Team building lessons from 'Team India'. Here's why we must take note.

For the longest time that one can remember the term, Team India, referred to India’s men in blue, the fabled cricket team. Other sports have tried to latch onto that phrase, but in the popular imagination Team India is etched into cricket lore. All that is set to change if a certain meeting that took place in New Delhi this Sunday, 23 April, is any indication.

On that day the Governing Council of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog met to discuss the long-term policy related road map for the country. Chaired by the Prime Minister the meeting deliberated on a 15 year vision for the country’s development and on several immediate measures for action. If you want to read more on that meeting, you can do so here. But, what caught one’s attention is the signage on the backdrop that dominated the meeting hall. It announced, very simply, “Team India”. In a series of tweets that day on the meeting the NITI Aayog plugged #TeamIndia as in the tweet below:

So, what makes the idea of this “Team India” so radical and trans-formative? The field of governance and politics, a field in which teaming of this nature had never been imagined before, is what makes this unique...

So, what makes the idea of this “Team India” so radical and trans-formative? The field of governance and politics is what makes this unique. It is a disparate, often conflict-driven field in which the default mode is for individual players to play the ‘me’ rather than ‘we’ game, where competition takes precedence over cooperation. Where, if you are not one-upping the other woman or man, you could be drowning. A good enough reason for those who deal, build and deliver with teams to note the method which is being adopted to architect this Team India. 

In developing this team, India’s Prime Minister has projected himself as a CEO more than a politician. In my book, a CEO is distinguished by her/his focus on a sharp vision and granular results. If vision and results occupy most of your mental shelf-space then you are a CEO, whether in Marketing, Finance, HR or any other function, whether or not you actually enjoy the title. Building and deploying the team to work for results has been a huge challenge for most CEOs. The way this team has been erected and deployed has to do with three highly-focused management processes: developing the banding, creating the bonding and messaging the branding.

Banding infuses the soul into the architecture of the team and canny managers know how critical it is to success.

The first of the set is developing the banding. The Governing Council consists of all the Chief Ministers of the country, Lieutenant-Governors of Union Territories, key Central Ministers, executive leaders of the Aayog and, of course, the Prime Minister. Physically the team is in place. But, banding happens when the vision and purpose of the team are articulated. For a team as high-power as this one, the vision has to be soaring enough to capture attention. A 15-year Vision Document was presented to the Team, a disruptive exercise in itself when you consider that five year plans had so far ruled the policy roost under the Aayog’s predecessor, the Planning Commission. Soaring as a vision should be, it should be accessible as well to the team. This was ensured by a strategy paper and an action plan, presented by the NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman, Arvind Panagariya. Banding infuses the soul into the architecture of the team and canny managers know how critical it is to success.

The second is creating the bonding. In a new research paper, to be published shortly, Wharton School Professor Andrew Carton studied the mobilization of personnel in NASA in the 1960s as the agency prepared to land a man on the moon. In an interview Carton says, “…even people who were quite far removed from the famous goal of landing a man on the moon reported feeling an incredible connection to this ultimate goal and would often define their everyday work in terms of that ultimate goal.” He says further, “…the types of organizational missions that people find most inspiring tend to be quite grand in scale.” This we have noted this in the previous section on banding. The challenge for leaders then is to “…depict a compelling picture of where ultimately we want to go.” In that fascinating must-read interview Carton adds:

“…articulating a common goal or a common purpose has powerful implications…It gives people a common cause that they can all rally around. It coalesces their energy and effort and can build what are called social contagion effects, where one person’s excitement spreads to another person. It also is a boon for coordination because it gives us a sense of what we’re trying to achieve as an organization.”

This is the bonding of the team, gravitation towards common purpose that follows the visioning.

All this is underpinned by the emphasis on brass-tacks. NITI Aayog CEO, Mr. Amitabh Kant, presented to the Council an action taken report on various schemes and initiatives and the key initiatives in several areas of governance. This granularity helps for, as Prof. Carton points out, “…people see a connection between their work and that vision, the usage of subgoals.” No surprise then that part of the title of Carton’s serious research publication is ““I’m Not Mopping the Floors, I’m Putting a Man on the Moon”.

The last process is in messaging the branding. In an organization I worked with earlier, operational teams had adopted names like ‘Vikings’ and ‘Titans’ and referred to each other by these. It was their identity and the names were well chosen with their association with history and legend. But, why would one brand an official, governmental outfit like the Governing Council of NITI Aayog? The answer lies in many things said and unsaid at the 23 April meeting.

What underlies the Team India branding is a drive for modernization of the mind of Indian governance, with its emphasis on distributed generation of ideas for policy-making.

What underlies the Team India branding is a drive for modernization of the mind of Indian governance, with its emphasis on distributed generation of ideas for policy-making. We are all in it together, the branding rings out, and will sink and swim together, irrespective of political affiliations! Calling the Council Team India seems to be natural, since the people of India sit on it through their elected leadership.

Sorry, men in blue, but the Team India brand has been usurped!

AfterNote:

On the teaming process one of the earliest paradigms was provided by late Bruce Tuckman, an American academic, in the 1960s. His paradigm stated that groups go through four stages of formation and consolidation: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. He later added other stages to group bonding, but this model was developed in the context of manufacturing, mechanical industries and stressed conflict-resolution and boundary creation for effective team performance. Tuckman died in 2016, a witness, no doubt, to the rise of idea organizations, information technology, social media and a more mature, aware and empowered generation of managers and leaders. The Banding-Bonding-Branding model, perhaps, is more suitable to forming modern, millennial teams.