Re-reading my notes on Tudor Rickard's presentation reminded me that his research on Teams from Heaven and Hell showed that a high performing team will score well on all seven factors:-
1. Strong platform of understanding
2. Shared vision
3. Creative climate
4. Ownership of ideas
5. Resilience to setbacks
6. Network activators
7. Learn from experience
Rickards also pointed out that the seven factors are highly interactive and there is a strong creative leadership role to inspire and ensure team effectiveness.
Interestingly Katzenbach and Smith in their book Wisdom of Teams write of Real Teams:
"This is a small number of people with complementary skills who are equally committed to a common purpose, goals and working approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."
They write that a High-performance team "is a group that meets all the conditions of real teams, and has members who are also deeply commited to one another's personal growth and success. ....The high-performance team significantly outperforms all other like teams and outperforms all reasonable expectations given its membership."
Hilarie Owen writes of the need for high-performing teams to address both the "What" and the "How" of team processes. The "What" in this case is to be ready with a new display each May (to a very high standard). She states "Success is a joint function of three activities
- the level of effort group members put in collectively in carrying out the task;
- the amount of knowledge and skill members bring to the team task;
- the appropriateness of the performance strategies or procedures used by the team in its work to achieve the task"
The "how" part is the internal and external processes that enable the team to develop and achieve joint goals. Hilarie points out that there are two interlinking process chains that need to work if synergy is to be released for a team to become high-performing.
The diagram below shows the final diagram of the synergy flows between the visible external and less visible internal process chains. Alter one aspect in a chain and it has a ripple effect along its own chain and an interaction with the other.
As Hilairie says "Within the visible strategy of setting clear objectives and goals there was a less visible process of identifying their personal goals and vision to the objective."......"if team members incorporate their personal goals and vision for the team into goals they are more likely to achieve and even excel in achieveing them.
"These internal or less visible processes have been neglected in previous theories and are present in all the processes needed for a high performing team. They will be included here. Therefore the model is made up of two chains -an external strategy chain and an internal process chain.....each process chain is linked and developing one will affect the others." By working on both, the team develops the property of synergy.
So developing high performing teams is itself a team effort with the addition of visionary leadership to ensure that synergy develops and continues to do so.
As Tudor Rickards says "its all the ingredients or the team will falter in developing its capabilities."
We have observed similar and then pragmatically developed a process we call "Design Journey" to describe the development of high performing innovation teams. The next post will begin to discuss the journey.
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