Is Team a generic ‘one size fits all’? Is there a specific Team prototype for a specific task? What is the best analogy to think about a Team structure? How do you design a Team for a given task?
As I mentioned in my previous post the main reason Leaders get in trouble right away with Teams is two-fold. First, they use the term team generically. They want their work group to ‘feel’ like a team and function like a team (whatever that means). Any group dynamics are a function of the human behaviors of the group and left without any structure will have all the good and bad human behaviors found in the people. In other words, don’t talk team unless you are willing to put in the elements necessary to help them perform as a Team. Talk is cheap and people know it. Leaders get in trouble right away with Teams is two-fold. First, they use the term team generically. They want their work group to ‘feel’ like a team and function like a team (whatever that means). Second, Leaders perceive only one definition of a team or application, when there are really three (or sometimes more) distinct ones. Although sports ‘teams’ maybe not the best analogy that is what Drucker utilized in his discussion on Team (There’s More Than One Kind of Team (The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 1992) and is also the easiest sometimes for everyone to understand.
The first kind is the baseball team. The players play on the team, not as a team. They have fixed positions they never leave. The pitcher and the third baseman have specific responsibilities and are not interchangeable. The Team goal is to win but individual members can accomplish goals while the Team still fails. The baseball team concept is used in the surgical team performing an open-heart operation, in the Henry Ford’s car assembly and mass production line, in the traditional Detroit sequential design team (from researcher to designer to developer to production to marketing).
The second type is the football team. The players have fixed positions and assigned responsibilities, but they play as a team. The football team concept is seen in a symphony orchestra (the conductor calls the plays), in the performance of a hospital trauma unit rallying to revive an emergency patient, in a Japanese car design team where marketers, designers, engineers and manufacturing people pool their know-how in parallel vs. Detroit’s in series.
The third type is the tennis doubles team. The players have a primary rather than a fixed position. They cover each other, switch places and both must have a vast repertory of complementary shots and moves. The tennis doubles concept is a jazz combo with spontaneous and yet harmonious improvisations, it’s the president’s office, ‘a team of top’ executives truly working, deciding, and acting together, it’s the IBM team concept that designed the revolutionary personal computer that was never used by IBM (a discussion for another time).
Each type of team has its advantages and disadvantages and its place in the organization. The baseball type team has enormous strengths. Each individual’s performance can be precisely measured, each position can be staffed with a temperamental star without interfering with the others. There is great accountability, but with great inflexibility; a football team requires much more specific direction. It needs precise play calls from the quarterback in the huddle, signals from the coach on the sidelines, intelligence reports from spotters. The orchestra needs a musical score for each instrument, the Japanese product design team starts with minute specifications and detailed costs objectives. The doubles type team has even more stringent requirements for training and working together. Members of the jazz team, seven at most, must function in unison, with a great deal of personal flexibility and adaptation. The team performs, while the individual members contribute.
Drucker points out that “all three types of teams are true individual type Teams”. Yet, they are very different in structure and in function. There can be no mixing of the various characteristics. Attempts at creating some hybrid baseball-football-tennis- team failed despite the ever-present managerial temptation to compromise or because they just didn’t know any better. As I have stated previously, Teams are tools. Wherever people work together, they do so as a team. Which type of Team to use for what purpose is a crucial, difficult, and risky decision that is even harder to unmake.
Drucker talks about prototype Teams I think more in terms of Team design or structure, what are the basic structural elements required for any Team. Whether it is an ad hoc team put together for a short-term purpose, e.g., solve a problem, create a new design, etc. and disband. These elements don’t guarantee success, however absence of anyone of these is a one-way ticket to failure.
First and foremost is a clear purpose. This shouldn’t be a fluffy word hodgepodge. Next is a personal identity. Personal is the identity the personal identity which the Team takes on. I worked with a small R&D manufacturing team that called themselves the Mushrooms. It’s a long story but it worked for them. Next is a guiding value set. Again, no fluff. What are the basic values the team will use to guide the teams behavior. True team goals. This may incorporate an external enemy, competitor. The ‘right people’ on the team. All to often this is politicized. An effective team can’t carry a member. The ‘right leader’. Again, a place where politics and or favoritism can cause failure at the start. Last but not least is the need for a ‘Godfather’. Too often forgotten is the need for someone with the power and influence to protect the group from outside forces. This person is not a member of the team, or the team leader. With ad hoc or really any Team that is tasked with a difficult goal this becomes very important.
The Team concept and these design elements are not anything new. Lockheed created Skunk work design teams back in 1943 to address the appearance of Nazi fighter jets in Europe. Skunk works refers to a small team given responsibility for developing something in a short time with minimal management constraints. Large companies competing in dynamic and continuously changing industries have been resorting to this organizational form as a way of stimulating innovative, path-breaking projects.
In my next blog I will talk about how the application of Teams has different ‘nuances’ depending on how you compete in the marketplace. Also, I will look at the difficulty associated with constructing a true ‘Team at the Top’, e.g. a senior management Team.