Do we have what it takes to be a Winning Team of the Future?

Qualities of an ideal team have not undergone change for years, may be for centuries. What has changed though is that certain qualities which were good –to- have are now in the category of should-have but would very soon come in the category of must-have. Primary reason for this is the increased uncertainty that the world faces today. Gone are the good-old days when the playing field was even, the rules of the game remained unchanged and everyone knew the probable scenarios while the game was being played. In today’s world, the playing field can change at any point in time, rules of the game are not given and the number of scenarios which may unfold can change is infinite. The qualities required in a team in these circumstances are bound to differ dramatically from those which won in yesteryears. Unfortunate and unbelievable that it may sound, but more often than not, we select players basis the way game was being played in yesteryears for games to be played in the next decade! Without too much of exaggeration, it is almost akin to selecting a Test Cricket team for Rowing. What is equally surprising is the lack of focus on identifying those qualities which would spell the difference between winning and losing in the decade ahead.

Here I would focus on only those qualities or characteristics which I feel are must for success in the coming decade but which are not being given as much attention as they deserve. This, by no means, is an exhaustive list of characteristics which are required of a winning team.

First would be individual excellence- in tomorrow’s world, there would rarely be an individual hero. Rare would be the scenario where one individual could make an organization or team succeed quarter on quarter, year on year. While for centuries, humans have had a fixation with individual heroes, time has come to shift focus away from that. In a stable and static world, one individual could turn –around an organization or could single handed win against competition, but it is impossible in a complex and dynamic world. This change is not sudden and there are organizations which have indeed realized this but then there are many more which still reward and recognize individual heroism. The days of individual heroism is numbered at best and over at worst and any organization still focusing on individual heroes would do so at its own peril. Time has come to focus on collaboration- ability to work with others who share the same goal. Collaboration is Not the same as social cohesion; it is fine if two people do not get along personally as long as they share the same goal and are passionate about that goal. If people have a shared goal and are committed to that, then even if they are not the best of friends personally, they still know how to work with each other to make that goal happen. People collaborate with each other when they know that they could either swim or sink together; the option of surviving alone is not an option which exist anymore. Collaboration as a competency, comes way down in the list of several organizations, if at all it finds a place and there are many who merely give it a lip service. Ironically, this very competency may be the differentiator between those who survive and win in the market in the coming decade and those who do not.

Second, being the proverbial jack of all trades and master of none will not help any team in the decade ahead. For years now, the world is moving increasingly away from the so-called “generalists”. In a steady state scenario someone who knew bit of everything could function very well and serve any team or organization. In fact, teams needed more all-rounders rather than specialists. When the world becomes more complex, uncertain and volatile, the jack of all trades would not be able to do much good for their teams. This is a time when you need specialists- people with deep subject knowledge and experience to be able to guide the team in turbulent waters. Unless one is an expert, one would not be able to guide in situations when the circumstances are unprecedented. Here you need people who are experts. The need of the hour is not to have the tick-in-the-box across several skill sets but a complete mastery in one area. It is not the all-rounders with general management skills who will charter the path to success in the coming decade but the specialists who would steer the organizations to success.

Hierarchies are like the forts of the past centuries – they are historical features with immense archaeological value but cannot help any nation to progress in future. People who fall back on hierarchical command-and-control structures for success, are likely to find success far more difficult come than they have seen in the past. What is required for success in the coming decade is ability to network across the organization and with like professionals across organizations than using the crutches of hierarchy. The sin-quo-non for hierarchies used to be ceteris paribus conditions – that is everything else being constant. If nothing is constant, hierarchies are of little relevance. When you are faced with continuous turbulence and response time required is reducing by leaps and bounds, you cannot expect to wait for massive hierarchies to move. Moreover, in today’s world where everyone is connected to everyone else across the globe in a matter of seconds, a fellow professional sitting half-way across the globe can add much better value than hierarchical ladders and proper channels of communication within a hierarchy. I am not aware how organizations are evaluating the ability of a prospective candidate to network nor am I aware whether networking is being adequate importance while selecting individuals for critical roles.

Whether you are a start-up or an established organization, the entrepreneurial zeal is a must for success in the decade ahead. While Max Weber’s bureaucratic organizational mind-set served well up to the last quarter of the previous century, it is a sure-shot recipe for disaster in the decade ahead. Entrepreneurial zeal means taking ownership in totality and not operating in silos or being fixated with one’s own “objectives” or “KRAs”. Those days are long gone when if each individual did what he could do best, there was an invisible hand which would make the organization succeed. Now and even more so in the decade ahead, every member of the team or organization would need to behave as if he/ she is the owner and act in the same way an owner would. Being good team-player would mean being an authentic owner. Every individual has to be and behave like an owner if a team has to succeed.

Last but not the least is the ability to look outward rather than being merely internally focused. When everything outside is by & large constant, it may have been fine to look internally alone since there was not much to look outside for, especially if the organization is doing well otherwise. However, in today’s and more importantly tomorrow’s world, whether you are the industry leader or the laggard, not scanning and learning from the environment on a continual basis could make the difference between survival and perishing.

To summarize, the five qualities or competencies that a winning team would need in the decade ahead and where we may not be focussing as much as we ought to:

1.      Ability to Collaborate rather than merely being competitive

2.      Being Specialists or experts in an area rather than being generalists across several

3.      Ability to network across and beyond the organization rather than being hierarchical

4.      Having the ability to act like an entrepreneur instead of behaving like a bureaucrat

5.      Ability to look outward and learn on a continual basis

If we focus on building, developing and reinforcing these competencies within organizations, our probability of success in the coming decade would be far higher.