The first of this two-part series looks at the challenge of qualifying team success and suggests a more systemic approach to measuring it. For the second part we invite your input so that we can share real life examples of how you have been able to define and measure the success of teams in your own organizations.

If you believe teams are the prime work unit of organizations then the answers to the above questions matter, and alarmingly, given two current trends we observe the typical answers are “Not Really!” and “We don’t!”

Trend 1: People are on an increasing number of teams – I frequently hear that over the prior 12 month period most people have on average been part of 5 or 6 teams, with a significant number on 10 or more.

Trend 2: The number of these teams that the individuals considered to have been successful? – Rarely more than 5%!

While the above trends are based on informal surveys, they are broadly consistent with our own observations of team performance and match the impressions of many executives we have worked with.

So how do you measure the “success” of a team?

The simple answer “Show Me The Money” or short-term ROI is tempting but dangerous – the examples of teams achieving short-term $$ metrics that left significant long-term problems and high lost opportunity costs are all too frequent. Another variant of simple, but dangerous, success measures seen in organizations with a more “fire-fighting” culture, are where a team is tasked to “just fix the problem!”. Members of these teams often report feeling pressured to come up with quick, temporary solutions to complex problems that they know may aggravate the situation in the long-term and which leaves them feeling frustrated, disillusioned and helpless.

Here lies the challenge; it is both difficult and ambiguous to really measure how a team is performing. However, just because something is difficult to measure doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. As my colleague, Max Isaac, succinctly stated in a recent client discussion “Figuring out how to deal with ambiguity is the essence of leadership”. Leaders and teams need a more systemic approach to measuring their success

Most of the more straightforward metrics currently used relate to dollar-amounts, efficiencies achieved or milestones attained and are therefore measuring how effectively a team’s execution is related to a project, goal or strategy. Make no mistake they are necessary, indeed vital but just not sufficient to measure the complexity of the situation most teams face.

For a more complete picture, it is necessary to look at the underlying framework, or the 3Circles™ of a successful team.

(From: The Third Circle, Interactions That Drive Results).

Real success requires not only superior execution but also a sound strategy. These can only be realized with effective interaction: the often-overlooked third circle. So a gauge of overall team performance needs measures in each of these 3Circles™: Execution, Strategy and Interaction.

Execution – Did the team get the work outputs done on time, on budget, and achieve the goals as stated?

Setting SMART measures in the execution circle is rarely a problem, particularly with more teams benefiting from the discipline of current processes like Lean, Six Sigma or Agile. What I notice however, maybe because these metrics are relatively easy to establish, is that they are often set before the strategy has been fully developed.

Strategy – Although execution metrics should come from strategy, many teams spend a surprisingly short amount of time getting clarity and alignment in this area.

The challenge with measuring success in the strategy circle is usually centered on problems of communication and alignment. The frenzied rush of the annual budget cycle often results in the high-level strategy and goals being imposed rather than communicated, and with inadequate time or process to get alignment or buy in down the organization. A number of organizations are starting to use software-based approaches e.g. Success Factors Business Execution software or Ozone Performance Management software. These can help measure the gaps between strategy and execution, as well as showing the alignment of teams and leaders up and down the organization.

The good news is that even a few hours invested by a team in clarifying their mission and purpose can create clearer alignment and stronger buy-in even when the goals may have been “handed down from above”

Interaction – Success metrics in the interaction circle are inherently difficult to define, primarily due to their more subjective nature. Unfortunately since teams always identify the interaction circle as the origin of most of their issues, “difficult” is definitely not an excuse not to try!

So let’s start from the approach that success in this area is very much in the eye of the beholder. For example, even if a team has an agreed upon conflict-resolution mechanism, the actual success metric is not the presence or absence of the mechanism but whether the team members believe conflict is or isn’t being resolved.

The answer to the question “If given the choice, would you want to stay on this team?” is often cited as a good general measure on interaction, but again it depends on the organization. In a culture where people are “assigned” to the teams they must work on, it is of limited value. But as I learned on a recent visit to Google headquarters, their engineers absolutely have the right to leave a project team if they are not happy, without fear of reprisal; in this case it becomes a far more valuable interaction measure.

So it turns out that even an imperfect and subjective measure of interaction success, used consistently over time, can give useful data and provide a relative comparison of performance.

Following this “imperfect but useful” logic, we developed the Team Accelerator Index as a subjective measure of the following aspects of a team’s performance:

• Goal Setting & Alignment
• Planning Team Processes
• Assigning Responsibility
• Discovery of Data
• Handling Conflict & Making Decisions
• Learning & Feedback

(Click here to download the TA Index.)

We have been using the Team Accelerator Index for a number of years to benchmark and track both the performance of workshop teams in a learning environment and also functional or project teams in their real work environment.

In our Team Accelerator Phase 1 workshop, the workshop teams rate themselves after the 1st scored exercise. Next the teams go through an intense, experiential period of learning and further scored exercises and then rate themselves again after the 4th and final exercise, their scores generally improve significantly.

Three to six months later the real functional or project teams now participate in the Team Accelerator Phase 2 workshop, to translate the learning gained in the first session into a concrete set of understandings and ground-rules that are applicable to their particular situation. During the Phase 2 session they again use the Team Accelerator Index to benchmark their current real world performance and they are usually very aware that they have defaulted back to their old norms. This is a powerful illustration of how high performance teamwork is not a single event, but a structured ongoing process

The following table shows the typical results we have found over the last 5 years and interestingly enough they vary very little between companies, industries or levels of the organization. All scores are out of 30 points.

If you would like to try this out on your own team, click here to download the Team Accelerator Index spreadsheet.

For the second article in this series I invite your input so that we can share real life examples of how you have been able to define and measure the success of teams in your own organizations.

Specifically:
1. We would like to invite you to do the Team Accelerator Index on your own team and send us the results.
2. How do you measure your team’s success? – please send us your examples in all or any of the 3Circles™. We will select the best responses and feature these in the next article.

Simple checklists and formulas cannot guarantee effective leadership. In fact, leadership effectiveness is one of the most controversial research areas in the social sciences; the last time I checked there were over 50,000 books on leadership on Amazon.com each with its own prescription for being a good leader.

We offer no such prescription, but in our work with teams we have found that certain fundamental approaches to human interaction can be very helpful and can form the foundation for the development of leadership qualities. You will note that a key component of what we suggest involves getting honest feedback from others.

Also, it is worth stating at the outset that an underlying principle here is the belief that teams, not individuals, achieve organizational results, and that you need to know how to be an effective member of a team to be an effective leader.

Given this basic assumption that teams create results, we have identified three interconnected factors that are very helpful in building the capability in individuals to work effectively in a team:

Coherence: an accurate understanding of the areas in which one can contribute to team results along with an awareness of those areas in which one is likely to be less effective and hold the team back.

Versatility: the ability to appropriately adjust to different situations.

The Ability to Learn: how to contribute to the creation of a safe climate in a team; how to effectively give feedback to and receive feedback from team members.

This model has been successful in “turbo-charging” people’s careers, achieving substantial improvements in personal performance very quickly. The reasons for the model’s effectiveness are:

• Individuals can work on their own using scientifically validated methods (e.g. Belbin Team Role Theory) to identify their strengths and minimize the impact of their weaknesses on others.
• These three factors interact with each other to form a system that leads to continuous learning and personal improvement.
• Individuals can feel safe periodically monitoring their progress using third party observations.

1) Coherence:
We define an individual’s personal coherence level as how well our self-perception of our strengths and weaknesses matches observer assessments of our behaviors. We use Belbin Team Role Reports to assess and develop coherence. Individuals can gain an immediate “snapshot” of their own team role strengths and weaknesses and compare their self-perceived strengths and weaknesses to the behaviors that others observe. This ongoing process of increasing coherence is an important factor in creating effective team leadership.

2) Versatility: the ability to adjust situationally. Management literature is replete with research and examples of how important this capability is. In a team setting the ability to adjust situationally is vital. There is a clear link between the development of this skill and the use of Belbin Team Roles. The team roles provide an extremely effective framework for clearly understanding one’s inventory of talents. Over time, the ability to seamlessly switch from one role to another to meet specific challenges can be developed.

The “rules” around being versatile are that one should develop the ability to read situations and temporarily “shift gears” to adjust (very much like an astute driver of a car adjusting to weather conditions – we have all seen drivers that don’t!). This process is greatly facilitated by the Belbin framework, which provides an inventory of roles you can play in a team. Becoming astute at knowing what is required when and adjusting is a talent that is very valuable to a team.

Here’s a real life example: in a meeting three individuals were clearly in competition in orchestrating the activities of the group. No sooner would one of them pause than another would take the reigns. This back and forth swapping of control was clearly slowing progress. One of the three shifted from the team role of Coordinator (an individual skilled in orchestrating action in a team) to that of Team Worker (an individual skilled in “smoothing the waters” within a team). It so happened that the person who switched was adept at both roles and had the experience to quickly assess the situation and adjust his behavior to better fit the team’s needs at that time.

3. The Ability to Learn:
Creating a safe environment in which people feel free to contribute to the best of their abilities is another vital attribute of an effective team player.

It may be becoming obvious that the three team effectiveness factors discussed in this document are closely intertwined: individuals who have a solid understanding of their strengths and weaknesses (verified by third party observation) are more likely to be effective adjusting and being versatile. Individuals who are both coherent in their views of their capabilities and who are capable of adjusting to others’ needs may find it easy to acquire the skill of being non-defensive. The three skills tend to work interdependently, creating a functional and sound system for effective team interaction that drives organizational results.

How can you use the ideas in this article to help you become a more effective team leader?
Create a personal improvement plan and formulate a process to monitor your progress:

1) Assess your coherence and take steps to improve in this area.
Begin by getting third-party feedback on your behaviors and skills to discover your strengths and weaknesses along with your personal coherence level. Does what you see match up with what others see? The instrument we use for this is a Belbin Team Role Report. The data in the Belbin Report enables you to analyze why there may be differences in what you believe to be your strengths and weaknesses and how others view you. Using the feedback you receive from your observers used in the Belbin process creates a framework for dialogue with others as part of your continuous learning and improvement plan.

2) Improve your versatility – Situational awareness and an ability to adjust to different situations are hallmarks of an effective team leader. Belbin Team Role Theory provides you with a valuable framework for being deliberate in how you adjust to different situations. Once you fully understand the various team roles at which you excel, you will be better able to deliberately decide to play (or not play) certain roles. Feedback from others as part of your personal improvement plan will help you to crystallize in your mind when and where you can best contribute to team performance.

3) Increase your ability to learn (get in touch with your own defensiveness and manage it).
Practice both giving feedback to others and soliciting feedback from them and work on defensiveness (the learning killer). As you become adept at this vital team skill you will create a “virtuous cycle”: self-disclosure leads to feedback from others. Often those providing the feedback will then engage in self-disclosure themselves and seek feedback from you. This process creates a mutually reinforcing cycle that builds both individual and team strengths. Our Team Accelerator workshops provide a foundation for the development of this critical skill.

Focusing on these 3 key areas for personal development (coherence, versatility, and the ability to learn) and monitoring your progress in them will make you more effective as not only a team member, but also as a team leader.

Can you imagine the day when 3D hologram technology exists so that when you want to have virtual meetings, all participants can “sit in the same room”, even when they are located all over the world? Cisco and Musion are working on making this technology a reality, as you can see in this video:

Cisco On-Stage Holographic TelePresence Experience from Musion Systems on Vimeo.

Since it was brought to my attention, I have been discussing this video with anyone who will listen. It gives us a fascinating vision of the future. We have a lot of technological options to support virtual teams (e.g. conference calls, screen sharing programs), but virtual teams still wrestle with getting things done effectively.

You need to focus on two areas in managing meetings: the mechanistic “rules and regulations”, and the dynamic elements such as how decisions are made, how conflict is solved, and how learning occurs. In our experience, the dynamic aspect is much more important when it comes to achieving team results: it doesn’t matter how many tools you have, it’s how you use them that counts.

We are working more and more virtually these days, and our teams are incorporating new technologies into even simple meetings. Several basic concepts from our Team Accelerator workshops can help to improve your results and interactions at virtual meetings:

1) Team Size: The most crucial factor in determining whether or not you will have a productive meeting is your awareness of how to handle different numbers of meeting participants. We have already discussed this issue in a previous article (When it Comes to Teams – Size Matters!), but in summary: you are more likely to get effective results with a team size of 4-6 people. When you have a larger team size, it becomes more critical to have a high level of facilitation skills.

2) Belbin Team Mapping: A high-impact technique for getting the best out of people in a meeting, is to complete a Belbin Team Map based upon Belbin Team Roles. A visual representation of the strengths people bring to the table (as well as potential team pitfalls) is an instant productivity enhancer. It enables the most effective use of each team member, highlighting their contributions. For example, those who can best play the Coordinator team role bring to the team an ability to orchestrate problem-solving, and create consensus, while those best suited to the Monitor-Evaluator role provide the vital skill of critically examining the practicality and soundness of ideas.

3) Groundrules: It is especially important in virtual meetings to have very clear groundrules on how the meeting will run. For example: starting the meeting on time, being connected to the conference call before the meeting starts, and carefully managing the amount of social discussion that inevitably occurs at the beginning of meetings.

4) The Three “P”s: In virtual meetings, using The Three “P”s (Purpose, Process, Preparation) is absolutely essential. We have dealt with this topic in depth in a recent article, where we discussed using The Three “P”s as a flexible technique for meeting preparation to increase productivity in meetings.

5) Balance of Participation: How many meetings have you attended (especially virtual meetings!) where a few individuals take up most of the meeting “air-time”, while the rest of the meeting participants contribute very little to the conversation or to the problem-solving that is required to reach sound decisions? Usually, it is up to the people playing the Coordinator and Team Worker roles to use active inquiry skills to get out all of the potential ideas from all meeting participants. Having only a few people who dominate a meeting, severely limits the amount of useful data available to a team.

6) Divergent/Convergent: It is as important in virtual meetings as in face-to-face meetings to have a careful management of the right amount of divergent thinking (e.g. brainstorming) versus convergent thinking (e.g. prioritizing and making decisions). We recommend conscientiously starting with divergent thinking to get out all of the ideas before moving into a convergent mode.

7) Benefits and Concerns (“Bs and Cs”): Doing post-meeting “Bs and Cs” checks on meeting effectiveness is absolutely essential at the end of each virtual meeting. In virtual meetings, things can go awry much more easily than in live meetings as there is no face-to-face contact. You may not really know how people are reacting to ideas and to each other. It is our experience that concerns will be brought up at the end of meetings in a five minute “Bs and Cs” check that may not have been voiced during the meeting. Only by diligently employing post-meeting checks can you make sure that your virtual meetings are not steadily deteriorating.

During our Team Accelerator workshops, participants internalize how to effectively use these ideas in their organizations, producing an instantaneous improvement in meeting effectiveness. When individuals from various levels of the organization implement these concepts, the learnings develop into new and permanent organizational norms.

Congratulations to Tuck School of Business (Dartmouth College) for placing 2nd in the top business schools in the world on the latest ranking from The Economist.

Source: A Pecking Order for MBAs at The Economist

Tuck is at the forefront amongst business schools in focusing on self-awareness as a foundation for effective leadership.

We are very pleased to work with Tuck, providing them with support in using our Belbin Team Role methodology.

A central tenet of the application of Belbin Team Role Theory is playing to strengths and managing weaknesses. Developing versatility in how your top team roles are deployed situationally is a skill that can be learned over time and can contribute significantly to your effectiveness as a leader.

The Belbin Team Role methodology has demonstrated over time that all 9 roles are required on a team for the team to be effective. The secret is for you to have an in-depth understanding of your roles, how to improve them, and when to play them. Here’s how you can be more effective:

2) Weaknesses related to the roles in which you are least likely to succeed; your least preferred roles. These are typically 3 or 4 roles in which you are not likely to be very effective. It is surprising how many people do not have a good fix on their weakest roles when we first analyze their “roles portfolio”. Once recognized (and accepted!) it is relatively easy to develop strategies to ensure that you do not set yourself up for failure by trying to fulfill the tasks that are usually associated with these roles.

High-performance teams over time gain highly developed skills in knowing what combination of roles fit the best when they are working in a one-on-one scenario or with larger groups of people. For a team to truly grow, it is helpful if members monitor and improve their team role performance as part of a personal development program and share the results with other team members.

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things”
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
- Peter Drucker

The two quotes shown above by Peter Drucker may be instructive in helping us to understand how to use the advice given in lengthy tomes written on how one should prepare properly for meetings. We are instructed to issue agendas ahead of time, following up on action items, keeping minutes, etc.

We note a vast difference between the practices employed in our various client organizations. Some work at a frenetic pace with people jumping from one meeting to the next without a break; others appear to be far more organized. In some organizations the norm (a group habit) is to employ lengthy standardized checklists, which call for extensive pre-meeting, in-meeting and post-meeting “rules and regulations”.

When elaborate meeting preparations have become the organizational norm, astute managers intuitively know that they are doing things “right” instead of doing the “right things”. On the other hand we have seen the opposite: where there is no preparation and people simply show up at meetings, maybe on time, maybe not. Invariably when one asks about meeting effectiveness in these cultures there is an outpouring of frustration and complaint at the waste of productivity that occurs in meetings.

The reality is that the workplace has changed; the pace of activity in organizations has increased with people rushing from meeting to meeting. Meetings are getting shorter and are often done virtually. We also have much better technology allowing us to exchange information more quickly and effectively. This creates a challenge: we know we should be doing a better job at preparing for and running meetings, and yet we have less time to do so and intuitively know the “by the book method” is not a practical solution.

Using rigid standards for all meetings is misguided. Versatility is recognized as a valuable leadership skill. We need to be versatile in how we run our meetings. After all, as much as we hate to admit it, meetings are where true creativity in organizations needs to occur. Typically meetings are where we make important decisions and deal with important problems. In your organization, just how well do you generate creativity, make sound, timely decisions and solve problems?

A way of employing versatility is to use a simple framework and adapt it to the situation. We call it The Three “P”s. Keeping things simple, but making sure The Three “P”s are covered is the secret to better meetings.

1. Purpose: What you would like to get out of your meeting. The purpose must be stated as an outcome, not a process at the beginning of the meeting. Thus, “reviewing the product development plan” does not cut it as a purpose. “A high level documented plan of the website redesign” does. Ensuring that the purpose is stated as an outcome drives a goal orientation. It also provides a point of reference at the end of the meeting that can be used to assess whether the meeting was successful or not. Our experience suggests that being able to do this is very difficult for most people. Have a look at the goals for the last few meetings you attended, if they were stated at all.

2. Process: keeping things simple and adjusting the process to the purpose of the meeting is a skill that drives huge increases in productivity. There are some basics that apply to most meetings:

• When solving difficult problems, start with divergent thinking (brainstorming for example), then move on to convergent thinking (analyzing and grouping ideas, and creating plans). Then make sure decisions are made and not needlessly deferred.
• Use the Team Accelerator Index: periodically evaluate your team in areas such as goal setting & alignment, assigning responsibility, handling conflict and making decisions at the end of the meeting. This creates an environment of continuous improvement (how many badly run meetings do you attend on a regular basis with no discussion at the end of the value of the meeting?)
• Use a “Parking Lot” in the meeting to catch good ideas and actions that come up as discussion points, but don’t relate to the purpose of the meeting. Using this technique helps keep the meeting on track and at the same time captures good ideas for further consideration later.
• Create a norm of discussing “Benefits & Concerns” (“Bs and Cs”) at the end of meetings: a quick check-in with the team to see what worked (Benefits) and what could be improved upon next time (Concerns). Once this practice becomes a norm it becomes obvious when this step can be skipped. For example: very standard status meetings that are productive have been in place for a long time and have been fine tuned to be as effective as they possibly can be. A “golden rule” that we employ as part of the B’s and C’s process at the end of the meeting is a check back to see if the desired outcome specified under Purpose has been produced. If it has not, a short discussion is held and actions are identified to improve on this meeting, creating a culture of continuous learning.
• You may also want to check out our article, Treat Meetings As an Ongoing Process, Not Isolated Events, for further ideas on establishing more productive meetings that can help your organization become more effective in executing its strategy.

3. Preparation: adjust pre-planning effort to fit the requirements of the meeting.

• Many people like to have time to reflect prior to a meeting and to understand why they’re attending it. When we survey our clients, there are invariably people who find that establishing purpose and process on the spot in the meeting is very uncomfortable. They contribute much better to the discussion if they have some time to mull over the issues in their minds before the meeting. What one finds is that often participants spend a large portion of a meeting just trying to figure out exactly what they are trying to accomplish.
• If you’re having a quick meeting: send out a brief email with the proposed Purpose, Process and Preparation in the body of the email. Attach any documents that should be looked over before the meeting. Mention other prework that would make the meeting more productive.
• If you’re having a longer meeting, (e.g. a half-day strategy meeting): adjust the amount of time you spend putting together a good communication. It should provide the right content to make the meeting a success. You probably need much more content than you would for a 45-minute meeting to touch base on how to address who is going to attend the next product development meeting. You may consider preparing a detailed outline as shown in the example below.

We have built this system into our organization as a standard; for all meetings the organizer has to deal with The Three “P”s in a manner that is most appropriate to their management style and the demands of the meeting. This can be as simple as 3 bullets in a quick email to meeting participants or a much more detailed planning document.

The Three “P”s System establishes a flexible approach that maintains high standards of interaction at all levels in the organization. Our experience shows that teams that employ the methods described in this article can reduce meeting times by up to 30% and produce better results.