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 21^st 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