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Team Series

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Riding it Out or Reinventing

by Ron Potter

“U.S. Companies Lose Hope for Quick Rebound From Covid-19”  This was a headline in the Wall Street Journal the other day.  Buried in the body of the article was the statement, “Executives who were bracing for a months-long disruption are now thinking in terms of years. Their job has changed from riding it out to reinventing.”  On the same day (unrelated to the WSJ article) this cartoon appeared

I thought the cartoon was very appropriate because I’ve seen so many companies in my consulting career say they’re innovative but act like the cartoon.

Leaders Support Innovation

Leaders are not usually the innovators!  Good leaders support the innovators on their teams.

Let’s take a look at how innovation happens from a Team Leadership Culture framework.

Team Innovation

Team innovation can be the most difficult to pull off but at the same time the most rewarding as well.  However, it does take a few prerequisites for it to work.

Team Size

Many studies have determined that the best size of a decision-making team is seven, plus or minus two.

Once you get above nine people on a team, the ability to reach commitment on any given topic is greatly diminished.  There are just too many factions possible with 10+ people.

If you have fewer than five team members, it’s too easy for the team to form factions of three people vs. one person.  Even though that one person may have the most innovative idea, they will feel outnumbered and it’s too easy for the faction of three to treat them as an outlier or put pressure on them to go along with the majority.

Either way, the dynamics may be killing the innovation.

Keep decision-making teams to seven people, plus or minus two.

Team Attributes

TREC is the outline that brings the right attributes to an innovative team.

Truth.  Being able to speak the truth to each other without fear of reprisal is necessary for innovative teams.

Respect.  Each team member must be self-aware enough to know that their perspective is only a perspective.  It is not “the truth”.  It is not the only way of looking at an issue.  It’s only their perspective and each member has a valid perspective.  If the team trusts that all perspectives are valid, innovation is more likely to happen.

Elegance.   Coming up with an innovative solution that is also elegant (simple, understandable, actionable) is the best solution.

Commitment.  If the team is able to share the truth with respect, commitment can happen.  Even if your perspective was different (or even opposing) to the final direction, commitment means that no matter what, you express your commitment to the solution.  You’re able to do this because you were a member of the team that took all the perspectives into account and “committed” to a team solution.

Team Dynamics

If innovation is the goal, team dynamics becomes extremely important.  Teams have been conditioned to come together for a given amount of time (usually an hour), encouraged to follow the agenda, and finally, make decisions depending on the discussion or reports.  This feels very structured and efficient.  It’s just not good for innovation.

Innovative teams have a different dynamic.

  • They will start as a whole team to discuss the areas of possible innovation.
  • All the perspectives are shared, at least in an outline form.
  • The team then breaks up into smaller teams.  These can be as small as two individuals but should never be larger than three.
  • Deep Work is required.  Deep Work requires spending distraction-free time on the topic, pushing your cognitive capabilities to the limit.
  • Return to the full team with this new Deep Work perspective to hear what we’re learning and then discuss directions we could possibly head.
  • Rinse and Repeat.  Continue this large team, small team (maybe different small teams with each iteration) dynamics until the team begins to zero in on an innovative approach.
Team Decisions

Remember that the word “decide” means that you narrow your options down to a small number of choices (preferably two) and then you put one of those options to death.  You kill it.  You eliminate it.  You stop spending resources on it.  The commitment to the team direction should be powerful enough to put all of your resources towards the chosen innovative approach.

A Culture of Innovation

Moving the culture of an organization towards innovation usually centers around one word.

Decide!

As we’ve talked about the word “decide” lately, I hope it has become clear that the word decide means that you put one option to death in order to put your resources toward a different option.

Leaders and leadership teams will often decide on a direction but neglect to let the organization below them know that they’ve decided not to spend resources on other options.

Organizations are full of people who love the security of their job.  They’ve spent years learning the job, getting better at the job, and feeling secure that they can go to work every day and do the job.  They’re “secure.”

But, if you are now saying to them, “We’re heading in a different direction and we don’t know yet where it will all lead.”  They can often feel scared or at least insecure.  They may or may not mention this insecurity but they will wonder

  • Do I have the skill set to do the new job?
  • Will my job, group, division be eliminated?
  • Will I be asked to relocate to a different department or location?
  • Am  I back to ground zero in terms of my skills and worth to the company?

Without any clarity on these and other topics, people will tend to come to work every day and continue to do what they’ve always done.  They’ll seek security in doing the known rather than be lost in the unknown!

Open, Transparent, Humble

In times like these (which means now, in our current environment) it’s important that leadership is open with the organization.  Let them know everything that you know.

Be Transparent.  If people feel like they’re not getting the whole story, they’ll either go back to what they’ve always done or abandon ship.  Your best people, the ones you need the most will abandon the ship first.

Be humble.  Don’t give them the impression that you have all the answers when you don’t.  Let them know that you and the team are doing their best with uncertain circumstances.  Taking this approach will also bring forth more innovative ideas that you wouldn’t otherwise hear.

 

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Team Elements: Summary

by Ron Potter

We’ve just finished our series on building great teams.  Years ago I named my consulting company Team Leadership Culture, TLC for short.  Over 30 years of consulting work plus another 20 years in the engineering/construction industry and software development I experienced this combination to be the winning formula for great success.

Team

Build a great team first.  While great leaders certainly increase the opportunity for success, if they don’t work together as a team, the final result is always a failure.  Build the dynamics of a great team first.

Leadership

If you’ve built a great team, increasing leadership skills will greatly enhance your opportunity for success.  If your goal is to do something really great or overcome great difficulties, add powerful leadership skills to great team dynamics.  Next week we’re going to look at these two elements in combination and you’ll also see great overlap that makes it difficult to accomplish one without the other.

Culture

There is plenty of research that companies and teams with great cultures rock!  Starting in a couple of weeks we’re going to look at the elements of great culture.  But, it’s important to note that it’s impossible to build a great culture without great teams and great leadership.

Great Teams

So let’s recap the elements of great teams.  I use Aristotle’s “Pursuit of Happiness” as the model of great teams.  Aristotle describes four levels of happiness.  Level 4 is the highest of the four pursuits and the one that Aristotle says all humanity seeks.  He describes it with five words: Truth, Love, Purpose, Beauty, and Unity.  I have not concentrated on Purpose because I believe business teams usually know their purpose.  However, if the purpose of the team is in question, that must be corrected first or all else fails.

I’ve also translated the four remaining words into terms that are better understood in a business environment and also make them easier to remember.

Truth (Trust)

Great teams know how to speak the truth with each other and also view their environment in a very truthful way.  We have numerous stories of corporate failures when the leader or the team just doesn’t believe the external environment is going to change enough to affect them.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”  Tom Watson Sr., IBM, 1943.

“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”  Henry Ford

On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors: John Z. DeLorean’s Look Inside the Automotive Giant

Speak the truth about your industry and customers.
Speak the truth with each other.  Great teams are built on great people who have entirely different perspectives.  Figure out how to share those different perspectives with each other and speak the truth.

Respect (Love)

This combination of Trust and Respect has been observed and chronicled throughout history.  Modern research reveals that psychological safety is essential for great team performance.  Psychological Safety is bringing Truth and Respect to the team.

Elegance (Beauty)

Elegance or beauty is all about simplicity and clarity.  Most leaders and teams think of organization structure when they think of elegance.  Do they have the best structure that invokes simplicity and clarity to get the job done?

Many of the leaders I’ve worked with through the years have asked me which organizational structure is the best.  They are never really satisfied with my answer because I tell them it doesn’t make any difference.  Organizational structures are simply lines on a chart to help direct large numbers of people to accomplish great things.  But all organizational structures are artificial.  They’re just a means to organize work and people.  Every company I’ve ever worked for is in the process of shifting from one org. structure to another.  No structure is perfect and no structure last forever.

Work on simplicity and clarity regardless of the structure.

Commitment (Unity)

Getting to unity is the ultimate goal of any team.  Commitment is the outward expression of team unity.  I’ve selected the word commitment because of this outward expression and because it brings all the elements together as TREC.  Hopefully thinking of TREC reminds you of the real word TREK which is defined as a long arduous journey.  Using TREC to build a team is a long arduous journey but it’s well worth the effort.

Always the Engineer

I graduated from the University of Michigan with an engineering degree.  I guess I still think like an engineer regardless of the task: Great structures, great software, great teams.  So here is my engineering formula for building great teams with TREC:

[ (T x R) + E ] x C = Effective Teams

Truth times Respect, plus Elegance, all times Commitment equals Effective Teams.

Let’s take a snap quiz.  Pick a team you’re a member of and score each element of TREC on a zero to five basis.   What’s the maximum score for the equation?  [ (5 x 5) + 5] x 5 = 150

Least Impactful Element

Which element has the least impact on the overall score?  Elegance!  Let’s say you score a 5 on all elements except Elegance which is a zero.  Your total score would be 130.  Increasing  Elegance from zero to five increases the overall score from 125 to 150.  And yet, when things aren’t going well, one of the first things I see leaders do is change the org. structure.

Most Impactful Element

Which element has the most impact?  Commitment!  You can score the maximum on Truth, Respect, and Elegance but if your Commitment score is zero, your overall score is ZERO!  Just increasing it from zero to three improves your effectiveness score from zero to 90!  Build Commitment!

Team Effectiveness

It’s hard to improve any one element at a time.  There is no way you will build commitment without truth and respect.  Respect will never be realized without speaking the truth and committing to the team.  Building teams is a TREC, a long arduous journey.  But when I talk with those of us who have grown gray over many years, our best memories are the great teams we worked with and what we accomplished together.

Take the journey.  It’s worth it!

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Team Elements – Commitment: Decision Process

by Ron Potter

Understanding and using the right process is one key to decision making.  It also helps assure that you’ll reach full commitment to the decision rather than compliance.

There have been a number of decision types identified but one simple list includes:

  • Unilateral
  • Consultative
  • Consensus
  • Unanimous

Unanimous

Leave that to the courtroom.  It doesn’t really happen in a corporate environment.

Unilateral

This decision type has the advantages of speed, simplicity, and clarity.  However, it will waste a groups intelligence, invites resistance and lowers motivation.  It should be used when speed and time are paramount and there is a real danger in not making a decision immediately.  It can also be used when one person or team’s decision has little effect or impact on another person or team.

But the real cost of Unilateral decisions occurs with wasted time because of lack of clarity.  I have observed team time wasted by putting a “unilateral” decision on the agenda for a team meeting.  Unilateral decisions should be made and then the rest of the team informed.  Informing is more effective through other means (memos, emails, reports, etc) than making it a topic of a team meeting.  Once a decision hits the agenda, it is assumed or at least treated as if it is up for questioning, discussion or debate.  If a decision is unilateral, do not put it on the agenda!

Consensus

After observing and working with leadership teams for thirty years, I am convinced that business teams never make consensus decisions.  They may talk as if it was a consensus decision but most decisions are unilateral or consultative.  Don’t kid yourself.

There may be one or two decisions that must be made by consensus because they are so crucial to the future health and well being of the corporation but you cannot run a business by consensus.

Consultative

Almost all decisions are or should be consultative.  However, one major key to consultative decisions is that there is a clear decision owner.   I have seen hours wasted in team meetings trying to make a decision when the real issue that is being sorted out is who really owns the decision.  Unfortunately, that issue is either ignored or never stated out loud.  Consultative decisions must have a clear decision owner.  Sort that out first before you continue with the decision-making process.

The second most important aspect of good consultative decisions is a clear process.  The consultative decision leader or a good facilitator must help the team through a good process that includes more listening than talking.  One of the best processes to learn is the concept of Prudence.

Prudence

Prudence is one of those ancient words that doesn’t get much use today and most people would tell me that it doesn’t fit in today’s modern business world.  However, listen to the definition of Prudence:

“The perfected ability to make right decisions.”

As a leadership team, your goal is to perfect your ability to make “right” decisions!  Learn to follow the process of Prudence.

The Prudence process is described as Deliberate, Decide, Do.

  • Deliberate well.  Most teams either don’t do it well or skimp on the deliberation process in order to get to a quick decision.
  • Decide but be sure to use the proper decision type.
  • Do.  Execution of the decision will be much crisper, clearer and faster if the first two steps are properly followed.

Debate, Discuss, Dialogue

Deliberation can be in the form of debate, discussion or dialogue.  Let’s take a quick look at each:

  • Debate.  If you’ve ever been on a debate team you know that the goal is to win.  Often debaters are asked to take a position that they themselves don’t believe is true but the goal of winning remains.  Debate creates winners and losers.  Commitment will not be achieved when a portion of the team feels like they lost.
  • Discussion.  The idea of discussion may sound more civilized but the root word for discussion is the same root word for percussion.  In other words, he who can beat his drum the loudest will win the discussion.  Once again, discussion creates winners and losers.
  • Dialogue.  Dialogue is part of the Socratic method.  The Greek origins are “through discourse or talk.”  The Unabridged Dictionary says to “elicit a clear and consistent expression.”

Dialogue begins with eliciting, questioning, listening.  Everyone must be heard and understood.  (See my short book review of On Dialogue by David Bohm).

If you do a great job of deliberation, using dialogue, decisions will be made easier.  A decision will not only be made easier, but there will also be a full commitment to the decisions that are reached.  This happens even if individuals were opposed to the decision in the first place.  Dialogue works through those differences and allows teams to get beyond compliance with full commitment.

Once full commitment has been achieved, decision execution happens.  No revisiting.  No dragging of feet.  No sabotage.  Just clean, crisp execution.

Get to full commitment by identifying your decision type and using a good process to reach commitment!

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Team Elements – Commitment: Diversity

by Ron Potter

We’re looking at the element of Commitment in our Truth, Respect, Elegance, Commitment (TREC) journey to great teams.

Last week we talked about the trust required in great teams.  Trust of purpose, leader, and team members.  In building that trust we must look at the diversity of thinking and points of view.

Word of Caution

During my career, I have been asked to either lead a “diversity” effort or coach the person who was leading the effort.   The first thing that struck me was that diversity was defined by outward appearance.  Race and gender were the two most common ones but any number of characteristics can be identified.

Inclusion, not Diversity

One of my first reactions was that it shouldn’t be called “Diversity training” it should be named “Inclusion training.”  Because the name identified it as diversity, it seemed like the curriculum was based on emphasizing the diversity rather than turning it to inclusion.

As I got to know the people who were to be part of the process, I noticed that two members thought similar to each other even though they were of a different race and gender.  While another pair almost never saw eye-to-eye even though they were the same race and gender.

Diversity of Thinking

Great teams have learned to respect different points of view and how to work with those differences as simply differences.  Not good or bad.  Not right or wrong.  Just differences.

In my car the other day, I heard an old song by Dave Mason that hits this one right on the head.  The words are:

There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy
There’s only you and me and we just disagree

No good.  No bad.  Just disagreement.  Let’s start with the fact that we just see things differently.

Brain Science

Why is that?  Why can we observe the same thing and yet it seems like we see things differently?

One of the tools that have helped answer that question is the functional MRI (fMRI).  The MRI has been around for years but it simply took a snapshot.  The fMRI takes video!  We can actually see movement within the brain.

When our eyes observe an event, the image isn’t simply recorded on our brain and then stored on our “hard drive.”  There are two major flaws in believing that’s how we see the world around us.

Brain Processing Centers

First, are the known processing centers of our brain.

  • Values
  • Emotions
  • Goals
  • Beliefs
  • Ideas
  • Memories
  • Pain
  • Stress
  • Experiences

There are somewhere over twelve processing centers known today and many scientists believe there may be at least twice that many.

What we know from the fMRI is that when an image enters our eyeball and the optic nerve, it is split into at least 127 million bits of information and dispersed throughout the processing centers named above.  The image is then funneled through the ancient processing centers of motion detection and object recognition before being “reassembled” into coherent perception.

Think about that for a minute.  You and I can watch the same event.  But, because I have very different emotions, goals, beliefs, memories. etc. the image that is “reassembled” in my brain can and will be different from the image reassembled in your brain.  We see different things!

Courtroom judges will tell you that if two eyewitnesses tell the same story, the judge knows there has been collusion because “no two eyewitnesses ever see the same thing!”  We see things differently!  Just because someone has a whole different take on a situation don’t mean they’re not telling the “truth.”  “There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy.  There’s only you and me and we just disagree.”

Memory is Not a Hard drive

Because we’ve been using personal computers now for several decades, we’ve come to think that our memory functions much the same as computer memory.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  When we enter data onto a computer storage device or in the cloud, we can depend on it to be exactly the same when we retrieve it in the future.  However, our human memory doesn’t work that way.  Not only is it modified by the processing centers that we just talked about, but new experiences are also constantly modifying our memory from the moment it’s stored.  Our memory is never an accurate representation of what was first stored in our brain.

Beliefs and Assumption

Because of this science-based understanding, we should start conversations about decisions and difficult topics by having everyone share their beliefs and assumptions.  They’re all valid.  It will help you understand where others are coming from.  It will help them understand your position.  It will actually give the team a great foundation to begin working toward a position of commitment.

Appreciate diverse thinking!  It’s powerful!  It gives us a broader range of perspectives and helps us move forward together.  Every point of view is an accurate one.

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Team Elements – Commitment: Building Trust

by Ron Potter

Building Commitment from Unity is the last element of our TREC to build a great team.  Remember that TREC is our acronym for:

Building Commitment requires the following three pieces:

  1. Trust in Purpose, Leader, and Team Colleagues
  2. Diverse Points of View
  3. Good Process

Purpose

Building Trust in the purpose of the team can sometimes be difficult.  Often team members don’t feel they have any power to set the purpose of the team or even tweak it slightly.  It seems to be dictated from on high.

It’s important to note that you always have a choice.

  • You can go along with the purpose even if you don’t believe it.
  • You can decide that the purpose of the team doesn’t align with your personal values or direction and make a move.
  • You can be a part of building a team that’s open to the discussion about the purpose of the team to help align it with personal and corporate goals.
Going Along

Going along, even when you don’t believe in the goal can be a dangerous route.  Going along will make it difficult getting out of bed in the morning and headed out to a job you don’t believe in.  Not speaking up when you don’t agree with the purpose and direction has been directly linked to some of the more horrific events in life.  Be very careful about making this choice, it will affect your well being and may affect the well being of others.

Make a Move

Making a move can also be a difficult decision.  The need for security plays a big part in our lives and making a move means leaving what we know, even if we’re uncomfortable and moving into the unknown.  The unknown is always scary.  However, I have seen this play out in my life and the lives of many of the people I’ve worked with through the years.  If you need to make that move, make it!  Dealing with the scariness of the unknown is much better in the end that living with the consequences of staying in a place that isn’t right for you.

Build a Great Team

Being part of a great team gives us much better options in life.  Building a great team starts with being able to speak the truth with each other.

All good teams start difficult discussions by being open to everyone’s beliefs and assumptions about the topic.  When we understand that we’re not necessarily speaking a “truth” but only our beliefs and assumptions based on our unique lifetime of experiences, it’s easier to state a position that may be very different from the expected purpose.

By starting with beliefs and assumptions, teams can often reach a unique solution that everyone sees as positive and leads to team commitment.  However, keep in mind that this process may lead you back to options one or two, going along or making a move.  I don’t believe going along is ever a good option but if it leads to the need to make a move, it will be much easier to accomplish and will happen with the support of many team members which will make the decision much easier to make and execute.

Trusted Leader

Having a trusted leader for the team is also key to developing commitment.  There are eight great attributes of trusted leaders but the first and most powerful one is Humility.  It almost seems like a paradox or dichotomy but humble leaders are very confident and have great self-esteem.  They just don’t wield either one of them like a sword.  They remain very open to listening and learning from anyone and any circumstance.  Research confirms time and time again, that the number one reason people leave a position is because of their boss.  If you’re the leader, develop into a trusted leader.  If you’re a team member, mentor your boss (mentors are not simply the older person).

Trusted Colleagues

Trusted colleagues possess two great qualities:  They are truthful and they are respectful.  This combination of truth and respect can be found throughout history and has a great biblical foundation.  This series of Team Building started with those two attributes, truth, and respect!

Committed

Teams must be committed to the purpose, the leader, and their colleagues in order to build great teams.  When you see it in action, there’s nothing quite like it.  And, there’s nothing more thrilling than being a part of it.  If you’re not experiencing that kind of joy in your life, figure out why you or others are not committed to the purpose, leader, and members of your team.  Today!

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Team Elements: Progress

by Ron Potter

We just wrapped up the Elegance Summary for building great teams.

You may recall that we started with Aristotle’s Level Four Happiness.  He described this level as being the highest form of happiness that every human being innately desires.  The words he used were Truth, Love, Beauty, and Unity.  There was also a fifth word in the middle.  That word is Purpose.  I haven’t spent a lot of time on Purpose because my assumption is that business teams know their purpose.  But, if there is not a purpose for the team or the understanding of the purpose is not aligned across the team, this must be fixed first before the other elements of great teams can be effective.

TREC

I’ve altered Aristotle’s terms of Truth, Love, Beauty, and Unity to Truth, Respect, Elegance, and Commitment.  The reason for the change is to use language better suited to the business environment and to put together an acronym that may help you remember the list more easily.

Truth is Truth

The word truth doesn’t need to be changed.  Truth is truth.  Sort of.  Each of us builds our truth based on experiences, environment, history, beliefs and others.  It’s important that a team share their beliefs and assumptions so that truth is understood.

Love is Respect

I had one business leader tell me not to use the word love in their meeting.  They were tough-minded business people and the emotion of love did not come into their decision making.  The love that Aristotle was talking about was the Greek word agape.  It has nothing to do with emotion, it is related to respect and how you treat others.

Beauty is Elegance

Beauty may be the hardest one to understand in a business context.  In the business world aesthetic’s are not the main issue although companies like Apple have proved that devices that are beautiful also have business appeal.  But here I’m talking about simple, elegant, efficient, unambiguous business practices.  Does your business run elegantly?

TREK is TREC

An acronym to help you remember.  We all know the word TREK.  The definition is “a long arduous journey.”  Building a great team is a long arduous journey.  It doesn’t happen overnight and you’re always striving to reach your destination.  I hope TREC will help you remember that it’s a journey and that it’s made up of Truth, Respect, Elegance, and Commitment.

Unity is Commitment

Our next several blog posts will be about building unity on a team.  Real unity!  Not just nodding of heads and not just compliance, but a deep commitment to a unified path and direction.  You won’t build a team without the first three, Truth, Respect, and Elegance but without deep Commitment, the team won’t accomplish the goals of the purpose.  Unity and Commitment take hard work, even as part of a long, arduous journey.

Request

I have a request to make.  Most of you have been on this blog journey with me right from the start several years ago.  I appreciate and cherish the fact that you’re still here reading and commenting.  My goal all along was to build a community of readers where we could share concepts together.

My request to you is to share this resource with others.  Whether they be colleagues, friends, family, someone you’re mentoring or even a broadcast resource that you use.  Would you help spread the word and share these blogs with others?  While our numbers have increased at a steady pace since the beginning, I would like to see them increase at a higher rate.

Thank you so much.  I appreciate you being with me on this TREC.

Ron

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Team Elements – Elegance: Summary

by Ron Potter

We’ve looked at three of the four sections that will help us build great teams: Truth, Respect, and now Elegance.  This week’s blog is a summary of the Elegance portion that has been written about over the last three weeks.

Elegance is made up of Simplicity, Focus, and Role Clarification.

Simplicity

Simplicity:  We all know the old adage KISS, Keep It Simple, Stupid.  I love old adages because they’re built on truth, even if they are a little rude like this one.  But the point is right on target.  Keep It Simple!  Once we start adding complexity to an issue, it becomes less elegant, more prone to mistakes, missteps, miss understandings, and missed results.  Our human brain is lazy and overloaded.  It looks for ways to simplify things so we have the capacity to understand and deal with complexity.  The more we simplify the greater chance the team has to perform together.

Focus

Books have been written about how our modern technology is not only destroying our focus but is destroying our ability to focus.  That’s scary to me.  But, like any muscle or ability, we can enhance that ability through dedication and practice.  You’re not going to be in good physical shape without regular exercise.  You’re not going to be a good reader without reading on a regular and disciplined base.  You’re not going to be focused without regular exercising of focus.

In every case, the concept is simple but the execution is difficult.

  • Go out for that walk, run, or bicycle ride on a regular basis.  Get to the gym several days per week.  Seems simple enough.  But it takes dedication and determination
  • Pick up that book rather than turn on the TV or flip through social media or complete just two more games on your phone.  Seems simple enough.  But, there we are, watching TV, finally looking up from our social media not realizing that we just spent an hour.  Time is more valuable than money.  We can always earn more money.  But, once you spend that hour, ten minutes or even ten seconds on something frivolous, it’s gone forever.  You’ll never get it back.  Focus.

Role Clarification

This one is a negative, not a positive.  While simplicity and focus are things that will greatly enhance teams, demanding that everyone stay in their “swim lane” or just do their role well and don’t worry about everyone else is a negative when it comes to great teams.  Yes, good teams rely on everyone knowing and doing their roles well but great teams tend to blend and mix thinking and perspectives in order to come up with the best solution.  Great teams function more like orchestras where the parts blend well together and are much richer and stronger in harmony they are as individuals.

Elegance

Elegance is the third leg of our team journey.  It’s an important and positive leg but is more subtle than the previous two.  When we’re not sharing the truth or showing respect, it’s obvious.  When our Elegance is slipping it is not always to see it happening right away.  Stay diligent on this one.  Look for the signs of Elegance waning.  Build an Elegant team.  It’s powerful!

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Team Elements – Elegance: Role Clarification

by Ron Potter

This will be our last blog post on the Elegance section of TREC: Truth, Respect, Elegance, and Commitment.  We’ll summarize these three elements in our next blog as you begin to see the entire journey to great team development.

This post, a subtopic of Elegance, is about Role Clarification but I want to start with one of those statements that seem to have gone viral in corporate speak.

Stay in your Swim Lane

If you’ve been in the corporate world over the last several years, you’ve probably heard this term.  I’m not sure who started this cliche but it sure wasn’t someone who knew how to build great teams.  This is NOT one of my favorite sayings.  Every time I hear this statement it’s in reference to someone who has:

  • crossed the boundary
  • stepped on someone else’s toes
  • “presumed” to know better than the “expert” how things should or should not be done

Whatever the reason for the irritation, it sends a message that everyone is supposed to do their own job and somehow that will make the team effort successful.  This message reveals a couple of beliefs at the core of team building.

  1. Build the right set of skills, do your job and everything will be just fine.
  2. No one has the skills or experience to question the “expert.”  Questioning the expert questions their competency.

There are some fallacies in those beliefs.

  • Skills and competencies are what will make a team and a corporation successful.  WRONG!
    The reason this belief exists is that most corporations depend on the measurement of skills and competencies as the measure of internal success.  Promotions, pay levels, and other rewards are based on these measurements.  Research and experience points to the fact the good people skills create more success than job skills and competencies.  It’s just that people skills, leadership style, and team engagement are harder to measure.
  • Other research shows that new creative, innovative, breakthrough ideas almost always come not from the expert but from the person who has a different perspective altogether.

Orchestras and Choirs

Teams should function more like an orchestra.  If you want a quick read about what that looks like, try Maestro: A Surprising Story about leading by listening by Roger Nierenberg.

I’ve been a choir member off and on for years.  I just love the harmonizing of the various parts.  When it all comes together in a crescendo, it just sends a chill down your spine and sometimes brings tears to your eyes.  Hearing and being a part of a 12, 50 or 100 member choir as they bring their voices together is a wonderful experience.

Rehearsals

Rehearsals are very different and a great learning experience.

  • The leader expects each section to know their part and perform it well
  • The leader will often stop us to say, “This section is not working, let’s listen to each part then put it all back together again.”
  • Often we’re instructed to tone our section down a bit so that the overall piece can be better understood.  “Basses, tone it down.  The sopranos are carrying the melody at this point and you’re drowning them out.  The audience can’t hear the melody.”
  • “Now basses, pick up the energy and the lead from the sopranos and bring it together with the same enthusiasm.”

The orchestra conductor leads us.  He expects us to know our part and corrects us when we don’t do it well.  But when we do it together it sounds awesome!

Business teams don’t usually function in this manner.  “Stay in your swim lanes” or “Know your job assignment and do it well.”  Seldom do I hear team leaders asking a section to tone it down, work at something other than your optimum rate, blend with the team, pick up on their enthusiasm and build something great together!

Build Team

Knowing our roles is important.  Building a great team means bringing it all together, not just maximizing each part!

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Elegance: Focus
BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Elegance: Focus

by Ron Potter

We’re working through the Elegance section of a TREC.  TREC stands for Truth, Respect, Elegance, and Commitment.  These are the four elements that make up great teams.

Elegance consists of Simplicity (our last blog post) Focus and Role Clarification.  This blog post will explore Focus.

Focus

Lack of Focus is another issue that keeps teams from becoming Elegant in their approach.

I’m a baby boomer.   The Beatles didn’t come on the scene until I was in my teens.  I started a microcomputer software company when Microsoft was still in Albuquerque, NM before moving it to Seattle.  I owned one of the first Blackberry’s on the market.

I’m not sharing all of this just to demonstrate that I’m old, I’m setting the stage by saying that I’ve seen a lot of changes in my life and career.  But what I have not seen through those many years of changes is a population so distracted as I see today.  I watched a person walk straight into a lamp pole while being distracted on their phone.  When I’m on the highway I can immediately notice a driver several cars ahead of me when they turn their attention to their phone rather than the road and traffic.  We are losing our focus people.  Even scarier, we’re losing our ability to focus.

One of the more profound books I’ve read over the last several years is Deep Work, Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport.  Cal gives us research, reason, and ideas on how to regain some of this lost focus.  It’s well worth the read.

Over my 30 years of consulting work, the people who I would put in the category of best leaders all had an ability to focus.  In fact, one common trait that began to emerge over the years was their experience and belief that they could only hold the proper focus if they kept their list of key issues to three or less.  Their time frames might change, usually from quarterly to yearly but the numbers was always three.  If they begin to feel distracted from those three, even if it was for very good and legitimate reasons, they would start to hand-off the responsibility to others so they could get back to their three priorities.  This was also a good way to grow others in the process.

Have you begun to look at what distracts you from your primary three goals?  Our technology is geared to distract us or at least to attract our attention at a moments notice.

  • Have you turned off the notifications on your phone?
  • Have you set aside a period of time each day for no email or texts?
  • Even more powerful, have you established an hour a day, a day per week, a few days per month when you eliminate all of the distractions to get into some deep work?

Just like Einstein’s quote on simplicity, it takes courage.  But without the courage you’ll never grow, progress, reach your goals, stay focused, become an elegant performer.  Another definition of elegance is:

Pleasingly graceful in appearance or manner.”

Are you and your team pleasingly graceful in your manner?  Maybe you need to work on your simplicity and focus!

Stress

One final thought on focus before we leave.  If you’ve fallen into the trap of being constantly distracted by your technology or connected 24/7, you will be experiencing stress in your life that is unnecessary!  If you’re experiencing constant stress that you don’t seem to be able to escape, read Cal Newport‘s book, Deep Work. Just the act of focusing on a book for a while will help relieve some of the stress and you’ll find good lessons for returning to a more satisfying and less stressful approach to live and work.  Focus!

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Elegance: Simplicity

by Ron Potter

Let’s continue our TREC to a great team.

You’ll recall that Aristotle defined four levels of the Pursuit of Happiness.  Level 4 is the highest level that produces the most happiness.  Aristotle’s words to describe this level were Truth, Love, Beauty, and Unity.  I’ve converted those words into Truth, Respect, Elegance, and Commitment.  I’ve made this conversion for a couple of reasons.

  1. Words like Love and Beauty are not often found in our corporate language today so I’ve converted Love to Respect and Beauty to Elegance
  2. I like to use language tricks to help you remember a concept.  TREC sounds very much like the word TREK.  The word TREK means a “long, arduous journey.”  Building a great team is a long, arduous journey.  You’re on a TREK

If you intend to start that journey of building a great team, following the concepts of TREC will help you accomplish that goal.

We’ve looked at Truth and Respect in our previous blog posts.   Our next topic is Elegance which will include the subtopics of

  • Simplicity
  • Focus
  • Role Clarification

Today we’ll start looking at Simplicity.

Simplicity

One definition of the word Elegance says “the quality of being pleasingly ingenious and simple.”

I think every team would want to be known as ingenious.  Our corporations are pushing for more innovation every day.  But I think simplicity is the more powerful and difficult of the two.  In fact, being ingenious in the simplest form is the most powerful type of innovation.

Albert Einstein said,

The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.”  He also said “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”

Notice that with the pause right in the middle, he indicated that it would take courage.  Taking something complex and making it simple is genius at work but it takes courage.  Why?

I think one of the answers to that question is that you are a professional or expert.  Often you have earned your right to be on the team because you have become a professional or an expert at something.  Professionals and experts tend to make things more complex to prove themselves or show-off their genius.  But, back to Einstein’s quote, any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex.  Real genius happens when things are simplified, made more elegant, streamlined, easier to adjust to changes, quicker to adopt.

Part of your TREC is to come up with the simplest, most elegant solution possible.  It’s not easy and it takes courage.

The other reason I’ve seen through the years for making things more complex rather than simpler is that it’s hard to be held accountable when things are bigger and more complex.  I’ve seen “expert” after “expert” explain away why a plan or structure didn’t work because “who could have predicted something like that would happen in a system so complex?”

Make things simpler, clearer and less complex.  Might you be held more accountable?  Yes!  But high-performance teams hold themselves more accountable than anyone else will.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.  Take out the complexity.  Bring more clarity.  Be a more elegant team.  People will notice.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Respect: Summary

by Ron Potter

Over the last several blog posts we’ve been working on the framework for great teams.  The four elements in the framework  include:

TREC.  The dictionary defines a TREK as “a movement, especially when involving difficulties and complex organization: an arduous journey.”  I realize that TREC and TREK are slightly different, but I always want to add an element that helps you remember a concept or framework.  Notice that building a team includes difficult and complex organization and is an arduous journey.

Teams don’t just happen.

Just because you gather together a group of people at roughly the same level in an organization, that doesn’t make them a team.  It’s simply a group of people who have some of the same goals and many different goals.  Leadership teams are charged with lining up the goals of all the participants, regardless of their personal or functional goals.  Sometimes those personal and functional goals need to be sacrificed in order to move the team goals forward.  It’s an arduous journey.

There is a fifth element that was not included in the list but needs to be checked and that’s Purpose.  The reason I tend to minimize the Purpose goal is that I assume leadership teams know what their collective goal is or should be.  However, if that’s not the case, this fifth element will jump to the top of the list to be solved first before the TREC can begin.

Truth and Respect

So far we’ve worked through the details of Truth and Respect.  We summarized Truth and I would like to summarize Respect in this post.

We need to look at the individual pieces of Respect as covered in the last three blog posts but there is also an important principle that relates to the combination of both Truth and Respect.

Respect

Individually, Respect can be made up of several elements.

Team Strengths
  •  Humility
    • When someone does not demonstrate humility, it’s hard to believe they have respect for others.
  • Development
    • When leaders believe it’s worth their time to grow and develop people, it demonstrates respect.
  • Compassion
    • People are motivated by being treated as human beings.  Not by what they do or don’t do, but who they are.
  • Patience
    • Stay calm, don’t get annoyed, turn back to Humility, Development, and Compassion
  • Kindness
    • “Giving someone what they need the most, deserve the least at great personal expense.”  Chip Ingram
Team Weaknesses
  •  Envy
    • Envy occurs when someone feels inferior to others.  It’s destructive, first the one who envies, then those around them.  When someone is dealing with envy, help them develop.
  • Anger
    • Anger eruptions are seldom positive.  Helping the team express anger and disappointment in a safe environment helps in dealing with loss and adversity.
  • Grudge
    • Grudges are usually caused by envy and anger but they just keep surfacing.  Deal with the envy and anger constructively to stop the grudges.

Truth and Respect

There is also a powerful force when a team is both very truthful and yet maintains great respect for every individual.  Amy Edmondson is may be the best-known author to identify the concept that when both Truth and Respect are present, a team experiences “psychological safety.”  Amy and others have shown through research that when psychological safety is present, teams perform the best.

Truth and Respect are necessary individually but when combined they help teams perform at a level that is much higher than expected.

Respect, Often the Missing Element

After spending nearly 30 years working with leadership teams, my experience has been that respect is often the missing element holding teams back.

Truth: Overt

“Truth” tends to be overt.  People say it.  Or more accurately, people blurt it out.  The problems happen when someone believes they have the truth and everyone else simply has a perspective.  I’ll write more about perspective in an upcoming blog about modern-day philosophers.  Billy Joel says in one of his songs “the only people I fear are those who never have doubts.”  If you have no doubts about your “truth”, you’re probably wrong.

The other thing I’ve seen happen on teams as they deteriorate, the truth turns sarcastic.  Yes, it is the truth but it certainly doesn’t get expressed with any respect.

Respect (lack of): Covert

I find a lack of respect to be covert.  Nothing is really said out loud or face-to-face but outside the room, there are comments made about a person or a position that is not very respectful.  Issues that remain covert are the most difficult to handle.  I know that people seem to think it’s kinder to remain silent and they’ll avoid the expected conflict created by being overt.  But anything that remains covert is always more difficult to work out.

Truth and Respect.  These are the first two steps in our TREC to great teams.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Respect: Envy, Anger, Grudges

by Ron Potter

We’re continuing our series on building great teams.  Great teams happen when we have

We’re still working our way through the Respect series with the final set of circumstances of Envy, Anger, and Grudges.  No, great teams don’t possess these attributes, great teams avoid these attributes. Envy, Anger, and Grudges are team weaknesses that can be lethal to your team’s well-being.

Envy

Envy is the first of the team weaknesses we’ll discuss. Great teams snuff out envy whenever it rears its ugly head.  Here are some attributes of Envy:

  • Discontented or resentful by someone else’s possessions, qualities, luck, or accomplishments, style or attribute.
  • An emotion which occurs when a person lacks another’s superior quality or achievement.
  • Desires to deprive another of what they have.
  • Delights in degrading those who are more deserving.

Envy occurs when someone feels inferior to others and will do what they can to undermine or chop down those who possess more or achieve more than themselves.

At its roots, this is a comparison issue.  Always comparing yourself to others is a losing battle.  Jordan Peterson in his book 12 Rules of Life: An antidote to chaos states in rule number 4 “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”  Comparing yourself to who you were yesterday puts you on the path of growth.

I once had a pastor who was fond of talking about the little boy pushing his wagon up a hill.  As soon as he sat down in the wagon to rest, he found himself at the bottom of the hill.  Never stop growing!  Never stop learning!  As soon as you give up on your own growth and development, envy creeps in.   You begin to be resentful of what others have or what others have become.

Envy is destructive.  Its first target is yourself.  Its second target is those around you.  As Jordan Peterson says, an antidote to chaos is to continue growing.

Anger

As the second of the team weaknesses, Anger that is directed at circumstances or failures can be healthy if it is channeled properly.  Eruptions of anger are seldom positive.  Expressing anger and disappointment in a safe environment can help everyone deal with the loss and adversity.

I’ve often run exercises with teams that have experienced great loss and disappointment.  Working in small groups I allow each person to express their emotions by writing them on flip charts.  No holds barred.  Get it all out.  Once the teams have exhausted the extent of their anger, we take the flip charts that were created, post them on the wall, share them with each other and then hand every chart out to members of the team.  They are then instructed to tear the flip charts into as many pieces as possible, throw the pieces into the middle of the floor (expressing as much anger as they can while doing so) and then we all jump on the pile of pieces and stomp on them as viciously as possible.  By the time the stomping has slowed to a stop I always witness a moment of somber quiet.  But then someone breaks out in a big grin.  Another joins them.  It soon turns to laughter and people start expressing how cathartic the exercise was.  In one form or another people shout out “Wow, I haven’t felt this good in a long time!”  The anger dissipates.  Calm heads return.  And a new determination emerges in the room to move on, work hard, figure out how to overcome and get better.

All too often the anger remains covert.  People assume they must hold their head up high, don’t complain and keep going.  When things remain covert it’s almost impossible to deal with them.  Once we brought out the anger in an overt but healthy way, new energy emerges from the team and it makes it possible to move forward.

Grudges

The third and most subtle of the team weaknesses, Grudges can be caused be either envy or anger but they just keep resurfacing over time.  It’s probably because it remains overt until that moment when it erupts once again.

One of my teams referred to the practices as “replaying old tapes.”  Something would happen on the team that didn’t seem to make sense to me and finally, someone else would explain, “Oh, they’re just replaying old tapes from what happened a few years ago.”  A few years ago?  Are you kidding me?  People are still holding and expressing grudges after a few years and no one has dealt with it yet?  Amazing.

Leaders and teams must call out grudges and put a stop to them.  Maybe it will take a team exercise like the anger one described above.  Maybe it will take some one-on-one discussions with the leader or a coach.  Maybe a leader needs to decide to help a team member move on if they can’t get past old issues.  Grudges can be like deep infections.  They continue to resurface.  Sometimes a mild antibiotic will heal an infection.  I dealt with one of those antibiotic-resistant infections a few years ago.  It took a direct injection of the most powerful antibiotic every three hours for six weeks.

Infections can be tough to deal with.  Grudges can be just as tough because they pop to the surface periodically.  You must get to the root of them and deal with them to have healthy teams.

In this post, we’ve talked about the team weaknesses you should avoid to build great teams.  In the previous post, we talked about the positive things that need to be present to develop great Respect within teams.  We’ll wrap up Respect with our next post to pull it all together with focus.

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