The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith McKinsey & Company, 1993 ISBN 0-87584-367-0 (p. 149) "Obstacles are a continual fact of life for teams. They occur from the moment a potential team gathers until the team comes to an end. Obstacles also differ as much as the teams, performance challenges, organizational settings, and business contexts that produce them. ... Any of these obstacles could have derailed the team's progress and performance. None of them did. Indeed, working through the obstacles made the team stronger." "Endings are also a fact of life for teams. They are one of the most critical obstacles that teams must face in achieving their performance potential. Moreover, specific ending situations can be as different as teams and obstacles. Some endings are planned, others spontaneous; some are abrupt; others drawn out; some are traumatic; others a relief; some perpetuate performance; others erode it. Despite these differences, however, most endings come down to one or two basic kinds of transitions that matter in terms of performance. Either the team must convey a continuing purpose and set of ongoing tasks to another group or team (as is the case with most teams that run, make, or do things), or the team must ensure that its final recommendations are carried out by others who will implement them. In either case, unless the ending is a well-handled transition, valuable performance can be lost." (p. 151) the frustrations associated with stuck teams - A loss of energy or enthusiasm ("What a waste of time.") - A sense of helplessness ("There's nothing anyone can do.") - A lack of purpose or identity ("We have no clue as to what this is all about.") - Listless, unconstructive, and one-sided discussions without candor ("Nobody wants to talk about what's really going on.") - Meetings in which the agenda is more important than the outcomes ("It's all show-and-tell for the boss.") - Cynicism and mistrust ("I knew this teamwork stuff was a load of crap.") - Interpersonal attacks made behind people's backs and to outsiders ("Dave has never pulled his own weight and never will.") - Lots of finger pointing at top management and the rest of the organization ("If this effort's so important, why don't they give us more resources?") (p. 156) The major dilemmas of being stuck: - A weak sense of direction: inappropriate, ill-defined goals; assuming that everyone understands and agrees on why and how they are working together; unexpressed and unresolved differences generate confusion about the team's fundamental reason for being and undercut the incentive to work together to achieve common goals. - Insufficient or unequal commitment to team performance: interpersonal conflicts; entrenched positions; endless side-bar conversations; out of the earshot of the full team, about personal styles and biases. - Critical skill gaps: significant, unresolved skill deficiency relative to objectives. - External confusion, hostility, or indifference: All organizations, whether friendly or hostile to teams, inevitably create some obstacles for them. E.g., contradictory or overly ambitious sets of demands; overtly or covertly fighting the team; or indifference to what the team does. - Leadership in need of help... (p. 159) Approaches to getting unstuck 1. Revisit the basics. One of the primary messages of our book is that no team can rethink its purpose, approach, and performance goals too many times. All teams--and certainly, stuck teams--benefit from going back to ground zero and spending the time to uncover all hidden assumptions and differences of opinion that, when assessed by the full team, might provide the foundation for clarifying the team's mission and how to accomplish it. 2. Go for small wins. Nothing galvanizes a stuck team as well as performance itself. Even the act of setting a clear and specific goal can lift a team out of the morass of interpersonal conflict and despair. Achieving specific goals is even better. Cynics within a stuck team, for example, might find fault with revisiting team purpose and approach as an insincere and fruitless effort to discuss again what has already been discussed too many times before. Specific performance results, however, carry no such handicaps. 3. Inject new information and approaches. Fresh facts, different perspectives, and new information play a major role in the development of teams. ... Competitive benchmarks, internal case histories, best practices, front-line work measures, customer interview--these and other sources of insight can provide stuck teams with the fresh perspective needed to reshape their purpose, approach, and performance goals. ... the team must also have the discipline to put whatever information and fresh facts it discovers to good use by asking the all-important question: 'So what does this mean for our team's purpose and perforamcne challenge and how we need to tackle it?' 4. Take advantage of facilitators or training. Whether they are complete outsiders or company employees outside the team itself, facilitators can get stuck teams moving in a constructive direction. Usually, successful facilitators bring problem-solving, communication, interpersonal, and teamwork skills to teams who lack them. The ultimate key, however, to whether a facilitator provides enduring help depends entirely on how effectively the facilitator's efforts help the team turn its collective attention back to its purpose and performance challenge. Facilitators who only address personal feelings and interpersonal conflicts, for example, often divert the team's attention from more basic needs. The same lesson applies to training. Stuck teams, like any potential team, can benefit from any good training program that highlights the importance of key skills, common team purposes, good teamwork, clear goals, and the role fo the leader. But unless the team immediately translates this new awareness into 'trial' actions, it will return to its real task with nothing to show other than, probably, an increase in cynicism and despair. 5. Change the team's membership, including the leader. Many teams avoid getting or staying stuck by changing their own membership. Sometimes this occurs wehn teams literally separate or add members ... In other cases, teams just circumvent stragglers without actually excluding them formally. Some teams actually set rules of membership that require periodic rotations of members to insure fresh input and vitality over time.