Effective Teams

Teams

Yesterday, I brought up how rare it is to have a highly effective team.  As it turns out, Google was really curious about this too, and had the tools and the team scope to do rigorous analysis.

From Google’s Project Aristotle that researched team performance, the following was forthcoming:  “The researchers found that what really mattered was less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together.”   

The most important single factor influencing team performance was psychological safety – such that each team member that they are safe taking risks, struggling, failing, or being dumb.  It doesn’t matter a lot who the team leader is, or what their style is, if the team is a safe place to experiment and learn.

A second major factor is dependability, where team members trust each other to deliver work on time and others in the organization do as well.

A third factor is clarity of expectations, including both the role and fit of each person in the team and the impact of individual performance.  Good goals are part of this, especially for short-term objectives, but alone they are not effective (hence the struggles of Management by Objectives).

Next in priority is having a sense of purpose, in the work or the product.  This plays somewhat into the dialogue about Vision and Mission – people like for their work to have value for the customer, the world, or SOMEBODY.

Last on the short list is impact for the company, as teams work best when their work contributes clearly to the success of their organization.

This is a brief synopsis, so if you want more detail just Google “Project Aristotle”.  All the above seems pretty basic and is hardly earthshattering, though the point about psychological safety was rather novel to me.   However, it isn’t easy to make a team “safe” in a less trusting culture, and few teams readily make the shift on purpose, and fewer by accident.  Even as a manager I can tell you it is hard to foster such team dynamics, and it is not easy to have a clear and consistent hand on the tiller without sometimes being too critical or too lax.

Another point worth making, that I don’t think the Google study reflects, is how to forge a good team from good people.  I’ve never seen it happen without a stringent target and high expectations, and generally an atmosphere of uncertain success. 

Actually, temporary teams in a harsh performance environment, may be the ones I’ve seen consistently perform.  Looking back, one reason I always liked being on proposal teams was there seemed to always be a solid combination of good, sharp people, a clear goal that mattered, a high performance bar, and a lot of uncertainty.  Long hours, late nights, too much fast food and caffeine, and finally midnight runs to FedEx were part of the fun, but the camaraderie was the clincher.