Seeking the Solution

In 2024 I successfully defended my doctoral research into North Sea Rig team effectiveness. The findings were intriguing and will be shared and integrated into team support solutions going forward. Below I have summarised the research in a more generic way as the exercise should be informative for any team in any environment.

My main research question was this:

?“What are the relevant factors and actionable steps that enhance effective team performance?”

Supporting literature and field research were compared and discussed to identify these factors: context, stakeholder collaboration, leadership, team system, and team culture. The team system incorporates the steps of effective team performance, including planning, executing, learning, and improving. The team culture incorporates the perceived cultural factors necessary for the system to work. These factors include shared vision, team composition, team values, and the team environment. A model which is representative of these key elements, including the symbiosis between system and culture, is proposed as an aid to teams in 2025.

Findings from the field research align with the three domains explored in the literature review. These domains include learning, culture, and communication. The corollary findings are the inconsistency of applied learning, despite the field research findings that it is important; inconsistency of work environment, despite the field research findings that a positive culture is key; and inconsistent leadership, despite the field research findings about the criticality of the right leadership approach to communicate with care, and to build effective teams.

A culture of communicated learning has never been more important in any industry, given the uncovered context of the rapidly changing backdrop to every workplace in 2025. To this end, frontline leaders play a central role and should be selected and supported accordingly. Building on the existing body of knowledge is the realisation and illustration that the team system is the team culture and vice versa. The two are symbiotic and the best way to build a culture that people want to stay with, is to agree to a system and to commit to that system. Afterall, culture is behaviour at scale. The team will always exist within a context, and in the current context, stakeholder collaboration is critical for progress and success.