NOTEPAD

Teams at the very heart of any company

For quite some time I have had the chance to collaborate with Apprecia, a company focused on leadership and high-performance teams development. In addition to being practitioners, Apprecia produce knowledge related to an area whose importance can hardly be exaggerated when talking about modern organizations.

This collaboration has contributed decisively to my perspective on the value generation capacity of teams, when they are well constructed and carry out the necessary reflection on their operating rules and objectives.

Today, organizations that create value through knowledge have innovation challenges that have render hierarchical structures archaic, just to give way to dynamic, matrix organized companies, whose basic value generation cell is the team.

Such is the relevance of knowing and embracing the science of high-performance equipment.

But what is a team? And how does a high-performance team should be configured? What are the dynamics that allow us to achieve that? These are broad questions, but we can say that:

"Who is on the team is less important than how members interact, structure their work, and perceive their contributions."

This is taken from "Think with Google: Team dynamics: Five keys to building effective teams"

This is a required reading for anyone on a team. Part of the path is, more than simply bringing together the best and putting them to work, look to five dynamics that will differentiate the best performing teams from the rest:

• Psychological safety. Members can take risks or make proposals knowing that this will never work against them.
• Trust: Members trust that quality work will be completed and will do what they can to do so.
• Structure and clarity: roles, objectives and plans are clear and people know what is expected of them.
• Meaning: the vital sense of purpose.
• Impact: members believe that their work makes a difference.

Teams science is certainly not new, and there is vast literature and academic production on the subject. (Check here "High-performing teams: A timeless leadership topic", by McKinsey)

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”

Michael Jordan

Let's check out this HBR article (What is a good job?), where the author-researcher maintains that -beyond the definition of what a "good job" can be-, this always, unfailingly, appears with the individual belonging to a reliable and performing team.

Among the vast literature that exists on teams, I especially want to recommend the book Building Winning Teams ("Construir Equipos Ganadores", so far spanish only), by Julio Martínez Itté. It brings together both research and theory as well as the practice of having helped numerous teams throughout an extensive career.