:
- Poor planning and execution (leadership)
- Communication issues (leadership and clarity)
- Scope creep (unrealistic deadlines)
- Insufficient risk management (poor leadership)
- Team dynamics and morale (dysfunctional teams)
- Inadequate leadership (obviously leadership)
- Resource constraints (deadlines and resources)
- Dependency issues (while it could be in clarity and leadership, I’ll talk about it here as in my experience it is a major cause of struggle for large complicated, complex programs)
- Process inefficiencies (leadership)
A very similar list. Also system created. Let’s analyze Gemini’s list:
Lack of clarity: this has always been one of my favorite challenges. If it is something that the system allows, then the clarity will not exist.
When starting a project or program, you get an amorphous description of what is wanted. Unless you and the team resolve this lack of clarity, confusion will reign. You and the team must clarify enough of the goal to get started. Note that I am an agile follower (I’ve been doing it since the mid-1990s, before the Agile Manifesto, when I led the Intel Inside® Program system development). As an agile follower, I believe in knowing enough to get started. The details can be refined as you go. But you still need to know enough to get started. And ideally have a good enough picture of the end result.
As a team, you need to draft a goal and plan to get the team rolling. Developing a vision of the goal would be an article on its own, at least. Suffice it to say that it starts with the leader getting as clear a picture as you can from your stakeholders, drafting an approach, reviewing it with stakeholders, and repeat as needed. Move Fast & Fix Things has a great description of this approach.
A related challenge: requests by stakeholders to have everything in the product. By this I mean the tendency not to prioritize but instead demand that everything is required. At the same time. This is one of those battles that you can try and attack directly (“yes, but some things must be more important than others. Can we defer some?” “No! We need everything and we need it in X months!” (pick an unrealistic number of months, such as 3 which I’ve been given.)) It is probably better to not fight it but instead try and get a sense of what’s most important and start delivering to it.
When I led the Intel Inside Program system development, my manager and customer (same person) insisted they needed everything in three months. After arguing yielding no results, I said “yes, but it won’t happen” and worked with my peers to achieve a workable plan. As you deliver, which we did, you build credibility and the stakeholders are more willing to accept the fact that not everything on their wish list is required or is as important. Success brings forgiveness!
Once you have a vision of what the output would be, you need to plan for it. Again, be agile. If the project/program involves multiple teams and inter-team dependencies, I like to use the Map Day approach of Commitment-Based Project Management (CBPM) described in Timm Esque’s No Surprises Project Management. I’ll revisit this approach when I discuss dependency issues below.
If you are interested, my training materials on the planning, as well as execution, are available at my website. I have written articles on this approach, with a couple of them being “Planning a Complex Project” and “Simplifying the Planning of a Complex Program/Project”.
This approach makes it very clear as to who is doing what for whom by when, which is essential for team members to know what they need to deliver on.
There are a number of books out there on holding people accountable. A recent one, a good one, is Who Does What By How Much? by Jeff Gothelp and Josh Seiden. This book focuses on OKRs (MBOs in Intel-lingo). Excellent.
Again, if the system (organization’s culture) allows for lack of clarity, it will happen. It is your role as the leader to work on it. If the system doesn’t allow it, then it will be obvious that it is part of your job, you’ll be supported, and this will not be an issue.
Poor Leadership: Good leadership would overcome all of the challenges listed above as well as others. Poor leadership though, would make things worse. How can a leader improve their leadership?
While there are a number of models and approaches, I am partial to the Six Domains of Leadership™, a comprehensive, research-based model that has been in use for over 15 years and has demonstrated its success with thousands of executives and managers in the US and internationally. I’ve been coaching using this model since 2008 and happy to talk about it. I have also written articles on it and related topics such as planning. See https://josesolera.medium.com/ for a full list of my articles. An example is “Leadership Effects — How to Achieve the Results You Want”.
Leadership has been getting a lot of play over the last few years. Still, many organizations don’t require good leadership. They may not even know what good leadership is or how to ensure they have it. As a leader, it is your job to work on your own leadership development, your team members’, and encourage the rest of the organization to develop leadership skills.
Dysfunctional Team: while individual personalities can play a role in a dysfunctional team, it is my premise that the organization and its culture are creating the dysfunctionality. Unhealthy competition. No clear goals. No accountability. Poor leadership. Punitive “leadership”. Any of these and many more will cause a dysfunctional team to exist. It is the leader’s role to eliminate these situations.
A good resource is Building Trust: In Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life by Robert Solomon and Fernando Flores.
If you are not familiar with Tuckman’s stages of group development, you should read on it. The Wikipedia article in the link provides a good summary and my “Helping a ‘Storming’ Team” article connects it to the Six Domains of Leadership.
And if you want to improve the overall team, consider team coaching. Consider the work of Peter Hawkins (e.g., The Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership). While this book is focused on the most-senior leadership team in an organization, there are excellent insights and informative guides for all teams.
Poor leadership is something that organizations should not allow. Good leadership is what should be expected. While progress is being made, and many organizations are working on it, it is still very common to lack good leadership.
Unrealistic deadlines or resource constraints: these two issues are classic in project management. Stakeholders want everything now (see Lack of Clarity above). And, in some cases as describe by Timm Esque in No Surprises Project Management, if a team struggles the solution management picks many times is to reduce the time provided! Mr. Esque addresses in his book how the team resolved this challenge: they accepted the management deadlines but only committed to their own internally-developed deadlines. This is the secret: get the team to develop their own timelines. They will move heaven and earth to meet their self-defined goals and you can help them. Acknowledge the management’s desire date; indicate they are probably not doable; articulate the team’s commitment and indicate the team will work to improve on their own commitments.
Resource constraints is related in that if resources are missing, and if there’s no way to work around the problem, the project will struggle. It’s the leader’s role to make this situation and its consequences clear to management. They may still not provide the resources and the leader must continue to figure out if there’s a creative way to accomplish the goal, but they will have notified management of the risk.
Unrealistic deadlines and resource constraints are allowed or prevented by the system. Leaders must work to identify when these are challenges and work to resolve them, as well as work on the system so that they are not acceptable.
External factors: this is one that could be the most difficult situation for the leader to address and resolve. Some of them could be anticipated by the leader and team, capturing them in a risk log and putting steps in place to prevent them, if possible, or minimize the impact and recover if they happen. There may be some unexpected situations, though, that could not be anticipated. The leader must identify them as they happen, respond as best as possible, and notify the management of the impact and consequences.
ClearPoint Strategy and other sources have models that can be helpful in identify and responding to risks. For post-9/11, I realized that while the causes of a situation impacting the organization could be many, if the impact is the same, then the best thing to do is focus on the impact, how to prevent it, and, if it happens, how to ameliorate it and return to the prior status quo. We identified key things, such as losing a building, then the likelihood of it happening and the impact it would have. Those severe enough that were most likely then would get our attention and a plan developed to respond. Since this was before broad internet access, we developed an alternative work space. As it was, a water main burst in one of our buildings, destroying a floor of offices and equipment. We had to activate the plan. Not a cause we even thought about it but, as the impact was the same, we had the capability to respond.
As a leader, spend time identifying negative impacts to your effort/group, determine response plans, and have them ready to respond. If you don’t, you’ll be surprised, have to scramble, and your team will struggle.
The five factors above are the ones Gemini came up with. As I mentioned, I wanted to address dependency issues (ChatGPT) a bit more.
Dependency issues: as articulated above in the Lack of clarity section, dependency issues can create major problems. Team members do not know who is dependent on them, when whatever is dependent on them is needed, and why it is important. And, in many cases when the item is delivered, it does not meet the requirements of the recipient.
Map Days (CBPM) makes these situations clear. During the planning process an owner and one or more users are identified. The need to discuss what constitutes the item is highlighted. Commit and need by dates are generated. The dates are compared. Is the need by date later than the commit date? Then OK. Is it earlier? Time to talk to figure out how to solve the problem.
The execution process of CBPM identifies items that are coming due so that status discussions can be undertaken if needed. See my articles, Timm Esque’s No Surprises Project Management book, as well as my training materials for more details. If you have a situation that needs this type of work, contact me.
In Summary
This is a pretty good list from Gemini and ChatGPT. As I think of other possibilities, I can slot them into one of these. For example, part-time team members that get pulled away: resource constraints. M&A that impacts the team: external factors.
As the team leader, keep these reasons why a team may struggle in mind. Work on them and in particular on your leadership.
Contact
Contact me at jose@coachsolera.com to find out how to improve your leadership.
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Visit my team performance coaching website: https://coachsolera.com
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