The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization Jon R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith ISBN 0-87584-367-0 McKinsey & Company, Inc., 1993 Commonsense Findings (p. 2) 1. A demanding performance challenge tends to create a team 2. A disciplined application of "team basics" is necessary, and often overlooked. (basics: size, purpose, goals, skills, approach, accountability) 3. Team performance opportunities exist in all parts of the organization, including teams that recommend things, teams that make or do things, and teams that run things. 4. Teams at the top are the most difficult. Complex, long-term challenges; heavy demands on time; ingrained individualism; and role expectations--all conspire against teams. 5. Most organizations intrinsically prefer individual over group (team) accountability. Job descriptions, compensation, career paths, and performance evaluations focus on individuals. Uncommonsense Findings (p. 4) 1. Companies with strong performance standards seem to spawn more "real teams" than companies that promote teams. 2. High-performance teams are extremely rare. It takes commitment to one another, and cannot be managed into existence. 3. Hierarchy and teams go together almost as well as teams and performance. Teams integrate and enhance formal structures and processes. Hierarchical structures and basic processes are essential to large organizations...Teams are the best way to integrate across structural boundaries and to both design and energize core processes. 4. Teams naturally integrate performance and learning...By translating longer-term purposes into definable performance goals and then developing the skills needed to meet those goals, learning not only occurs in teams but endures. 5. Teams are the primary unit of performance for increasing numbers of organizations. Key Lessons (p. 12) 1. Significant performance challenges energize teams regardless of where they are in an organization. No team arises without a performance challenge that is meaningful to those involved. Good personal chemistry or the desire to "become a team," for example, can foster teamwork values, but teamwork is not the same thing as a team. Rather, a common set of demanding performance goals that a group considers important to achieve will lead, most of the time, to both performance and a team. Performance, however, is the primary objective _while a team remains the means, not the end._ 2. Organizational leaders can foster team performance best by building a strong performance ethic rather than by establishing a team-promoting environment alone. Most of us really do want to make a difference. Naturally, organization policies, designs, and processes that promote teams can accelerate team-based performance in companies already blessed with strong performance cultures. But in those organizations with weak performance ethics or cultures, leaders will provide a sounder foundation for teams by addressing and demanding performance than by embracing the latest organization design fad, including teams themselves. 3. Biases toward individualism exist but need not get in the way of team performance. Teams are not antithetical to individual performance. Real teams always find ways for each individual to contribute and thereby gain distinction. Indeed, when harnessed to a common team purpose and goals, our need to distinguish ourselves as individuals becomes a powerful engine for team performance. 4. Discipline--both within the team and across the organization--creates the conditions for team performance. ...For organizational leaders, this entails making clear and consistent demands that reflect the needs of customers, shareholders, and employees, and then holding themselves and the organization relentlessly accountable...Groups become teams through _disciplined action._ They _shape_ a common purpose, _agree_ on performance goals, _define_ a common working approach, _develop_ high levels of complementary skills, and _hold_ themselves mutually accountable for results. And, as with any effective discipline, they never stop doing any of these things. Why do teams perform well? (p. 18) 1. They bring together complementary skills and experiences that, by definition, exceed those of any individual on the team. 2. In jointly developing clear goals and approaches, teams establish communications that support real-time problem solving and initiative. 3. Teams provide a unique social dimension that enhances the economic and administrative aspects of work. Real teams do not develop until the people in them work hard to overcome barriers that stand in the way of collective performance. By surmounting such obstacles together, people on teams build trust and confidence in each other's capabilities. The also reinforce each other's intentions to pursue their team purpose above and beyond individual or functional agendas. Overcoming barriers to performance is how groups become teams. Both the meaning of work and the effort brought to bear upon it deepen, until team performance eventually becomes its own reward. 4. Teams have more fun. Resistance to Teams 1. Lack of conviction. Some people do not believe that teams, except in unusual or unpredictable circumstance, really do perform better than individuals. Some think that teams cause more trouble than they are worth because the members waster time in unproductive meetings and discussions, and actually generate more complaints than constructive results. Others think that teams are probably useful from a human relations point of view, but are a hindrance when it comes to work, productivity, and decisive action. Still others believe that concepts of teamwork and empowerment applied broadly to an organization supersede the need to worry or be disciplined about the performance of specific small groups of people. 2. Personal discomfort and risk. ...Most people's discomfort with teams, however, is because they find the team approach too time-consuming, too uncertain, or too risky... "My job is tough enough," goes one recurring comment, "without having to worry about meeting and getting along with a bunch of people I don't even know that well, or I do know and I'm not sure I like all that much. I just don't have that kind of time to invest." 3. Weak organizational performance ethics. ...Such companies lack compelling purposes that appeal rationally and emotionally to their people. Their leaders fail to make clear and meaningful performance demands to which they hold the organization and, most important, themselves accountable...At the worst, such environments undermine the mutual trust and openness upon which teams depend.