Teams, Collaboration and High Performing Teams | YouTeamFast

The YouTeamFast Series

2010-08-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

01. An Overview of YouTeamFast	02. Team Capability Identification & Assessment	03. Agree your Team's Ground Rules
04. Team Culture and Behaviors	05. Explore the "Karma" of your Team	06. Effective personal collaboration strategies
07. How to run great team meetings	08. Team decision-making techniques	09. Quickly find the synergies in a team
10. The seven beliefs of high performing teams	11. Creating a collaborative profile of your Team	12. Collaborative Document Development
13. Autonomous Team Member Behaviors	14. Team Social Network Analysis	15. How to detect an “Inverted Team”
16. Organizational Team Turbocharger Tool	17. Virtual team satisfaction assessment	18. Team “communication distance”
19. Is collaboration working: the 3 greens test	20. Team culture: the 3-colour technique	21. Spot Team “responsibility” issues

Team Member Feelings about change: the 10 second test

2010-07-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

Instantly discover a persons main worry about an upcoming change by how they speak just five words: “We cant do that here”.

I found this in a book a long time ago – “The Secret Language of Success: Using Body Language to Get What You Want” by Dr. David Lewis (1989).

I confess I never got round to testing it properly but it sounded intriguing so I pass it on - "buyer beware".

Imagine you are the leader of a new team or network.

How can you quickly find out what each team member's number one concern is about working in this scenario?

Dr Lewis recommends you get each of them to repeat the following 5 words out loud without thinking about it too much:

"We can’t do that here”
Listen carefully to which of the five words they stress – if its:

We – they are worried about their Identity
Can’t – they are worried about their beliefs and values
Do – they are worried about their skills
That – they are worried about their behavior
Here – they are worried about the environment

It might be nonsense, they might laugh at you or you might just learn something important about one of your fellow team members!

21. Spot Team member “responsibility” problems

2010-07-17T09:24:00.001-07:00

One of the main dilemmas for team leaders and members is the thorny issue of responsibility. We often fixate on the problem of leaders and members not taking enough responsibility but according to Dr Scott Peck they can also do damage if they try to take too much!

This really is a dilemma in the true sense of the word as it requires a very tricky balancing act.

The responsibility dilemma is beautifully described in Scott Peck's classic book The Road Less Travelled where Dr Peck describes two unhealthly extremes of the responsibility spectrum which he describes in clinical terms as "character disorders" and "neurotics".

I have tried to capture the essence of this difficult balancing act in the cartoon below:

Character disorders

This is the most common responsibility disorder and is defined as taking too little responsibility.

The mindset is "I have no power of choice" and everything is somebody else's problem or fault.

I am sure we all have been in teams where members have adopted this outlook.

Team members operating like this focus much more on compliance than commitment and may follow the process unthinkingly, even if it is not producing the required outcome, as a defensive measure against blame.

So be careful about 'over elaborating' team member responsibilities if you are worried about this kind of mindset - you can make it too easy to comply without committing.

Neurotics

Less common but equally damaging is taking too much responsibility.

The mindset here is "I am always falling short" and everything is my fault.

This is not only damaging to the individual but it also can nudge fellow team members towards thecharacter disorder position on responsibility.

We do them no favours whatsoever when we take others' responsibilities and problems - we remove their opportunities for personal growth and learning.

One of the main dilemmas for team leaders and members is the thorny issue of responsibility. We often fixate on the problem of leaders and members not taking enough responsibility but according toDr Scott Peck they can also do damage if they try to take too much!

20. Team culture: the 3-colour technique

2010-07-17T09:21:00.000-07:00

The cultures of organisations and teams can be colour coded according to Jerry Connor and Lee Sears authors of “Why Work is Weird”.

Red is achievement oriented, Yellow is people focused and Blue values Professional Expertise.

Most teams have a dominant colour but with shades of the other two. This approach can be very helpful as the first stage in harnessing culture in a positive way is always to recognise it.

Red teams value "getting on with it" and achieving the task

Attributes that are successful in red cultures include drive, focus, directness and practicality. In this kind of culture, activity and achievement are highly valued.

Yellow (humanist) teams tend to be people focused

They value consensus and involvement. Decisions tend to be taken through discussion and it is seen as important that each individual can air their views. In this kind of culture, upsetting or alienating people will be strongly discouraged.

Blue (professional) cultures value professional expertise

They promote and reward the best trained and most skilled expert, and tend to devalue attributes not directly linked to the profession itself (for example in a hospital medical excellence may be valued but not management skills).

19. An holistic test of collaboration: the 3 greens check

2010-07-17T09:20:00.001-07:00

Much has been written about why people collaborate and the pay-offs. Key concepts include Tit for Tat and The Prisoners Dilemma discussed in Dysfunctional teams: bioteam them. In this article I introduce three critical tests which I call the '3 greens check' by which any collaboration should be continuously judged by all its participants: Test1: Is it working for us? Test2: Is it working for me? Test3: Does it feel fair?

Does your collaboration pass the 'three greens' check

Every time an airline pilot selects the undercarriage to 'down' they hold their breath to see three green lights which tell them it is safe to land.

Then as they continue their final approach the runway threshold will be indicated by green lightswith the end of the runway illuminated by red lights.

Imagine 3 parties A, B and C who individually can achieve a, b and c respectively:

Collective Success = 1-green

If by collaborating together they achieve d where d > a+b+c then overall it is a successful collaboration.

I call this a 1-green collaboration.

However we know that there are examples of good overall collaborations (1-green) which still fail miserably because one or more of the parties were not happy.

Individual Success = 2-greens

Therefore we also need to consider the collaboration outcome from the perspective of each of the 3 parties.

So if A achieves a+ where a+ > a then it is good from their perspective

If they only achieve a or a- then it is not good from their perspective.

In fact this is the risk of collaboration in a nutshell - you already have 'a' - by collaborating you hope to achieve 'a+' but the risk is you may end up with 'a-'.

So a good collaboration achieves d (>a+b+c) AND all of the parties achieve a+ individually.

I call this a 2-greens collaboration.

Strictly speaking not all parties have to achieve a+ - however the ones that do not are likely to leave or become passive freeriders.

This can destroy the overall collaboration by eliminating key resources.

Perception of Fairness = 3-greens

However even these 2-green collaborations can fail if there is a perception that one party has done a lot better than another.

So if A perceives that B has achieved b++ which is much greater than their a+ then it will cause resentment.

Yes my pie may be bigger by collaborating - but yours is enormous so I am not happy.

I am prepared to lose my benefits rather than see you taking more than your fair share.

So where all the parties also perceive fairness I call this a 3-greens collaboration.

This is discussed further in Why do humans cooperate which describes how, in human society, without perceived fairness cooperation breaks down.

There is also some interesting research on animal behaviour which shows that perception of fairnessis a universal concept which is shared across many species and not just humankind. See, for example, The economics of cooperative behavior - HOW LIVING CREATURES DO BUSINESS

To sum up

There are 3 questions everyone should ask and answer for themselves at the end of each collaborative meeting - did it work for us all, did it work for me and does it feel fair?

A good 3-greens collaboration needs to produce three things:

A collective outcome which is greater than the individual player outcomes combined - 1-green
A better individual outcome for the majority of the players and a worse outcome for none of them - 2-greens
A perception in the participants that the individual player’s outcomes are all in proportion and fair - 3-greens

For a very rigorous and thorough treatment of the complexity of collaboration involving multiple parties read The Complexity of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod

18. Identify team communication problems via “communication distance”

2010-07-17T09:19:00.002-07:00

Gerold Keefer, in a paper "Project Success Prediction Based on Communication Reliability Analysis" suggests that the effectiveness of a teams communication can be assessed in 2 dimensions: Reliability and Distance.

Communication Reliability is well understood.

However the concept of Communication Distance is novel and could be very useful for virtual teams.

Distance attempts to measure how much is getting in the way of our team communications due to various factors.

The greater this ‘distance’ the more chance of miscommunications.

Gerold suggests 5 factors which contribute to Communications distance in software engineering teams :

Geography
Clarity of Focus
Team Cohesion
Team Experience
Process Capability

The concept of communications distance could be applied to any kind of team and the factors which contribute to it defined accordingly.

17. Virtual team satisfaction assessment

2010-07-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

The Virtual Team Opportunity Iceberg is a very simple tool for letting you and your fellow team members instantly spot the potential for improvement in your teams. It's not intended to be precise - a show of hands will do - but it can be a great team ice-breaker!

Download spreadsheet

Just answer these 3 simple questions individually and then aggregate the results for your team.

Q1. EFFECTIVENESS: Do our work teams mostly fulfil their potential?

Q2. SATISFACTION: Do we get as much satisfaction from our work teams as our social groups and voluntary teams?

Q3. TECHNOLOGY: Do virtual technologies noticeably improve our work teams performance?

(Typical responses are Q1: 5-10%, Q2: 15-20%, Q3: 30-40%)

16. Organizational Team Turbocharger Tool

2010-07-17T09:18:00.001-07:00

Here is a brilliantly simple technique, which I call The 4 Team Stressors, for waking a team up to some serious problems which, in the pressures of work, it has somehow managed to totally ignore and which might just sink it!

Step 1 - Quickly describe your project according to the 4 dimensions

In as few words as possible define the project in terms of

The Timeline (Stressor 1)
The Team (Stressor 2)
The Main Deliverable (Stressor 3)
The Importance of the Deliverable to the Enterprise(Stressor 4)

If you cannot do this quickly its a sure sign that something is wrong - you would not have much confidence in a sports team where the players in the locker room could not agree on the goal before a big match.

Step 2 – Now stress the team in each of the 4 dimensions

This is best done as a team exercise with the selected action decided by a vote but it can also be used privately by the team leader(s) as an on-going sanity check

Stressor 1 – Time
What would you do if your delivery deadline was brought forward significantly – e.g. 6 months becomes 3 months? Restrict it to one proposed action only.

Stressor 2 – Resources
What would you do if in your resources were significantly cut – assume each team member is now only available half of the time they were before? Restrict it to one proposed action only.

Stressor 3 – Scope
What would you do if you had to deliver twice as much as originally planned? Restrict it to one proposed action only.

Stressor 4 – Consequences
Finally what would you do if failure to meet the new deadline, with the new resources and new scope was absolutely business critical. For example, the organisation closes and the team members all lose their jobs? Restrict it to one proposed action only.

Step 3 – Finally decide which Stressor Actions to implement NOW

Now review the 4 proposed actions and for each one ask the question

“Is there a compelling reason why we should not do this NOW for the current team situation?”

In my experience applying the 4 stressors will result in actions such as:

Stressor 1 – Meet with the team’s customer to understand what is most important to them and negotiate the rest out of scope
Stressor 2 – Have a short daily structured team meeting by phone – totally focussed
Stressor 3 – Have a no BS conversation with every team member to ensure they are clear and committed to what needs done and that all barriers to success they identify are removed
Stressor 4 – Secure additional help outside the immediate project team – don’t take no for an answer

Usually these actions should be implemented anyway – "The 4 Team Stressors" only serve to bring into sharp focus what the team already knew!

15. How to detect an “Inverted Team”

2010-07-17T09:17:00.001-07:00

Isaac Asimov, forecasted the coming age of Robots and developed the famous Three Laws of Robotics. Asimov’s laws can be easily adapted to teams to determine if your team is Performing orInverted (a team where the individual, team and other member priorities have got muddled).

But can these laws also be applied to teams?

I believe the answer is yes - these three laws not only apply but can be used to do an instant health check on a team by asking just three questions

The three laws of robotics

The First Law
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

The Second Law
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders conflict with the First Law

The Third Law
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or the Second Law

The Three Laws of Teams?

We need to remember some of the teams in work or sport or other areas which we have been part of and ask ourselves three questions concerning:

Team Goals
Own Goals
Other Team Member Goals

Q1: How did the members of best team we were in operate its priorities?
i.e. What were Rule 1, Rule 2 and Rule 3

Q2: How did the members of other teams you were in operate its priorities?
i.e. What were Rule 1, Rule 2 and Rule 3

Q3: What was the main difference between these two teams?

If you do this you might conclude that the best performing teams follow these three laws:

The First Law

The teams overall goal comes first

The Second Law

The other members goals comes next but not at the expense of the First Law

The Third Law

Individual team member goals come next but not at the expense of the First Law or the Second Law

I would expect little debate around the First Law.

The Second and Third Laws are not so easy to separate - it does seem somewhat idealistic to expect individuals to put their needs below the other team members.

The closest I have seen to this kind of team member altruism is where the individual needs and the other member needs are treated equally.

This may be as far is it goes or perhaps all this means is that I have not yet met any really ultra-high performing teams?

Two very different teams

So when you do your instant team check I predict you will end up with 1 of 2 results

A Performing Team where the pyramid is the right way up and team goals come first.

or

An Inverted Team where the pyramid is upside down and individual member ambitions have somehow overtaken the team goal.

14. Team Social Network Analysis

2010-07-17T09:15:00.001-07:00

Good teams have a network of weak and strong ties

Most teams are highly dependent on external relationships but do not have a way to identify and nurture these relationships so that they are there when they are needed. You can't do this 'just-in-time'.

Also most collaborative product is produced by sub-groups within the team and reviewed by wider groups. If these sub-groups are not right or missing key players or involve some poor relationships then this will damage the team’s productivity and quality.

This technique uses best practices in social network mapping to identify the relationships, both strong and weak, the team needs for success and the actions it needs to take to nurture these relationships.

These team network actions are for the whole team and not just the leaders as they need to build on existing team relationships where they exist

Effective teams have good internal and external networks

Social Network Analysis research (1) identifies two basic types of relationship - Weak and Strong Ties .

Organisational teams tend to be biased to one form of tie or the other - teams seldom manage both well naturally. Strong ties are very good for getting work done, usually in small tightly bound groups, but such teams not generally known for their skills at listening to and responding to signals from and changes in their external or customer environments. Weak ties (hubs or connectors) are very good for listening but not great for getting things actually done

The importance of strong ties in teams

It can often be a mistake is to try and create work in groups which are too large in the hope that this will ensure everybody is heard and bought-in. Large groups can originate work but only if it is very carefully managed to ensure that the collaboration is not dominated by only a few.

Some electronic meeting tools such as Zing can be very effective here if used properly. However this is the exception rather than the rule and the trick is to create the core collaborative product using the smallest effective group but to leave enough headroom and flexibility in it for the wider group to fully contribute and collaborate in its review and extension.

The importance of weak ties in teams

Looser relationships exist between the different smaller groups within a team which connects them to each other and connects the team to its outside partners. Typically these connections are between the hub members of each small group. A team without such a structure of weak ties is vulnerable to duplication of effort and poor co-ordination. Such a team may be the 'last to know' of important changes in its environment.

An example of this is the great 'heads-down' technical team who produce an excellent report which is not actually used because is no longer needed (but nobody told them).Or it was delivered to such a high specification that it arrived just too late to be useful.

A Process for social network analysis

The process a team can follow for social network analysis can be as follows:

STEP 1 The team needs to map out their collective network and identify gaps

This involves asking the following questions:

1. Who are the communities the team will impact?

2. What is the nature of the impact ?

a) community is a customer for team (positive or negative?)

b) community is a resource for the team NB - communities can be in both categories

3. What kinds of players does the team need in each community?

a) Intelligence Providers

b) Resource Providers

c) Authority Providers

4. What names can the team propose for these players?

5. What kind of relationships is in place between team members and these players?

a) None

b) weak (weak tie)

c) strong (strong tie)

d) positive, negative or neutral

6. How do these relationships now need to be managed by the team and which member?

STEP 2. Next the team needs to create and nurture this network

The ideal network for the team will support two objectives - getting the job done right (strong ties) and getting the right job done (weak ties.)

The team must address both its external and internal network .

There are two priorities internally – ensuring need effective sub-groups (strong ties) and ensuring the team has the right internal hubs (weak ties)

When the social network analysis is done it often reveals that only one person in a team holds many vital relationships. What happens if they get sick or overloaded - where is the fault tolerance? Also sometimes these people are not the best ones to be holding these relationships! Hubs are also vital for ensuring the team gets 'team intelligence' early enough to use it.

Customer Hubs are very important but many teams neglect other equally critical hubs such as:

1. Technical Hubs (who can get the IT department to do you favours)

2. Social Hubs (who know the team’s temperature)

3. Organisational Hubs (who are very well connected to the company grapevine at a high level)

References

1. Granovetter, M., 1973 "The strength of weak ties", American Journal of Sociology, Issue 6, pp. 1360-1380

13. Autonomous Responsible Team Member Behavior

2010-07-17T09:14:00.001-07:00

Creating controlled self-management in teams
Almost all team leaders want their teams to take more ownership and initiative.
However team leaders may shy away from “self-managed” teams because of a perception that this would be an abdication of their leadership or the fear of it leading to anarchy and chaos.
This technique identifies 7-generic behaviours of “responsible autonomous team members” which can be discussed and refined to suit the specific team, members, environment and objectives.

Natures Way

Craig Reynolds [1] a computer graphics researcher studied how bird flocks fly in formation to see whether there were simple rules, which could be simulated in computer software.

As a group activity ‘flocking’ is extremely complex however it turns out that the underlying member behaviours which produce it are very simple.

This must be the case if you think about it otherwise the individual birds, with their 'bird brains', would not be able to follow the rules to the necessary consistency whilst performing high speed flight manoeuvres in close formation.

'Boids'

Reynolds came up with a virtual programmable bird called a "birdoid" which quickly and appropriately got shortened to "boid".

These computerised boids could be made to fly successfully in complex formation in 3-dimensional space provided the individual birds were programmed to consistently follow just 3 very simple rules:

1. Separation: steer to avoid crowding other local flock-mates

2. Alignment: steer towards the average heading of the local flock-mates

3. Cohesion: steer to move toward the average position of local flock-mates.

Similar research [2] has also established that the complex behaviour of nature’s other groups such as ants, turtles, geese and termites can also be explained in the same way through sets of very simple individual member rules.

So in nature very simple individual member actions, so simple they can be easily followed without error, produce very sophisticated group behaviour (without the members even being aware of the complex capabilities they are enabling).

Benefits of Rule to Nature

Nature’s bioteam members don’t have big brains or long memories. However their survival and positioning in the food chain depends on their ability to produce more sophisticated and more intelligent responses as a collective than they could manage as individuals.

Their simple rule-based approach allows them to react exceptionally quickly to situations because the skills they need at an individual level are totally present and ready without any thinking or preparation being required.

In human terms they are able to exhibit what educators would describe as “unconscious competence” - the basis of true expert behaviour - you don’t think about what you do - you just do it.

Application of Rule to Organisational Teams

Today’s common wisdom on creating high-performance teams is that you need to create a team environment where the individual members can fully exercise their creativity and innovation.

This is very true but I believe that nature’s team show us that it is only half of the story of high performing teams.

When we use the normal approach to high performing teams we are actually jumping to the higher team capability level of “complex individual behaviour” but skipping out the lower team capability level of “simple but highly consistent individual behaviour”.

In so doing we sacrifice a number of important benefits by not putting this foundation platform in place first because natures examples prove that :

“coordinated individual simple behaviour can produce more intelligent collective responses than un-coordinated individual complex behaviour”

Now obviously human teams are not going to gain much benefit from the kind of rules which ants or geese use.

Human team members have the gift of human intelligence so we need to construct rules which are more abstract and allow space for team members to apply their own judgements.

O-R-G-A-N-I-C team member behaviours

I would suggest the following seven behaviour rules as a discussion starter for beginning to develop consistent autonomous member behaviour in your teams:

Outgoing - get to know all your team colleagues
Recruit - look out for new external partners to strengthen the team’s network
Go! - network widely outside the team
Ask - constantly ask for and offer help to other team members
Note - keep aware/abreast of issues of ‘team intelligence’
Investigate - when you see something interesting investigate it for the team
Collaborate - join at least one team workgroup as an active member - don’t just be a "reviewer"

3-Dimensional Team Members

These seven behaviors are designed to ensure that team members are '3-dimensional' in their operation, just like natures teams, with the ability to concurrently listen, communicate and act in the following 3 dimensions:

1. Member-Member

2. Member-External (i.e. Customers, Partners and Competitors)

3. Member-Colony (i.e. Host Organisations and Teams)

Benefits of Rule to Organisational Teams

Nurturing consistent autonomous team member behaviour provides distributed intelligence in our teams which will result in

reduced coordination overheads
better fault tolerance - ability to continue even when a particular part of the team is out of order
increased speed of spotting problems and opportunities

References

1. Reynolds, C., 1987. "Flocks, Herds and Schools - a distributed behaviour model", Computer Graphics, pp. 25-34

2. Resnick, M., 1997. "Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams - Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds", MIT Press, pp. 49-68

12. Best Practices in Collaborative Document Development

2010-07-17T09:13:00.002-07:00

Text is often the main output of many teams however effective collaborative authoring requires an understanding of:

The stages in collaborative document development
The different collaborative authoring styles
Effective approaches for document review
Which “channels”, technologies, tools and techniques are appropriate for which activities
How to recognise and avoid some of the potential difficulties including “Information Overload”
How to plan a collaborative document production

Detailed Technique Description

11: Profiling a Team

2010-07-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

How to avoid nasty surprises in supporting virtual teams

From my experience of working with teams, often due to business deadline pressures, we do not spend enough time at the start taking a quick look at the overall shape of the team. This means we often start trying to apply our toolkit of team effectiveness techniques and supporting virtual technology before we fully understand the precise nature of the complex, living and multi-faceted entity we are dealing with.

This generally results in nasty surprises which occur too late to do much about them. For example in a previous article I discussed three broad types of teams – “Recommending”, “Managing” and “Doing” Teams and the very different problems they each have.

Recommender Teams are often part-time; great for reviewing work but can lack a “team engine”for getting detailed work done.

Managing Teams are often staffed with senior executives who have serious time management challenges and are unlikely to engage with traditional team communication and meeting approaches.

Doer teams are great for doing things but their networks may be limited to their own functional areas which can blind them to some innovation and cross-functional opportunities.

An organisational team profiler

We can see that even asking and discussing this one question in itself can yield hugely valuable insight into a particular team's most likely challenges.
So I offer here my team profiling checklist which can be used to rapidly profile an organisational team or multi-enterprise network across eight different dimensions. It can be worked through with a senior member of a forming team in as little as 15 minutes.
I don’t pretend it is exhaustive but I do guarantee that if you use it properly it will identify at least 3 things about the team which you did not know about or were making invalid assumptions around and which will impact on your virtual team support plan!
First explore the eight areas:
Nature of Team Objective

Team Leadership/Management Style

Team Member Profile

Team Shape

Team Environment

Team Working Approach

Team Social Dynamic

Team Technology Factor

Then ask four questions:
What are the constraints/givens in the team?

What are the top problems/challenges for the team?

What are the Technology Implications?

What are the Change Management Implications?

=========================================
The Full Checklist

Note:

All answers can be ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘both’
Feel free to add more questions
I also include a mind-map version of the profiler which can be annotated as you work through with a team

1. Nature of Team Objective

Contingent (on others) versus Within Own Control?

Single or multiple Product Deliveries?

Must Have (people get sacked) or Nice to Have (people shrug shoulders and move on to something else)?

Scope already clearly defined or not?

Deadline already fixed or not, and if its fixed is it moveable? 'Recommending', 'Managing' or 'Doing' Team?

2. Team Leadership/Management Style

Dominant Style - Command and Control versus Self-Managed?

Formal or informal Project Style (meeting minutes, reports etc)?

Team consists mostly of Employees, Volunteers or Consultants/Suppliers?

3. Team Member Profile

Degree of co-location? Mobility (what % of the working day are they at their desks/PCs)?

Single Organisation or Few Organisations or Many Organisations?

Single Profession or multi-disciplinary?

How many Languages/Business Cultures?

4.Team Shape

Full or Part-Time Project Manager?

How many Full-Time Members ?

How many Part-Time Members?

Reviewer/Expert Participation Level?

External Party Participation Level?

5. Team Environment

Prior existence of rules, standards and processes?

Degree of external dependency/approvals required for the team to act?

6. Team Working Approach

Partitioned or Co-operative Development?

What form do the Primary Team Meetings take?

What is the Primary Team Communication mechanism (e.g. phone or email)?

7. Team Social Dynamic

Degree to which team already know each other?

Willingness of team members to invest in team relationship development?

8. Team Technology Factor

Sophistication of shared technology environment?

Technology Capabilities of Team Members?

10. The seven beliefs of high performing teams

2010-07-17T05:56:00.000-07:00

Beliefs are what makes the difference between good and "high performance"

In this article I suggest the seven hidden beliefs of high performing teams are :

Clear and Public Accountability

Trusted Competency

Give and Take

Total Transparency

Shared Glory

Meaningful Mission Value

Outcome Optimism

Free will and beliefs in human teams

How we will act is influenced by the beliefs we hold regarding the situation we find ourselves in when we receive the stimulus [1]. For example, if I do not feel I am being adequately supported or appreciated by the rest of the team I may avoid action where there is a perceived risk of my failure. Alternatively if I felt strongly supported I might take higher risk actions.

Learned Optimism – the impact of team beliefs on performance

There is actually very little written about the impact of team member beliefs on overall team performance. The only research which partly addresses this issue is the unique work on “Learned Optimism” by Professor Martin Seligman [2]. Dr Seligman is a clinical psychologist who for the last twenty years has studied the areas of learned optimism and learned helplessness to help individuals deal with depression and pessimism in their lives.

As a sub-topic within his research Dr Seligman has explored how optimism and pessimism in team members impacts on the overall team performance. His theory is that optimism is better in individuals and teams because when an optimist encounters a setback they will tend to perseverewhereas a pessimist will tend to give up. In the team context he believes that if you have two teams of broadly equal abilities but one team is optimistic and the other team is pessimistic then the optimistic team will recover better from setbacks.

Dr Seligman goes on to prove this in sport using American baseball and basketball teams. For whole seasons he would track two comparable teams and record and rank their optimism/pessimism by the statements they made in the press after defeats. Optimists tend to explain defeats as‘temporary’, ‘specific’ and ‘external’ whereas pessimists explain things as ‘permanent’, ‘universal’ and ‘internal’. Thus to an optimist a set-back is a temporary thing, in a very narrow area which can be fixed or avoided next time. A pessimist however sees a set-back as a permanent thing, wide in scope which reflects a fundamental weakness or situation which is very difficult to do anything about.

Beliefs of High Performing Teams

I found a useful article, How To Inspire Your Team, by Charlie Feld in CIO Magazine which suggests that leaders of high-performing teams need to operate from the following four beliefs to get the best out of their staff - Trust, Hope, Enjoyment and Opportunity. However I have found no other research in the public domain which directly looks at the beliefs of the team members of high-performing teams. There is however excellent material on the detailed characteristics and behaviours of high-performing teams – two of the most useful are Hot Groups [3] and Organizing Genius [4].

Uncovering the "hidden beliefs" of high performing teams

From my own experience of teams and by analysing the material mentioned above I have been able to identify a set of about seven hidden beliefs which seem to repeatedly underpin high performing teams (HPT):

1. Clear and Public Accountability

HPT team members believe that every member of the team has a clear and public accountability. Every team member knows what they are being counted on for by the others and what they can count on the others for.

2. Trusted Competency

HPT team members believe that the rest of the team trusts them to know how to do their job properly without being supervised. In a multidisciplinary team this translates into “I know what you have to do and am confident you can do it - how you do it is your business”

3. Give and Take

HPT team members believe that if they need help they can ask for it and it will be freely offered. They believe that asking for help, in moderation, actually increases their standing within the team rather than diminishing it. They also believe something is badly wrong if somebody is struggling along and not asking for help or is asking for help but being ignored by the team.

4. Total Transparency

HPT team members expect to be kept appraised in an honest and timely manner of any important issues in the project even if it does not directly affect them. This is part of the dynamic of every member believing they are a team leader and able to contribute beyond their specific functional team member briefs. They also believe they are free to pass opinions about situations they are not directly responsible for and these opinions should be respected and listened to.

5. Shared Glory

HPT team members believe they are all in it together and that all glory and pain will be shared. Like the four musketeers it is “One of all and all for one”. They do not believe that the leader will take an unfairly big portion of the credit for success or the blame for failure. Underpinning this is the belief that each team member is accountable not just to the leader but to all the other team members.

6. Meaningful Mission Value

HPT team members believe that the mission they are engaged on is significant, important and meaningful. They believe that if they are successful they will have made a fundamental contribution to their organisation or even to the greater good. If they saw the project as just ‘business as usual’ or routine then their motivation would sag significantly. Part of this is that the task must not seem trivial or easy or “done-it-before”. HPT team members also generally feel they are the only people in the organisation who could succeed at such a difficult task.

7. Outcome Optimism

Finally, as discussed under “Learned Optimism” HPT team members are confident that they (and they alone) are going to succeed in delivering the mission of the project no matter what.

Good beliefs make a team work harder

One of the main consequences for a team of a set of beliefs like these seven is that it simply makes them more committed and willing to put in the necessary hours for the project to succeed. For example, if you feel trusted, there is a feeling of shared glory, a sense of meaningful mission and the expectation of success then it is more likely you will do whatever it takes to deliver.

First identify your team’s beliefs

The first step for an ambitious team is to try to honestly identify the current beliefs your individual team members hold.

Next these can be compared with the seven high-performance beliefs above to identify the top team motivational issues.

Obviously it is not effective just to ask a team if they hold these 7 beliefs or not. I have therefore devised a short 20-question HPT Beliefs questionnaire designed to be used to see how well a team's beliefs correlate with HPT beliefs.

The Questionnaire asks each question in two different ways to avoid team members "gaming" their answers and includes 3 other team member "red herring" beliefs implied by some of the literature on HPTs but which are not universally present in HPTs. It should be completed by as many members of the team in question as possible and then consolidated and discussed.

As for all belief situations people can be encouraged to modify their beliefs but in the end of the daynew beliefs cannot be mandated.

The most powerful techniques for modifying beliefs are firstly illustrating the consequences of current beliefs and secondly modeling alternative beliefs.

Both these tasks are the responsibilities of the senior members of the team and the team members whose beliefs are more in line with HPTs.

References

1. Frankl, V., 1984. Man's Search for Meaning, Simon & Schuster

2. Seligman, M., 1990. Learned Optimism – How to change your mind and your life, Free Press

3. Lipman-Blumen, J. & Leavitt, H., 1999. Hot Groups – Seeding them, feeding them and using them to ignite your organization, Oxford University Press

4. Bennis, W., 1997. Organizing Genius – The Secrets of Creative Collaboration, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

9. Instant Team or Network

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The Collaborative Opportunity Mapping Process

Objectives

To find if real collaboration opportunities exist within a potential network
Motivate the network companies to consider collaborative networks
Create new potential channel partners for the companies

The main objective of "Instant Network" is to find out if there are enough potential collaborative supply chains within the group to make a network or not. The other objective, which is just as important, is to do this very quickly in a way, which is highly interactive, engaging, and develops new relationships.

In addition I always try and send each participant away with at least one new 'channel to market opportunity' even if they never come to another network meeting.

There is a very important rule when working with small businesses - never ever waste their time at a workshop - always send them away with something they value - even if the workshop cannot deliver its primary objective.

The aim of "Instant Network" is to establish collaborative sub-clusters by identifying collaborative product/service offers and companies who can play the following roles:

Here is an abridged version of how "Instant Network" works:

Step 1

Everyone identifies their core business offer and puts it on a YELLOW card with their name and sticks it up on a large whiteboard. I call these YELLOW cards Core Product Providers.

Step 2

Everyone reads all the cards and must fill out at least one BLUE card and sticks it beside any Core Product card (YELLOW) that they believe they might be able to produce a new customer for. I call these BLUE cards Channels.

Step 3

Everyone also fills out at least one PURPLE card for any YELLOW card that they believe they have some knowledge or product which could make a core product more valuable. They stick these up too beside the YELLOW Core Product cards -I call these PURPLE cards Innovators.

Step 4

We examine the whiteboard and see how many natural sub-clusters made up of Core Product Providers, one or more Channels and one or moreInnovators we can find.

Step 5

I then ask the participants to look for opportunities to merge these sub-clusters with the objective having of not more than 4 merged clusters.Also each merged cluster should have least 4 players one of whom should be a channel or it is not viable.

Step 6

I then get the participants to go back to work on these merged clusters to explore the possibilities and requirements for three further roles and they stick more cards into the clusters on the whiteboard for:

RED - Supporting Service Provider - provides a critical supporting service for the collaborative product
ORANGE - Integrator - plays a key design or integration role in the new collaborative product
GREY - Investor - can provide finance or resources needed to make the collective supply chain viable and attractive to the market

Step 7

We then do a quick 'tidyup' to name and scope each of the merged clusters as "collaborative product offers". Then we close-out by seeking feedback from each of the participants to see if they are intrigued enough to want to collaborate further to develop each of the merged clusters.

Result!

Foundations for an 'Instant Collaborative Network'
... consisting of 3-4 potential collaborative supply chains
... with self-selecting work groups
... who want to work together to establish their feasibility, identify required additional players and develop a strategy and plan for each of them.

Conclusions

The bottom line is that a single enterprise can define its strategy first and then go and try and acquire the necessary resources and skills to implement it. However business networks don't work like this.

A business network's strategy and viability is only established by first examining its collective capabilities to see what it can actually do.

Only then does any network strategy for business development, marketing, new product development and alliances make any sense.

If you get this first network engagement right then you are well on the way to starting the incubation of a successful and sustainable collaborative business network

8. Team decision-making techniques

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“The way a team decides to decide is one of the most important decisions it makes!”

Though fashion occasionally underscores one or another of these approaches, there is no right or wrong way to decide an issue.

The important thing is that the team decide, in advance, what decision-making method will be used. No surprises.

If members are appraised of the process, even autocratic methods acquire the consent and blessing of all.

Depending on the type of decision an effective virtual team will discuss and agree on one of these 7 styles – BEFORE the decision-making discussion starts.

Typically the leader of the team describes the decision which needs to be made and proposes a decision-making style which is then discussed and agreed.

A good leader will also state how the decision about the decision-making style will be concluded (usually through style #2 or style #7).

INVENTORY OF TEAM DECISION MAKING STYLES

(based on “Why Teams Don’t Work” – by Robbins and Finley)

#1 CONSENSUS

#2 MAJORITY RULE

#3 MINORITY RULE

#4 AVERAGING

#5 EXPERT

#6 AUTHORITY RULE WITHOUT DISCUSSION

#7 AUTHORITY RULE WITH DISCUSSION

Detailed Technique Description

7. How to run great team meetings

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It is said meetings take minutes and waste hours but it does not have to be like that.

This technique provides:

A Roadmap for “focusing” a virtual project team
Guidance on where the different types of meeting fit in team development
Running good Operational Meetings
Effective Strategic/Senior Management Meetings
The Perfect Brainstorm

Detailed Technique Description

6. Effective team member personal co-operation strategies

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Natures most effective co-operation strategy

Most team members don’t have a practical technique for what they do when another team member lets them down. 'Win – win' is an outcome not an effective collaboration strategy.

Without a personal collaboration strategy many team members inevitably feel taken advantage off by others and simply “silently disengage” from the team in terms of their commitment and participation.

This technique uses nature’s most effective collaboration strategy “Tit for Tat”.

Natures most effective co-operation strategy

Research has discovered that many species in nature use a surprising strategy for cooperation known as TIT FOR TAT (TFT).

The rules of TFT are very simple:

1. Never be the first to defect

2. Retaliate only after your partner has defected

3. Be prepared to forgive after carrying out just one act of retaliation

It appears this strategy is highly popular in nature even in situations where the individuals are only able to recognise their species rather than specific individuals.

Sticklebacks play TIT FOR TAT

One of the best empirical tests of TFT in nature is Milinski's laboratory experiments with stickleback fish in 1987 [1] During the early stages of an attack by a stalking pike, some sticklebacks may leave their shoal to approach the predator, for a 'predator inspection visit'.

They do this as a small group so that they can get very close and if the pike turns on them the fact they are in a group is confusing to it and increases all their chances of escape.

Milinski gave sticklebacks the chance to alter their behaviour according to that of an imaginary companion fish - their reflection in a mirror.

The mirror could be angled to give the illusion of a companion keeping up (co-operating) or lagging behind (defecting).

In the experiment the stickleback followed the rules of TFT exactly - for example those fish with co-operating mirrors went closer to the predator and stayed there longer than the fish with defecting mirrors.

Also the fish would usually forgive their cowardly companions up to a point and approach the predator again and again.

Some weaknesses in TFT Very recent research [2] has revealed some weaknesses in TFT - the biggest of which is that it the two players can become locked into a spiral of retaliation.

The problem is this can happen by accident such as errors in communication or interpretation but it may be impossible to break out of the cycle.

Consequently another strategy WIN STAY- LOSE SHIFT (WSLS) (“if its working keep doing it if its not change it”) may be better in certain situations such as those with error-prone communications environments.

Benefits of Rule to Nature

TIT FOR TAT (and other biologically-based strategies such as WIN STAY LOSE SHIFT) provides the most effective long-term cooperation strategies for many species in nature. In the longer term cooperation is better for the whole community but is open to abuse by individual opportunists.

TFT allows for cooperation to be achieved but not at the expense of being exploited through the retaliation and forgiveness responses which enable conflicting parties to then recover the co-operation after a breakdown.

Application of Rule to Organisational Teams

Recent research has shown that TIT FOR TAT is also the best long-term strategy for human co-operation [3].

Human teams and their members often say that they are committed to "playing Win-Win" which is great! But what does this actually mean?

I propose that the best strategy for achieving Win-Win is not Win-Win but in fact TIT FOR TAT!

Team members who say they are playing ‘win-win’ are generally referring to one of two very different personal collaboration strategies:

Mr Nice Guy “I will assume you are cooperating with me until it is proven you are not - then I won’t work with you again”.

In this situation you can be easily taken advantage off at which point you are be too resentful to try and put it right. Relationships that start in this kind of naivety generally end in tears!

Mr Stand-off

“I will assume you are not cooperating until it is proven you are - and if it is not conclusively proven after a certain time I will assume (privately) you are not a good partner”.

Relationships which start in this kind of distrust usually become self-fulfilling prophecies - start cautiously and you won’t be disappointed!

Win-Win is a state not a strategy

So Win-Win is actually a highly desirable outcome/state but is itself not the best strategy for getting there because Win-Win (in both forms above) has no means of checking a non-cooperating partner and then recovering Team members need practical personal collaboration strategies such as TFT based on the three simple principles:

1. Never be the first to defect

2. Retaliate only after your partner has defected

3. Be prepared to forgive after carrying out just one act of retaliation

The other key point is to make it clear to all your team members that these are the rules you go by -secret TFT does not work!

Biological research also shows that a "cluster" of TFT players will grow and eventually convert other non-cooperative players to TFT.

However it also shows that if more than three quarters of a population are using non-cooperative strategies then the team is beyond cooperation and is destined to stay in destructive behaviour and its consequences.

Benefits of Rule to Organisational Teams

Viable natural personal co-operation strategies such as TIT FOR TAT keep the team together tocreate the environment for a Win-Win state to emerge in the team.

Absence of such strategies creates distrust which results in a huge amount of waste such as:

people checking up on each other
team members falling out
people playing politics
members raising personality issues with the leader rather than the offending person
email wars
team cliques

Consistent use of TFT in a team by its members can avoid all this.

References

1. Meredith, C., 1998. "The Story of Tit for Tat", Article for Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABC Online, http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/tittat/story.htm#tittat

2. Nowak, M., 2005. "Why we cooperate", Webcast for Royal Society, Londonhttp://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=3112

3. Axelrod, R., 1990. "The Evolution of Cooperation", Penguin

5. Creating The Team Karma

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How to balance personal team member expectations with inputs

Here’s what the leader needs to do – step by step!

Click on this link to see a fully completed karma spreadsheet which you can tailor for your group

STEP 1.
Articulate the VISION for the team (ending with some real concrete specifics)

STEP 2.
Communicate the vision to the team at a Team Session (Workshop 1)
Don’t go into a group discussion on it - that will come later.
Then outline the process you will be following with them (not in any detail) to see where (if anywhere) they fit

STEP 3.
Request they individually email you on their comments in your vision (comments - what they like, don't like, think is missing - not questions!!!!!). Also what specifically they wish to get out of working with you (part 1 of Karma)

STEP 4.
Consolidate this for yourself and see how it looks

STEP 5.
Develop a list of the top 20 tasks which will have to be done to deliver the VISION - group the tasks into the relevant roles (Karma part 2 prep)

STEP 6.
Create the karma spreadsheet you can use to gather and consolidate the info

STEP 7.
Have another team meeting (workshop 2) to present back their comments on your vision (and how you may have adjusted it), their consolidated wants (not identifying individuals) and explain the spreadsheet

STEP 8.
Now request each team member individually indicate what they will take responsibility for on this list by filling out the spreadsheet (Karma part 2 execution)

STEP 9.
Consolidate their inputs (Karma part 2) and see for yourself what the gaps are

STEP 10.
Have a team session (Workshop 3) where you present it to them, along with the consequences, the end request they now go back and make their new "offers" to you and on this basis you will select your team

STEP 11.
Receive their new offers and see if they cover enough for you to fly!

STEP 12.
Assuming they do - have 1-1 conversations with your team members to finalise and commit their new offers

4. Team Culture and Behaviors

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Identifying Critical Team Behavior Changes

Step 1 - Identify the current member experience of Teams - "OldTeam"

Step 2 - Identify the required approach to Teams for this project to succeed - "NewTeam"

Step 3 - Establish Most Critical Team Behavior Challenges

Step 4 - Establish Priority Team Behavior Changes

All references are to a team behaviour change spreadsheet (see Tab "Behaviors")

This technique uses "Cultural Polarity" based on international best practice in categorising different business cultures with specific extensions for teams.

This technique will also identify if conflicting dominant sub-cultures exist within a team.

Step 1 - Identify the current member experience of Teams - "OldTeam"

Using the "Cultural Polarities" defined below with specific extensions for teams

Record this in the Old Team Column (1-6)

Step 2 - Identify the required approach to Teams for this project to succeed - "NewTeam"

Record this in the New Team Column (1-6)

Step 3 - Establish Priority Team Behavior Challenges

Note the Variance (ie the difference between Old Team and New Team Cultural Polarity)

Assess the Outcome Impact (3=High, 2=Medium, 1=Low)

Estimate the Change Difficulty (3=High, 2=Medium, 1=Low)

Calculate the Overall Composite Risk (Variance * Outcome Impact * Change Difficulty)

Maximum score here is 81 but any score over 8 (2*2*2) needs carefully looked at

Step 4 - Establish Priority Team Behavior Changes

For the priority areas (3 max)

Identify the key team behaviour changes

Establish whether the change is so big that an interim bridge practice is required

==================================================

Cultural Polarity - The key areas

18 “Polarities” which categorise a Business Culture

From the “Cross-Cultural Business Pocketbook” by John Mattock and based on work by Edward Hall, Geert Hofstede, Terence Brake, John Mole, Fons Trompenaars and Richard Lewis

Perception And Cognition

PC1

Decisive - we control our lives, make free choices, anticipate consequences

Submissive - our destinies are dictated by our god(s), fate or environment

PC2

Theoretical - ideas are more useful within an orthodox conceptual framework

Pragmatic - its OK to meet phenomena case by case, learning by experience

PC3

Universal – some ideas/concepts are absolute and can be applied in all situations

Circumstantial – theories are interpreted in the with common sense/human need

PC4

Loose Time – deadlines are only guidelines – they won’t mind waiting a bit longer

Tight Time – delay equals failure: “This project must run to schedule or else…..”

PC5

Multiple Event – clever people handle several ideas at once: the art of juggling

Single Event – One at a time to avoid confusion: interruptions/distractions are bad

PC6

Quick Results – mechanistic/impatient; actions now should bring satisfaction soon

Big Picture – holistic/patient; we think and act in the broad context of past and future

Self And Society

SS1

Outgoing/Informal – our circle of acquaintance is wide and flexible – we do not harbour secrets

Private/Reserved – we share our inner thoughts only with close friends and family

SS2

Personal Fulfilment – encouragement and reward for individual talent and initiative

Loyalty to the Tribe – duties are fixed by tradition, autocratic leaders or team needs

SS3

Prescriptive – rules of conduct must not be bent – society suffers if they are

Flexible – sometimes we can ignore laws; respect your conscience and friends

SS4

Doing & Measuring – high status goes with performance and achievement

Being & Feeling – living life well is the greatest achievement; work is only part of it

SS5

Relationship – “if we get on well, the work will be pleasant and fruitful”

Task – “if we can do a good job together, we might get closer as people”

SS6

Cooperation/Consensus – decisions by group synergy can be smoothly implemented

Competition/Conflict – forceful advocacy defeats opposition and brings success

Decisions And Communication

DC1

Suggestion – “I’m sure you’ll get the gist of my idea without tedious over-explanation”

Statement – “We’ll both be more comfortable if I spell this out to avoid ambiguity”

DC2

Contextual – plenty of background information helps us to understand things better

Direct – we move directly to the proposal, handling context questions later

DC3

Emotional – few inhibitions about expressing joy, anger, fear, passion, regret ….

Contained – embarrassment and friction can come from displays of emotion

DC4

Avoiding Risk – beware precedents/consequences; Look before you leap

Embracing Risk – seize every opportunity without dithering; who dares wins

DC5

Hierarchical – good organisation requires clear direction from above

Democratic – power is distributed; everybody contributes to decisions

DC6

Merit – respect is given to those who have earned it – leaders included

Standing – respect goes to those with of right age/grade/class/qualifications

3. Team Ground Rules

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Keywords

Ground-Rules, Etiquette, Norms, Standards, Sanctions, Trust, Issues, Conflicts, Information-Sharing, Decision-Making, Meetings, Induction, Mentoring, Communications

Context

It is important for a Team to establish ground rules for how it intends to operate

In my approach to teams I split this into two:

Ground Rules

Covering in general the negative team member behaviours we wish to discourage – this tool addresses Ground Rules.

Team Culture and Behaviors

Covering in general the positive team member and group behaviours we wish to encourage and adopt. Team Culture and Behaviors are covered in a separate technique.

Applicability

* virtual teams

* cross-functional teams

* collaborative business networks

* virtual communities

* supply chains and clusters

Click here for a spreadsheet of typical ground rules which you can tailor for your group.

1. Objectives

* Ground Rules are the agreed position of the whole team regarding what behaviours are mandatory and what action should be taken if this is not the case (warning and sanctions).

* Ground Rules must be short, sharp, unambiguous and unanimously agreed – otherwise they cannot be enforced by the team.

* A Ground Rules document should never exceed 3 pages of A4 – its better to not have enough than to have too many!

* WARNING: Most teams set the standards too high for their ground rules - these kinds of unrealistic ground rules quickly become discredited as most people don’t comply with them and it can be very hard then to put in any ground rules whatsoever.

* Ground Rules are meaningless if not implemented. This means that warnings and sanctions have to happen early on or else the ground rules are not worth the paper they are written on

* To enable this to happen you need to make it not an embarrassment, or black mark to be warned or sanctions. This is where you can lead by example by letting yourself receive an early sanction for the sake of the team!

2. The Overall Process

Step 1. Conduct Ground Rules Team Session#1

* Allow 90 minutes

* Use the check-list as a means of asking each member of the team their opinion.

* Never do it as a group discussion – you need the individual inputs from every team member.

* An electronic meeting tool which allows everyone to type their answers and see other member’s answers is the best environment for doing this.

* After each answer you should summarise the key themes and ask supplementary questions if you need more details

Step 2. Document the Session

* There are two outputs - the unedited log of what everyone said plus a document which summarises the session question by question and identifies clearly:

a) where the group was in agreement

b) where the group was not in agreement (or answered in insufficient depth to be able to know)

* This second document requires excellent editing skills to ensure it exposes the critical points of disagreement and where there is insufficient clarity/definition. It is a summary and should not exceed 3 pages.

Step 3. Include review comments

* Circulate both documents to the participants (typically with the full transcript as an appendix to the summary) and request comments.

* Where a comment is a simple non-contentious clarification or a correction update the document accordingly.

* Where a comment is contentious or represents a further elaboration on what was said at the meeting include it in the document in a way with makes this clear.

* Re-circulate the updated document.

Step 4. Conduct Ground Rules Team Session#2

* Allow 90 minutes.

* Work through the document again question by question.

* Request quick confirmation from team on all agreed questions – don’t open these up to discussion.

* Request more discussion on other points to try and identify an agreed position.

* If discussion is not productive after a 5-10 minutes maximum identify two extreme positions which cover both ends of the argument and if necessary do an informal vote

* Don’t try and wordsmith the document as a group – capture the key points and word-smith later

Step 5. Document the Session and Reissue Revised Document

* Where necessary in this version identify two options on points which are not yet agreed and request people indicate their preference.

* If the group is split then leave both options in the document for review later – it generally becomes obvious which will work best.

* Publish the final document as Version 1.0 with the date – a living document.

Step 6. Schedule Regular Ground Rules Discussion Items

Ensure a Ground Rules item is included in one full team meeting per month

The discussion should be:

Are we having any compliance issues - If yes:

* Is it a misunderstanding? Or

* Are the Ground Rules unrealistic in this area and require change? Or

* Do we need to implement the agreed warnings and sanctions?

3. Checklist

1. Trust Damagers

What will damage trust?

2. Trust Destroyers

What will destroy trust?

3. Conflicts of Interest

What are the most likely scenarios to arise and how should they be handled?

4. Team Boundaries/Member Types

What are the boundaries of the team and types of member participation (e.g. Core, Reviewer, Expert, Other)

5. Information Sharing

Where will we be transparent and where will we be private?

6. Issue Resolution

How will we resolve issues/conflicts and what will be the main stages in this practice?

7. Conflict Resolution

How we will resolve conflicts between members and what will be the main stages in this practice?

8. Decision Making Practices

Strategic, Wide Operational(affects most project members), Narrow Operational(affects only a few project members)

9. Meetings

What will be the teams meetings? Purpose, frequency, attendees and channels (face to face, phone, online)

10. Induction/Mentoring/Buddying

How will we handle new team members joining?

11. Communications Tools

Which tools will we use for which type of communications (urgent, important) and

“Reply by” Times

12. Sanctions

What sanctions will we employ and how will we agree them?

Red Card/Yellow Card,

Penalty Points

13. Other

4. A Worked Example/Supporting Spreadsheet

This example is based on the scenario of a collaborative business network of independent companies.

These Ground Rules are a lightweight non-legally binding mutual agreement between all the members of the virtual business network. They define the minimum set of acceptable behaviours and processes to be followed by all existing and future members of the network. They will be added to and changed as required.

Ground Rule 1 – What will damage member Trust

a) not open and inclusive

b) not really adding any value in terms of meeting participation or opportunities brought

c) careless around handling confidential or proprietary information

d) not properly managing important internal commitments such as tender responses

Ground Rule 2 - What will destroy member Trust

a) not delivering their quality, requirements or timescale commitments in customer projects

b) misleading other members about their capabilities or capacity

c) trying to poach other members staff

d) bidding against the cluster in ways which other members consider unreasonable

e) deliberately misusing confidential or proprietary information

f) repeatedly damaging trust (as per ground rule 1)

Ground Rule 3 – Conflicts of Interest

a) cluster competition with core member business

It is the intention of the network to develop collaborative business which is outside the core business of the individual members. If an opportunity arises for the network with a customer of another member company then this must discussed with the member company before any decision on making a network approach/bid is made.

b) companies with the same competencies

Bids and projects will be resourced purely in terms of member capabilities/capacities (not “turns”) for satisfying the given customer requirement and if 2 or more members declare an interest which they cannot collaborate on then we will have a simple internal competition process administered in a fair and independent way (see under Bid Management Process)

Ground Rule 4 - Information sharing, transparency and privacy

The following should be openly and accurately shared between members (but not associates):

a) All l Opportunities which are shared should be shared with all members (equality)

b) Member Capabilities and weaknesses (this is a mandatory membership pre-requisite)

c) Network Project and Quality Status reports

d) Outcomes of successful bids

The following should be private (unless the owners of the information decide otherwise):

a) Specific network bid pricing and margin details (only to bid team members)

Ground Rule 5 - Issue and Conflict Resolution

We agree the following issue resolution and escalation process:

STAGE 1 - The members try and sort it out themselves – if they cant they request…

STAGE 2 - Neutral mediation involving the Cluster Leader (or another party acceptable to the conflicting members) – if this does not resolve it then…

STAGE 3 - Cluster formally notified of issue and tabled for a full cluster meeting (either a normal scheduled one or an exceptional one depending on the urgency).

STAGE 4 - This meeting will require a quorum of members present (see next rule) and the outcome will be final.

Ground Rule 6 - Decision Making

Voting Arrangements

* 1 Company – 1 Vote!

* Companies can submit proxy votes to be cast on their behalf – must be submitted on the web-site – not verbal

Day to Day Decisions

Are the responsibility of the Network Leader who will use the web-site to get opinions and keep people informed

Operational & Strategic Decisions

Will require full Cluster Meetings. Any decision must require 60% of total existing company membership who are in “good standing” to be in agreement for it to be carried. A member is in “good standing” if they have fulfilled all the joining obligations and have not been, nor are under pending consideration for expulsion from the network (Red Card – See Ground Rule 8). The Network Leader is the sole arbiter of whether a company is in good standing membership

Ground Rule 7 – New Members

a) We want to attract new members

b) They need to meet defined criteria

c) They need to be acceptable to existing members

d) They will need mentoring and looking after

We have also agreed:

a) Criteria for potential new members = whether they bring new capabilities or capacities to the network – no geographical restrictions

b) Under what circumstances can a new membership application be rejected – any member can veto the membership of a potential new member provided they have a valid reason (in their mind) which they explain to a meeting of the other members?

Ground Rule 8 – Sanctions

We need a caution system for a member who has damaged trust

a) We need to allow a member on caution to address the issues

b) We need to be able to expel a member who has destroyed trust

We will use a Red Card/Yellow Card System – Yellow Cards will remain in place for 3 months and if a second Yellow Card is received in this period then Red Card (expulsion).

* If issues are addressed the Yellow card will be wiped at end of 3 months.

* If issues only partly addressed the Yellow card may be extended for a further 3 months.

* A member will have no loss of privilege whilst on a yellow card (e.g. Web-site access, Voting…)

Ground Rule 9 – Business Development

Each Member should

1. Bring leads to the network

2. Integrate the network into their marketing (e.g. website links)

3. Share knowledge

4. Get to know the other members and what they can do

Ground Rule 10 - Unforeseen situations

We will add to these Ground Rules as and when required to address unforeseen situations. Any changes must be formally agreed by all members

2. Team Capability Identification & Assessment

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This technique is used by a business network or organisational team to assess its collective capabilities and then compare this with what capabilities are required to achieve its objectives.

There are 4 main steps

Step 1 – Create the Blank Capability Matrix

Step 2 – Consolidate the Team Capabilities

Step 3 – Review and refine the Consolidated Team Capabilities

Step 4 – Identify the required capabilities

The technique is supported by a spreadsheet to a) gather individual capabilities, b) consolidate them and c) create a visual capability heatmap

The process in detail:

Step 1 – Create the Blank Capability Matrix

1.1 X-Axis - Identify the key capability areas

For a Network:

Try to find and use a standard classification of the industry area – for example in IT you can use the Intellect Sub-sectors whereas in Environmental Technology you can use the UK DTI 14 sub-categories

For a Team

Identify the most important key experience areas in the organisation that the team will have to cover such as covering Finance, IT, Business Development, Project Management. Use organisational standard terms wherever possible.

A good start point is to use the organisational department/functional areas

1.2 Y-Axis - Identify the key capability types

For a Network:

Now get the companies in the network to list the main things they actually do for customers.

The easiest way to do this is first identify the explicit activities – you can get this by asking them individually to list their products and services.

Encourage them to write them as capabilities rather than product names.

You then need to add to this the implicit activities – what else do they do which supports customer projects/product delivery – this will include design, project management, customer support etc.

The Next step is to take all their individual inputs and consolidate it into a list with all duplicates removed. You will need to check with them whether they mean the same thing in specific cases.

For a Team

Now identify the most important activities the team will need to carry out.

First identify core activities which can cross more than one functional boundary (e.g. project management)

Then identify key functional activities more specific to a single Capability Area – for example Finance-Preparing Business Models, IT – User Acceptance Test Planning.

The best approach is for the team to do this individually then to take all their input for this and consolidate it into a list with all duplicates removed.

If you are running multiple virtual teams you will be able to reuse and refine this matrix with each project so it’s worth trying to get in right at the start.

Step 2 – Consolidate the Team Capabilities

Now you need to circulate the blank matrices from Step 1 and have the team complete them as individuals

As well as recording capabilities you may also record capability levels (e.g. experienced, intermediate or beginner for individuals or core, pilot or ambition for companies)

This exercise will also identify missing capability areas and types which should be added to the matrix

Step 3 – Review and refine the Consolidated Team Capabilities

Now you need to consolidate the capabilities for the team or network

For a Network

You should use the Kernel spreadsheet to create a Capability Heatmap (which is a sorted version of the Consolidated Matrix) to identify the number of companies who have a capability in each cell on the matrix

The “heatmap” provides a strategic discussion starter on where the network should focus its efforts, where it is strong and where it needs partnerships or new members. However it is not an exact science particularly in the boundary areas. It identifies 4 distinct zones:

Hot Zone

Focus most early business development effort here to provide the best returns. Also be aware there will also be the most internal competition in this zone.

Warm Zone

Develop and extend own member capabilities and areas to attack here. This is where we can extend an existing capability into a new market area or introduce a new capability into a market area where we already have strong presence/ reputation/ relationships.

Cool Zone

We should only enter this zone through partnerships and new members – the chances of a win on the networks own capabilities probably do not justify the effort that would need to be expended.

Ice Zone

We should avoid this zone we are neither in the activities nor the sub-sectors – likely to be a waste of time.

For a Team

You should use the Kernel spreadsheet to create the Consolidated Matrix (but do not sort it into a Heatmap) which identifies the number of team members who have a capability in each cell on the matrix

Step 4 – Identify the required capabilities

For a Network

Identify 2-3 tenders which are representative of the type of contracts the network wishes to win.

Code each of these tenders up as before as a Required Capability Matrix

Next compare them with the Consolidated Network Capability Matrix to identify missing capabilities, required new members and alliances

For a Team

Focus on the immediate project and code it up as a Required Capability Matrix.

Compare this with the Consolidated Team Capability Matrix to identify missing capabilities and additional team members required.

1. Overview of YouTeamFast

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YouTeamFast provides concise and well tried techniques in the areas of Team Mobilisation and Team Operations for a wide-range of collaboration scenarios including:

virtual teams
cross-functional teams
collaborative business networks
virtual communities
supply chains and clusters

Each tool in the YouTeamFast toolbox includes:

An Introduction to the topic
The overall process for introducing and using it
A Detailed Checklist
A Worked Example/Supporting Spreadsheet