3 key factors to successful teamwork

In my previous entries I have been discussing goals and objectives, mostly from an individual standpoint. Today I want to address them from a team perspective.

Last week I had a managerial simulation competitive workshop which lasted five days, where I was tossed in with five other people of which I only knew one. It was a rewarding experience and an entertaining change from the regular work routing one is used to, where the knowledge and lessons came from many angles, ways and forms. Our team was fortunate enough to build a great success at the activity and after leading the simulation from day one, we finished second only because we made a mistake inputting the software in the final activity. Still we felt satisfied and pleased with our successful teamwork.

So what are the three key factors?

Even the Dream Team with all its success followed these three simple factors

1. Decisions are a dish best serve cold.

Your daily routine is filled with crossroads and moments where you have to pick a path among sometimes a few, sometimes several choices. While some of these are easy and quite straight forward, others are filled with huge responsibility, implications and a weight that can be compared to a ton of bricks. So how does one make the best out of making a decision?

Be Cold

One of the most interesting things I read in me teen years was on my home study book when I was taking my driver's license exam was a key paragraph about driving under influence of external factors, not necessarily meaning drugs, alcohol or cigars, but just a simple fight with your boy/girlfriend, a job demotion, or any situation that could have affected you emotionally and upset you. I remember that the chapter said something between the lines of

"When driving, you have to be concentrated. If you have been upset for whatever reason, DO NOT drive your car. Instead, take a 30 minute walk, preferably by yourself, and let yourself blow the steam away until you feel more calm."

It has been a piece of advise that stuck with me through the years and that I have been able to extrapolate to managerial decisions.

Information to make an educated decision normally arrives at you after a period of waiting, so you have to take your time to analyze and interpret the data along with the alternatives you have. Sometimes you have to bring collegues, people who work for you or superiors as well, each one with an opinion of his own that will either enforce or weaken your resources on hand. The bottom line is: if the responsibility of making the decision is yours, then your mind must be clear and able to think straight.

Hopefully you're not running his kind of business.
However one thing to take from Michael is his ability to make important decisions coldly and calmly

Back to my workshop, during one of the shifts we face ourselves with a dilemma: our company had been focusing on an exclusive target market and our products were performing very well, with our team leading with a comfortable advantage. However three other teams who were more oriented on mass-production, were doing deals between themselves to try to reduce the gap; so, we had to develop and launch a new product into the market and we had two choices:

• Option 1: launch a new product aimed for a large target market with minimal profit betting on mass production (which meant diversify our business and sail into new uncharted waters)
• Option 2: launch a new product aimed for an exclusive target market with huge profit (which meant stay true to our core business)

The team was evenly divided into both options and the discussion was going on fine, until a arguments to reinforce option 1 started to become more daring. After about forty minutes of discussion, I had enough. I got up and did exactly what I remember reading on that driving test book. I told my teammates: "I'm going for a 15-minute walk and you should do the same. Let's go out and clear our heads. When we get back, we'll make a decision".

And so we did.



2. Make sure you put the right people on the right seat

I'll paraphrase some of the chapters from Jim Collins' Good to Great here. A team in a work environment, is like people riding on a bus on a very very long trip. So, you want them to be comfortable at their seats. Morever, you want them sitting in the right seat.

Assuming you already went over the "building the team" stage and you have your players, what comes next and is most important is that each player goes in the position where he'll perform best and where he'll perform best for the team. Perform best means:

• The player is good at the job
• The player likes his job
• The job brings the best out of the player

I address being past the "building the team" stage first, because it allows me to justify that if you haven't built a team yet, then you have to remove the stigma that you exclusively need the best player at its position in order to succeed. While it's definetily a plus to have someone who excells at a specific job, sometimes you'll won't be able to find this person as handy as you would like. That is why it's more important that the player is good at the job, likes his job and performs as well if not better than what is expected from him.

Take a look at your team and ask yourself if your HR, your S&M, your Operations and your Finance VPs are giving it the best they can and with the passion that is comparable to the quality of their work.

This is why there are ocassions in sports in which the so called "underdog" teams are able to win championships:

The 2002 Anaheim Angels (MLB)
The 2004 Detroit Pistons (NBA)
The 2003-04 Porto UEFA Champions League run and championship

Driven by Jose Mourinho (one of the greatest coaches/motivators), Porto went through an unbelievable run defeating heavily favorite teams to conquier the 2004 Champions League

Those teams had players who were not on par to some of the top stars of their leagues. but they performed best individually and even performed better within the team.

Which brings me to the third crucial key factor



3. Synergy

The easiest way to explain synergy is the tale of two short guys who wanted to reach an apple, but weren't tall enough to do it on their own. So they decided to team up: one hopped on the shoulders of the other one, and then they were tall enough to grab it.

Though my life I have had the privilege of working with a lot of accomplished people, building up successful teams. One thing that has always struck me, is the question of whether there has been an ideal perfect team, among the many I have worked with. Let's assume the answer is yes. If this is the case you reached utopic synergy; but that's not the case 99 % of times.

When you're tossed in a team, or a team is tossed into your department, you are facing a bunch of strangers, who let's say, are able to decide cold ice, as well as they are the right man/woman for the job. The only question left is: are they connecting with each other? This is the crucial factor on a successful team.

Let's say that just like me, you encounter a group of people you haven't met before and that you as a group intend to make a difference. Some of these TV reality shows make a really good job at showing the weaknesses of these teams, maybe to emphasize on the drama (quarrels, heated discussions) aspect of television per sè. However, something is true to the drama to be told. If no synergy is built, then problems will arise... and you do not want problems if you want a successful team, or at least... you want the minimum amount of problems.

Synergy is like that Seinfeld episode in which Jerry during his stand up act states that

"there is no reason for two guys not to bond, because they're just... guys. In fact, if a guy sees another one doing mechanics to his car, he'll jump in and start conversation out of nothing. The conversation can range from: hey, is that wrench a #4 1/4 with cushion grip, to got a few cold ones in the frige if you want one, to baywatch, to Swedish socialism, to nuclear reactors"

The point here is, when dealing with new people in a team, the most important thing you have to do is find something to relate with that person. It will help to ease the tension, break the ice, and start to bring more smile and laughs that are necessary to motivate your team initially and to build initial synergy. Of course this is only the beginning. Next comes the real process of growing synergy and solidifying it.

After transmitting that bond to the person who is next to the next to you, left and right, front and back, make sure that they do the same, so that each member in the team has something to bond about. Once this goal is met, then follows the definitive cherry: when two team members start a chat in which one team member asks the other one "how can your performance be enhanced by mine, and more importantly how can his/her (referring to a third team member) performance be improved by ours.

The goal: how can HR perform better with support coming from Finance, Operations and S&M, how can S&M perform better supported by HR, Finance and Operations... you get the picture.

The best example I can think of is Germany's crushing demolition of Brazil in the 2014 World Cup. If you look at how the goals were conceived, you will agree that there couldn't be any better teamwork effort delivered.

A commentator summed it all up in four smart sentences:

"Brazil has Neymar
Argentina has Messi
Germany... has a TEAM"

That's where success is.