Have you wondered what makes a high-performing organization tick? What secret sauce allows a group of individuals to achieve unparalleled success? Most people would agree that leadership provides a critical component. However, history is replete with examples of organizations, whose leaders demonstrated a history of outstanding leadership and management, only to create an environment that inevitably led to disaster. Enron, WorldCom, Blockbuster, and Blackberry provide vivid examples of spectacular failure with seemingly qualified leaders in the right positions. As a leadership practitioner with over 30 years of watching leaders and leading organizations, I have always been fascinated by those characteristics and traits that differentiate high-performing teams from those that perform in a non-optimized way. I feel lucky to have learned from both types of organizations. Leaders and organizational observers can sense the energy of a high-performing team. The people on high-performing teams express excitement and achieve success to a level often more than organizational leaders expect. One can observe individuals outside the team fighting to join it based on its reputation for excellence and a healthy work environment. While not all-inclusive, I noted that the two types of organizations could be characterized by eight traits. These traits are:
1. Discipline. Individuals and the whole team demonstrated consistent adherence to discipline. This included dedicated, positive habit-forming activities, where teammates repeatedly performed simple tasks and core competencies according to a uniform standard. Individuals and teams deviated from standards, but only after communicating their rationale. When time did not permit communicating deviation, individuals had faith in their teammates and leaders that it was deliberate and necessary.
2. Accountability. Individuals and leaders ruthlessly held their teammates to established norms and standards. If an individual failed to perform to established norms, the team questioned and, as necessary, rapidly corrected the deviation. When individuals repetitively failed to meet standards, the team did not tolerate consistent failure. They corrected the failures or dismissed the teammate. These teams demanded accountability, especially on basic or simple tasks.
3. Brutal reviews of performance. Known as the debrief in the Air Force and across the fighter pilot community, the US Army refers to this event as the After Action Review (AAR). Teams ALWAYS conduct a highly critical evaluation of its execution, even in success. They recognize that they can improve and that seemingly inconsequential errors or shortfalls in executing a recent activity could become critical and lead to failure in a future event or activity. Teams set the conditions for the most junior teammate to contribute to the AAR without fear of retribution, where that individual feels the group values the input. High-performing teams set a structured agenda, include a scribe, and conclude with required tasks to improve and/or to capitalize on those positive actions that contributed to the success.
4. Predictability. Teams adjust to chaos and uncertainty well by applying systems and processes to provide predictability. Application of systems and processes enable these teams to act and deviate with agility because they minimize chaos and the impact of factors they cannot control. These uncontrolled elements include external considerations such as: adversarial actions, market forces, geopolitical events, environmental effects, or unpredictable decisions. Leaders who advocate for and embrace daily chaos will inevitably create high stress environments leaving the door wide open to high turnover.
5. Empowerment. High-performing teams enable individuals to take the initiative, express creativity, and develop winning strategies at appropriate levels well below the organization’s senior leaders. Senior leaders in these organizations encourage this initiative and demonstrate a willingness to underwrite risk and decisions through word and deed, especially when a teammate’s initiative does not succeed. This is not to say that these teams and leaders facilitate a “free-for-all.” Teammates must still behave and operate according to the organization’s vision, mission, and values.
6. Encouragement to excel. Like every sports team, high-performing teams have leaders who constantly and consistently sing the team’s praises and encourage them to strive for excellence. Leaders act as part coach, part cheerleader. In public, leaders talk about their incredible teams, the success that they deliver, and their potential to achieve superior results. In private, individuals express confidence in their teammates that often exceeds an individual’s sense of themselves. Outside the organization, leaders defend their peers, leaders, and other teammates respectfully, but vehemently.
7. Commitment to the mission versus compliance of rules, regulations, & edicts. On the compliance versus commitment scale, teams exhibit commitment to the organization’s mission, vision, and values. This does not occur immediately, nor is it happenstance. It requires leader cultivation through clear, concise, and consistent communication and leaders who explain purpose frequently. Leaders communicate verbally and visually at every opportunity. Teammates know, understand, and can communicate the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Leaders express them internally and externally. They live the values through behavior and hold other teammates accountable when they fail to do so.
8. Subordination of oneself for the good of the team. Teammates believe the organization’s success is more important than personal satisfaction, enrichment, or success. Teammates retain ambition, personally and for their team, but they do not allow their ambition to jeopardize the team’s pursuit of success.
Teams can operate and achieve success, where leaders and individuals set an environment very different from the traits I listed. At best, these teams operate with teammates who operate in compliance but are not committed to the team. These teams will never optimize. At worst, they move down a fatal pathway that will break up the team. Building a high-performing team is similar to tending a garden. It takes a lot of work, consistent cultivation, and patience but that diligence will pay off and lead to results that are unexpected and even beyond the leader’s wildest dreams.
Authored By: Matt Weinshel, Managing Director