New Rules for Teamwork

Start your week on a positive note with this Newsletter ?

Every week, I carefully curate inspiring articles and share my thoughts, accompanied by motivational quotes. I hope you enjoy this next edition of my Monday Motivation, and I eagerly anticipate hearing your feedback and suggestions for future topics.

This week I would like to come back to the topic of leadership, in particular teamwork. Even in the time since I was in university, one can see that the focus on collaboration and teamwork has increased dramatically. In my time (not so long ago) we had only a handful of collaborative assignments as compared to individual assessments.? When I visit with university students today, it is clear that this ratio has increased dramatically, and rightfully so. Today, companies of all types, and the people who work there, are called on to demonstrate integrated, cross-functional, project-based teamwork in their operations.

Today’s article, New Rules for Teamwork focuses on exactly this area.? The author set out new principles of teamwork that focus on continuous, real-time testing, learning, analysis, adaptation, and improvement. In this period of accelerating change and innovation, and with access to data-driven techniques, everyone can benefit from the emerging ideas about how to create well-functioning teams within your organization.

Develop an Operating System.

Similar to a computer’s operating system, organizations much possess the building blocks for the ways in which team members collaborate. Although the systems may vary, what they all have in common is that they set out a view of how teams create value, what teams are supposed to achieve, the technical skills each team member is expected to contribute, the processes by which the work will be managed, and the cultural norms and mindsets of constructive collaboration that will guide behavior. The best operating systems embed an ethos of continuous improvement throughout the organization, not just in a single team or department. They are structured enough to provide consistent guidance but agile enough to accommodate changing conditions, priorities, data, and needs. The authors’ research has found that the high-performing teams consistently do three things:? Hold kickoffs, conduct one-on-ones, and take stock of progress using retrospectives.

Invest in Active, Real-Time Measurement.

As the old adage goes:? You get what you measure, so measure what matters. And in order to be successful, organizations need to be able to measure the outcomes of their actions and determine how changes in the inputs affect results. Some organizations may use formal systems like eNPS (Employees Net Promoter Score) while others may simply send out a weekly survey to simply ask how people are doing. This will help leaders to quickly identify trends among specific groups and respond appropriately. In addition, organizations should apply a similar approach to getting feedback from their clients and customers. By combining and evaluating the data from both the team and client surveys for a given project, leaders can identify how and to what extent the operating model used informs the work with clients. Importantly, and often forgotten, leaders must define what constitutes success. I am a fan of the OKR system to avoid subjectivity in such assessments, but each organization must find what fits for its particular culture, industry and structure.

Create a System for Continuous Improvement and Innovation.

The concept of continuous improvement is not new. However, many have not adopted their traditional mechanisms for pursuing this endeavor to appreciate and make use of the new forms of technology as well as the availability of data that we have today. It is important for teams to identify the metrics that matter most, hypothesize which actions could improve performance in those areas, and embed technologies in the operating system to enable continuous improvement.

If we are to accept the wisdom of the proverb, If you want to go fast, go alone.? If you want to go far, go together, then organizations know that effective teamwork is the only mechanism for achieving their visions. These teams may increasingly include technological components or even AI team members, but the fundamental will remain valid.

Stay on the beat with me and have an amazing start to your week ?

Yours,

Mark

Source

Dawson, A.; George, K. (September - October 2024) New Rules for Teamwork. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2024/09/new-rules-for-teamwork