In this week’s MSLD521 blog the elements of
high-performance teams are identified and applied to teams with whom I have
worked with in my current position as the Technical Publications Lead for Fault
Isolation. I will also identify the importance of shared values and show how
the influence of shared values affected team performance and detail one
positive and one negative experience and what I believe I could have done in
addition to enhance the outcomes. But first, let us take a brief moment to
review what Denning (2011) identifies as the four patterns of working
together.
Four Patterns of Working Together
Work Group
“Many so-called teams are
not genuine teams but work groups mislabeled as teams.” (Denning 2011, p. 161).
The main difference I see between work groups and teams that should keep
mistaken identity to a minimum is the level of collaboration between its
members. Team members often require close collaboration. Members of work groups
often do not require close collaboration. Also this “Work groups are the
traditional subunits in an organization: departments or divisions.” (Denning,
2011, p. 151).
Team
The level of collaboration
in a team is very high and decision making is usually limited to items that
affect the team and do not cross organizational boundaries. Team membership and
task(s) are usually defined by management. “Teams are organizational groupings
of people who are interdependent, hare common goals, coordinate their activities
to accomplish these goals, and share responsibility for the performance of the
collectivity.” (Denning, 2011, p. 152).
Community
Membership
is open to those who share the same values and interests. They are loosely
formed with no timelines or other formal restrictive measures that envelop many
teams. Often mistaken for networks, the can be developed from networking if
people with the same values and interests find each other and develop a reason
to bond.
Network
Contacts
you develop that can help you with relevant information to meet your needs.
Communities can be formed from networking if common values and interests align.
Elements of High Performance Teams
The elements of High Performance Teams (HPTs) is much like
the infrastructure that surrounds them. The elements are not so concrete and
set in stone that there is little flexibility or imagination. In discussing
what constitutes a HPT and the infrastructure surrounding them, one should keep
an open mind. These are the HPT elements asserted by Denning (2011) that span
pages 155 thru 160. I believe them to be accurate.
HPTs resemble Communities
“Emphasis on the differences between communities and teams
has tended to hide an important truth: high-performance teams resemble
communities.” (p. 155). So what constitutes a community? Almost all of us have
lived in communities at one time or another where neighbors pull together to
accomplish social tasks and the concept is very similar in the professional
world. “The word has now been extended to grouping of people who don’t live or
work in the same place but who share
common interests, practices and values.” (p.152). The reason I have underlined the word
values is to help distinguish professional communities from professional
Networks. Communities share values and networks do not. Values energize and
motivate people to come together to solve problems. Values rest in the minds
and hearts of people waiting to act with the right vision and the right story.
With the advent of the expansion of the internet and social
media the possibilities of creating these types of new communities where people
with common interests and values around the world can connect is absolutely
exciting. Unfortunately with the good comes bad. The yin and yang of social
media and the expansion of the internet, but we are not here to discuss those
issues so let’s recognize the threat and focus on the good.
Denning (2011) paints a nice image for me that HPTs are a
hybrid of a team and a 21st century community.
“Whereas members of a team are connected by interdependent tasks and values,
members of a community in an organizational setting in a community are usually
connected by interdependent knowledge
and values…Relatively few communities are teams, because their typical
goals relate to enhancing understanding rather than doing something” (Denning,
2011, p. 155).
When we think of a
team of people, we think of a very structured purpose. Typically teams are
selected. Communities are more open to membership. Teams usually have specific
goals and timelines presented to them to carry out. Communities typically have
no such structured framework. When a community does come together to focus on
solving a problem by assigning tasks and responsibilities to solve a problem it
begins to take on the form of a HPT.
How to Recognize a HPT
“High performance teams are exceptional” (Denning, 2011, p.
155). What makes them “exceptional” there output, the individual members or a
little of both? I wish Denning had brought so breadth and depth to this idea,
but one can come to some logical conclusions that the term exceptional applies
more to the output than to the individual members. I believe that after reading
the material on HPTs that the individuals in an HPT can be rather ordinary or
exceptional. The reason why I believe this is that if a community of ordinary
members have the right cause and good leadership, the synergies created by the
member’s desire and good vision and guidance from the leader can achieve
exceptional results. In a roundabout way, Denning does explain the details of
how synergies are created within a HPT and probably serves as HPT core
characteristics rather than elements. (Note: all of the following bulleted
quotes originate from Denning, 2011, p. 156).
·
“High-performance teams actively shape the expectations of
those who use their output-and then exceed the resulting expectations.” Because
the structure of a HPT is flexible and creativity not stifled but is instead
encouraged it is reasonable to expect expectations will be exceeded.
·
“They (HPTs) innovate on the fly, seizing opportunities and
turning setbacks into good fortunes.” Here again, the creativity afforded by
the loose structure (similar to that of a community) and the synergies created
as a byproduct of the loose structure from within have the potential to burst
in to positive outcomes.
·
“High-performance teams steadily grow stronger…team members
develop interchangeable skills.” As the team spends time working together, team
members begin to anticipate team events and the thoughts of other members and
learn the skills of other members. As time moves forward, the efficiencies of
the HPT increases.
·
“Fueled by interpersonal commitments, the purposes of
high-performance teams become nobler, team performance goals more urgent, and
team approach more powerful.” This quality Denning asserts I view as directly
tied to the synergy created by “team spirit”.
·
“High-performance teams carry out their work with shared
passion. The notion that if one of us fails, we all fail pervades the team”.
Ahhh…passion. What sparks passion in a team project? Certainly without shared
values, passion is hard to grow. I like to think of shared values as a type of
seeds to be planted. Some farmers value swiss-chard crops more than mustard
greens, some value coffee beans over peanuts and yet others might want to farm
hay over wheat. The seeds get planted in the farming community, but it will be
passion that drives how much the seeds flourish. Enter the leader with vision…the
water and sunshine to feed and nurture the passion.
My Personal Experience with HPTs
I believe I have had several near encounters if not the
real deal of having been on a member of an HPT. The first occasion happened
while I was a lead avionics technician while in the USAF. One afternoon, I was
asked to put together a team to troubleshoot an aircraft that had experienced a
chronic nuisance flight control malfunction. I was told the aircraft would be
ours for as long as we needed it. My mandate was to get it fixed. I had 24
hours to select my team from any squadron on base. Naturally I selected the
best and brightest technicians I knew. These technicians also shared the same
values as myself. Don’t say something was fixed unless you were sure it was
fixed was the number one value I considered. I also selected people I knew
would carefully document their work. Each team member was allowed to reject
team membership after learning the potential sacrifices they would possibly
endure. None did. After the team was set, we reviewed several months’ worth of
troubleshooting that had previously occurred, reviewed all maintenance records
and together we developed a logical plan to begin narrowing down the possible
reasons for the malfunction. Each team member was allowed to voice their opinions
and trust was quickly developed between team members. Working 12 hour shifts, after
about 24 total hours of troubleshooting we found the root cause and made the
repair. To my knowledge the chronic flight control malfunction never returned.
While it is hard to beat expectations in this particular case, it should be
noted that at approximately half of the time when such teams are formed to find
the root cause of a chronic aircraft problem, they are not successful on the
first try. It should also be noted that I have been asked four times to form and
lead such teams. All four times my method was to allow the team members to work
within a loosely constructed framework. All four times we were successful on
the first attempt with no reoccurrences of the malfunction. Being this was
nearly 20 years ago, before the proliferation of the internet and global
communities and networks, I can only imagine how the process described above
can be improved. Had I had the ability as the team lead to network, or my team
members to network we may have found the problem in hours versus days.
The next occasion is when I retired from the Air Force and
joined America West Airlines as a technical writer. When I hired on, the
technical publications department had just received a large fine by the FAA for
allowing publication change requests to go unattended to….for four years! In the
queue awaiting disposition were over two-thousand publication change requests!
There were two other technical writers in the department. They had no plan or
vision how to attack the backlog in the queue. In fact their attitudes showed
little desire to do nothing more than handle one request at a time. Meanwhile
we were averaging at least two requests coming in daily! Over the next six
months the following events happened: I became trained on the database and hit
the ground running; one of the technical writers left and two new writers were
hired in; Even though I was not the senior writer, I took charge of training
the two new writers. Both writers had the same work ethic and values I had. We
quickly formed a bond and a desire to kill that backlog! We developed new
procedures in the review process together and quickly learned how to take
advantage of our different skill sets. I was a very good organizer. Will had an
awesome engineering back ground and Rodney had recent experience on the
aircraft and was a “jack of all trades”. Between the three of us (the other
writer was let go soon after our team was formed) we knocked out the backlog of
two-thousand change requests in four years and managed to keep up with all of
the new change request coming in. I was told by our manager that these totals
were never accomplished in the previous 20 years the company had been flying.
The three of us still remain in contact to this day even though our team parted
ways in 2005. What could we have done differently? Good question. Honestly with
the resources we had this was an impressive accomplishment and only a HPT team
could have achieved. I am satisfied we did not miss any opportunity for
significant improvement.
My most recent example at Gulfstream is similar to America
West Airlines except it entails new aircraft publications development and a
formal “lead” writer role. In this formal role I am less active in the writing
portion. I only provide advice and guidance when needed and allow the team to
make decisions. I teach when needed, praise whenever praise is deserved, and
monitor from a distance and get things back on track only when required. What I
really don’t need to talk about is my role in developing our writing methods
which consumes the remaining portion of my time when I’m not leading. My team consistently
out performs the other teams in my organization and my senior manager recently
called me into his office to explain why my team out performs the other teams.
Since that meeting I have seen some changes and improvements in the other team’s
performance. Whether or not those changes will become permanent or they will
slide back to their old ways after a few months, time will tell.
Recently a vendor who imported all of our fault isolation
data for our flagship aircraft (the G650) remarked that the level of detail is “remarkable”,
“unbelievable” “they have never seen anything comparable”. When I heard those
remarks I shared them with my team…we basked in a moment of glory and then went
back to work. Wow.
The most exciting development recently (this week as a
matter of fact) is the potential for our team to become part of a HPT in the
company! The HPT (actually not sure yet if it is a team or a community yet) has
been formed from various teams within the company’s customer support work group
(technical operations and field service) to develop tomorrow’s methods of
troubleshooting. I found out about its formation through my network of people that
I have been developing as a result of MSLD511 and this Yukl (2013) passage “It
is essential for leaders to facilitate communication and coordination not only with
other parts of the same organization, but also with outsiders whose decisions
and actions affect the group.” (p. 250). I sent the email yesterday to try and
get membership into this community / team. Exciting stuff! Here is a huge
opportunity for improvement! Joining a community within our company…how
exciting!
References:
Denning, S. (2011). The leader's guide to storytelling: Mastering the
art and discipline of business narrative. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass.
Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in
organizations. Boston, MA: Pearson
