Teams exist to produce results. They are the engines that drive successful organizations. This article discusses what makes teams high performing and sustainable and the conditions necessary for teams to get the job done.
My experiences in corporate life as an executive and coach, past successes and failures, a quest for lifelong learning, and a deep dive into teamwork taught me that sustainable, high-performing teams have three characteristics in common: culture alignment, positivity, and productivity.
This article will briefly describe these three characteristics and their correlation.
A. CULTURE ALIGNMENT
Culture trumps strategy
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" is a famous quote from management guru Peter Drucker. This quote, however, has frequently been taken out of context. He meant to say that while strategy is essential, an influential and empowering culture is a surer route to organizational success. Culture is determined mainly by the group's hierarchy and the type of rapport or relationship between its team members.
The group's hierarchy is all about how to distribute authority within the team. A group can be managed hierarchically with power concentrated in one or a few strong leaders or horizontally with more autonomy for the team members. The team's rapport or relationship centers around how teams work together. Some teams are individualistic, with people operating in independent silos. Their internal relationship is mainly transactional. On the other side of the spectrum are teams that work more interdependently with closer collaboration and warmer collegial relationships.
An illustration of this idea.
A. The hierarchical and individualistic Troops culture is characterized by strong leadership in a fixed organizational structure and minimal horizontal collaboration. The people in this organization follow the leader's orders and generally operate in silos. The strength of the troop culture is in the common direction provided by the leader with a strong sense of accountability. The traditional military command structure may be an example of this culture.
Drawbacks: i). Team members aim mainly to serve the person in charge and may feel disconnected from top-level management. ii). A lack of horizontal information flow between teams, collaboration, and employee participation may create inefficiencies or blind spots.
B. Highly cohesive and hierarchical teams are Believers, a powerful and unified clan or tribe-like culture heavily driven by family-based leadership at the top. These teams are loyal and easy to energize and rally around a corporate environment emphasizing consensus and shared goals.
Drawbacks i). The emphasis on cohesiveness and a lack of diversity may create an environment where team members are hesitant to offer opposing viewpoints. ii). Watch out for a dominant top-down management style which may be a stumbling block that inhibits morale and cooperation within the workplace.
C. A Virtuous culture exists in a team with strongly individualistic people with little top-down authority. Virtuous organizations value individuality, promote creativity and bring new ideas. This culture is rooted in innovation and adaptability, where teams are encouraged to take risks to develop the next best thing. A virtuous culture benefits from having individuals willing to challenge each other. However, the lack of team rapport or a strong leader can cause them to pull apart under stress.
Drawbacks: i). When working in a virtuous culture, consider whether there is a strong shared vision and clear roles to keep all team members on the same page. ii). Ensure to tie new ideas to market growth and the company's long-term success. iii). Beware of the supernova effect; some virtuous team members initially shine as bright stars before they burn out quickly, implode and become dark holes.
D. A Friends culture fosters high cohesion and low hierarchy with little top-down structure.(1) The culture is rooted in the organization's approach to giving a common set of values that encourages challenge-specific teaming. Decisions are made through self-managing teams. Employees can choose the work they want to do and commit to their colleagues on what they will accomplish. This approach can lead to great results in the long run since team members become highly engaged and collaborative and take accountability for their performance.
Drawbacks: i). Friends' teams tend to get a slower start as it takes time to build trust between the team members and for individuals to get comfortable with their roles. ii). Decision time and, when necessary, changing strategic direction maybe slow. iii). Also, please be sure to watch out for ineffective internal competition.
B. PRODUCTIVITY AND POSITIVITY
What got you here won't get you there.
According to a recent survey(2), highly toxic workplaces cost U.S. businesses an estimated $223 billion. Nearly half of the employees in the survey said they had thought about leaving their current employer due to company culture issues. Moreover, almost one in five had left a job for precisely that reason within the last five years.
Managers are also aware of the value of having a working environment that actually works. The National Bureau of Economic Research(3) revealed that 9 out of 10 senior executives believe improving their corporate culture would increase their organization's value. However, in their quest for teams to be more productive, managers mostly fall back on old process-based models: strategic plans, goal-setting, streamlining operations, and reducing inefficiency. Recent research(4) supports that companies focusing on soft skills, characterized by positive team practices, achieve significantly higher organizational effectiveness measured by financial performance, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and retention.
Productivity supports the team in achieving results and staying on course to reach goals. At the same time, positivity strengthens the interrelationship between the team members and the group's spirit.
Positive team practices create:
· An increase in positive emotions. These broaden the employees' resources and abilities by improving internal relationships and amplifying creativity and willingness to think out of the box.
· Resilience against adverse events like stress and improve the employees' ability to bounce back from challenges and difficulties.
· Improvement in employee attraction and retention. It makes employees more loyal and brings out the best in them.
According to a Grant Thornton report(5), positive workplace culture is essential for developing employees' skills and increasing the company's productivity. It directly correlates with cultural factors such as collaborative efforts, employee involvement, client satisfaction, and earnings and profit. Organizations with a positive work culture are 1.5 times more likely to have 15% or more revenue growth within three years. They are also 2.5 times more likely to have substantial stock growth during the same period.
Similar to cultural alignment, we can visualize productivity and positivity in a four-quadrant model.
1. Low productivity and low positivity teams are dead zones in an environment characterized by low employee engagement and an atmosphere of criticism, blame, and cynicism. We can find the dead zones in organizations going through downsizing and reorganizations and are on the verge of being taken over or shut down.
2. High productivity and low positivity stimulate an environment best described as a rat race. We can find this environment in highly competitive organizations with an almost exclusive focus on efficiency and the bottom line. In “Leadership Without Armour,” Marie Claude Michaud (6) writes that many organizations have noted internal suffering among their personnel due to the extreme competition perceived as necessary to survive in an impersonal culture where the requisite level of performance is exhausting. Most people in these organizations suffer from high levels of stress and burnout, resulting in high turnover.
3. Low productivity and high positivity exist in friendship-style, purpose-driven organizations limited by a lack of urgency, efficiency, and bottom-line focus. These organizations are often change-resistant, with a strong sense of conflict avoidance and a tolerance for incompetence.
4. High productivity and high positivity environments are typical for High-Performance organizations with an inspiring vision and challenging goals. These teams feel a strong engagement with each other and a strong commitment to the results. They excel in teamwork with open communication lines and mutual support and are excellent at acquiring and retaining high-potential employees and creating a strong sense of trust and belonging.
Bringing it together
While the traditional process-oriented approach remains an essential building block for success, the reality shows that it is insufficient for modern management to bring organizations to the next level.
High-performing teams get the job done because they are aligned on mission and purpose and on their ability to work side by side towards a common goal, effective decision-making, and the ability to manage the resources they have(7)
While the traditional process-oriented approach remains an essential building block for success, the reality shows that more is needed for modern management to bring organizations to the next level.
This article underlines the need for organizations to align culture with their productivity and positivity model. When making the alignment, it is essential to be sensitive to the blind spots of each culture and to pay attention to problems that may arise early on before they get out of control.
NOTES
[1] Deloitte University Press: W.L. Gore, A case study in work environment redesign.
[2] SHRM, Society for Human Resource Management, September 25, 2019.
[3] National Bureau of Economic Research, Corporate Culture: Evidence for the Field, March 2017.
[4] Effects of Positive Practices on Organizational Effectiveness, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, vol. 47, 3: pp. 266-308. First Published January26, 2011
[5] Return on Culture by Grant Thornton and Oxford Economics April 2019
[6] Michaud, Marie-Claude. Leadership Without Armour: The Power of Vulnerability in Management. 2022
[7] Team Coaching International
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