DEVELOPING A WINNING TEAM

Pick the best people in any one field, put them together and you will have a winning team. Right? Wrong! Will you fill each position in a soccer team up with just goalkeepers, even if they are the world's best? Why?

Yet, organisations are still prone to what Dr. Meridith Belbin (see note 1) calls the Apollo syndrome where they think that a team filled with the brightest people will outperform any other team, ceteris paribus . Have you been in such a team or observed one? Do team members spend more time trying to convince others of their position on an issue instead on focusing on performance?

A team is a group of people whose work is interdependent and who are collectively responsible for achieving an outcome (see note 2) such as:

• Designing, developing, and/or producing products
• Delivering services
• Meeting the needs of a customer or group of customers
• Introducing improvements and innovations
• Integrating various parts of the organisation

Interdependence means that team members trust and rely on each other to get work done. Hence each team member has a role to play and the team is dependent on him/her playing that role well. In soccer, the strikers trust and depend on the midfielders to supply them with incisive passes. In service delivery, it may be error-free billing.

The outcome a soccer team wants is "the win", not just to singularly score goals or to defend their own goal. The task of the soccer team is to produce a win, the outcome. The task of a management team is to ensure a specified return on capital employed.

A prerequisite is that team members must hold themselves mutually accountable for the tasks and outcome. If the defenders in the soccer team do not see themselves responsible for the win, they won't be committed to this end . If the technical crew in an airline maintenance unit do not see themselves responsible for zero defect maintenance, flight delays, or worse, aircraft disasters will be an imminent consequence.

The process in which a team interacts in working together to accomplish their task is also very important. In soccer, this is how they field their play and synchronise their efforts. For the organisation, it is based on building blocks such as:

• Support and trust
• Sound procedures
• Appropriate Leadership
• Good communications

A useful checklist (see note 3) to help identify potential areas for team development is as follows:

Answer "Yes" or "No" to the following questions.

1. Do we have the right mix of team members?
2. Are we clear on what we want to achieve?
3. Are we sufficiently open and do we confront the real issues?
4. Do we support and trust each other?
5. Do we co-operate with each other and use the conflict of ideas and approaches productively?
6. Are our working procedures and decision making strategies sound?
7. Are we well led?
8. Do we review whether we can operate in a better way?
9. Do we utilise opportunities for development?
10. Are our relationships with other groups/departments productive?
11. Do we communicate well ?

Any "no" answer will indicate a potential area for team development.

Think of a team as an ecosystem. Just as an ecosystem is the synthesis of its various components, a team is dependent on the contributions and make up of its individual members. Only when a team works together with a common vision, interdependence, shared responsibility, clear role demarcation and balance in the various building blocks mentioned will it reap synergistic benefits.

References

1. Belbin, M. (1996) Team Roles at Work, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
2. Mohrman, S.A. and Mohrman, Jr., (1997) Designing and Leading Team-Based Organizations a workbook for organizational self-design, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
3. Woodcock, M. (1989) Team Development Manual, Gower Publishing, England.

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