So You Don't Want to Chase A Unicorn: Build Your Own High Performing Team In 90 Days

They’re called “unicorns”—companies that are privately held and have a valuation of over billion dollars. The billion-dollar technology startup and the unstoppable teams who made them, was once the stuff of myth and legend. Today these types of high performance teams (HPTs) are seemingly everywhere, backed by a class of fresh leaders and a new generation given of doing much better with much less, and delivering much more.

But what about the environments that foster these teams and create a thriving, vibrant synergy under which billion dollar ideas can be born? They're evolving into a new mythology too. But who wants to chase after the myth of a legendary team, when you can just create one of your own? 

“There is a desire in each of us to invest in things that matter, and to have the organizations in which we work be successful…Our task as leaders is to create organizations we believe in…to be part of creating something we care about, so we can endure the sacrifice, risk, and adventure that commitment entails.”– Peter Block

Arguably, today's organizational leaders spend most of their day focused on improving their teams. Especially in the current climate of Lean and Agile methodologies where speed to market and doing less with more are hallmarks. Leaders today want their teams to do it all - for less, with less.

They are operating under the imperatives of performing better, innovating more, resolving conflict and independently solving any problem that emerges while leaping tall buildings in a single bound. This shift isn't without cause. New technologies and emerging markets continue to hit corporate strategy agendas at warp speed, while disruption lurks around every corner.

Generally speaking, a team is built around four elements— common commitment and purpose, performance goals, complimentary skills and mutual accountability. The natural habitat of a high impact team, however must differ greatly from that generic team.

You may find these rare and mythical HPTs at work in such dramatic stages as surgical operating theaters or clandestine operations on a battlefield, where life and death are constantly at stake - or they may be found in a garage of some startup, poised to revolutionize the high stakes of education technology or healthcare.

For the purposes of illustration, let's say your organization isn't in the life or death business - these environments can still be a perfect study from which any leader can learn to build a performance benchmark; whether your teams are for-profit, nonprofit, spread across countries or just down the hall. But what exactly is it that happens in high stakes environments that is so different and which makes building a high impact, high performance team both necessary and possible?

The Legend of How High Impact Teams Are Born

Myriad factors go into an environment where an HPT can thrive, however if you are serious about demonstrating superior results in the next 3-6 months then your blueprint must start with (at least) these seven elements every high performing team has in common:

1. Vision

"Clarity, Singular Purpose, Destination"

One way to distinguish between a vision and a goal is to ask, “What’s next?” A vision provides clear ongoing direction—it is clear what you should do next. As you take each step, the next one becomes clear. A vision continues to act as a beacon, guiding you in setting new goals once current ones have been achieved. Creating a great team vision starts by asking questions: What is the company vision? How does our team make a difference toward that end? What will we be known for? What feels impossible? What do our customers most need from us?

A word of caution though; vision statements that sit on shelves do more harm than good, and can can diminish your credibility as a leader. If you chose to tackle this exercise, be sure you are fully committed.

2. Talent

"A players pick A players. B players pick C players."

As a leader, attracting the right talent will make or break your goal of creating a high-performance, sustainable organization that meets its strategic and operational goals or objectives. Keeping teams lean, stacked with laser-like focused expertise, built on real-world experience are your first key to an HPT roster worth writing home about. Keep these traits in mind, when selecting your starting lineup:

Resourcefulness; The ability to (quickly) find, unlock, and mobilize resources (i.e. money, expertise, skills, support) in order to plan, pivot, evaluate, execute, or scale a project.

Resiliency; The ability to work well under uncertainty, and to continue after (substantial) setbacks.

Principle; A sense of what is right and what is wrong, and choosing to act in accordance with what is right.

Confidence; A healthy esteem for one’s abilities and approach to life; an innate knowledge that “I can handle it.”

Loyalty; The ability and willingness to develop a long-term relationship with a team, organization, or cause.

Coachability; The trait of not only being able to accept constructive criticism, but of actively seeking out consistent feedback and mentorship; the trait of intentionally cultivating a beginner’s mind; the essence of
a learner.

Industriousness; The ability to work your ass off; good old fashioned hard work.

3. Role

"Everyone must carry their weight. However to do that, they must first know what is theirs to carry."

Roles are about the design, division, and deployment of the work of the team. Nothing erodes a team more than unequal distribution -- members who aren't equipped to do the work they've been tasked to do, and so leave the burden to other higher performers who will 'pick up the slack' -- you're almost guaranteed to end up with burnout and bottlenecks.

How we apportion the team purpose will in large measure determine the team synergy. High-performing teams leverage individuals’ different roles against the collective work products based on skill and expertise (Skill/Will Matrix). It is therefore essential that every team member is clear about his or her own role, as well as the role of every other team member.

While the concept is compellingly logical, many teams find it challenging to implement. There is often a tendency to take role definition to extremes or not to take it far enough. An activity that team leaders often avoid or fail at is facilitating the discussion about roles, especially the issues of role clarity.

Achieving role clarity is accomplished simply - through discussion, lots of it.

4. Speed

"It's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow."

In the new economy where everything is moving faster and it's only going to get faster, the new mantra is, "Do it more with less and do it faster." In order to get real speed, decisions at virtually every level must be made in minutes not days or weeks. Good leaders make tough decisions fast, sometimes without all of the information because they know that 80% of the information comes from the first 20% of research and that the longer it takes them to reach a decision, the more likely it is that new information will render this decision obsolete. These leaders posses a keen confidence in their ability to decide, and in their teams to deliver the right information.

Fast decisions also have to be made face-to-face, not email- to-email. This means that people have to think on their feet, and that the flood of email threads and approvals – so common in large organizations –must be eliminated. If a company waits until everything is perfect, it will never deliver, and it will be passed by. Enabling speed and moving quickly to delivery won't happen overnight, but if you can move from fast thinking to fast decision making, and build a model for sustaining that speed - you just might have something. Here are some goalposts to get you started:

• Large funnel first: evaluating EVERY idea and letting the best ones win
• Fast decisions: reducing approval cycles, bureaucracy as much as possible 
• Pivot quickly: constantly reassessing portfolios and proposals
• Tune constantly: managing your vendors to within an inch of their lifecyle 
• Head down: protecting the team, and their work - staying beneath the radar 
• Reduce clutter: championing simplicity, and flexibility

5. Power

"The world belongs to those who act."

Most leaders think they can do it all on their own, and many try. Ultimately, however, in order to grow an environment where high performing teams can thrive, you - as the leader - have to empower those around you. HPT leaders are willing to allow team members to make decisions and they refuse the impulse of stepping in as soon as something is done differently than they would do.

Hold fast. The more you give the team opportunity to make decisions, the faster they will get better at making them. Trust is empowering.

Whether it’s standing up for them to your boss, or standing beside them and supporting them in a disagreement with a vendor; leaders breed empowered teams when they consistently take the stance of fighting for them and being willing to go to battle for them. Giving your team permission to take risks, represent your organization to others, take on responsibility and stewardship - and having their back when they do, ultimately gives them permission to fight for their idea, even when it looks like it’s directly competing with your idea as the leader.

Permission to push back, when they believe in something you as a leader may not see - this is certainly the trait of an empowered and high performing team who will take you and the organization farther than you could have imagined.

6. Trust

"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough."

Working within a team that does not trust itself, can be one of the most distracting and draining situations in the workplace today. A team without trust isn't really a team: it's just a group of individuals, working together and often making disappointing progress. They may not share information, they might battle over rights and responsibilities, and they may not cooperate with one another. It doesn't matter how capable or talented your people are, they may never reach their full potential if trust isn't present.

However, when trust is in place, each individual in the team becomes stronger, because he or she is part of an effective and cohesive group. Trust is essential to an effective team, because it provides a sense of safety. When your team members feel safe with each other, they feel comfortable to open up, take appropriate risks, and expose vulnerabilities. As a leader, it is up to you to set the standard for transparency, candor and a common value of working together with integrity. How, you ask?

• Leading by example - show your team that you trust them, and you trust others (colleagues, bosses). Never forget that your team members are always watching and taking cues from you – take the opportunity to show them what trust in others really looks like.
• Communicating openly - Show your team you aren't afraid to address the "hard things", meet regularly and give everyone a chance to talk about progress or challenges. Make time for the team to get to know one another, this helps open avenues by which team members can help one another solve the 'big' problems.
• Making sure that you "walk the talk". Whenever you have important or relevant information to share, do so immediately. Demonstrate that open communication is important to you by consistently sharing with the group. The more you share with your team members, and thereby prove that you have no hidden agenda, the more comfortable they'll feel trusting you and each other.

7. Reward

"Rule of thumb: Reward in public, critique in private."

Rewarding a team dramatically improves not only the team performance but also the individual’s experience. Recognition serves as a tool for reinforcing the behaviors that drive an organization to excellence and gives a vital boost to employees’ engagement that has a “ripple effect” that reaches beyond the recipient. As leaders, our recognition lets the team know that we care about creating an environment where individuals feel appreciated for their contributions and their accomplishments.  Through recognition, we also build a culture that attracts and retains the best talent. A few rules when offering recognition: Be Genuine, Be Timely, Be Specific and always Personalize if you can. 

Here’s how to do it effectively.

• Set clear objectives. Team members have to understand and agree on what success looks like you need to have a way to assess the group's performance using a common set of objectives or aspirations 
• Check in on progress. Once the team knows what it's supposed to do checking in regularly can offer opportunities for discussion on how to improve or tune performance and may be occasion for celebrating if the team is consistently on the mark 
• Use the full arsenal of rewards. Think beyond team dinners and social events; there are lots of non monetary rewards at your disposal 
• Get to know your team. Rewards are only motivating if you are giving the team something it wants - spend the time to understand what they all value; and if you're at a loss ask them for input

Now that you have all of the elements to build your own high performing team - how do you actually do it? 

Stages of (High-Performing Team) development. 

You can't expect a new team to perform well when it first comes together. Forming a team takes time, and members often go through recognizable stages as they change from being a collection of strangers to a united group with common goals. Bruce Tuckman's Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing model describes these stages. Once you understand this, you can more effectively map the path you will take to helping your team become a legendary HPT. Keep in mind, it can take up to 6 months to complete the formation cycle - 

First 90 Days: Establish HPT benchmarks, take steps to create the environment, framework, daily progress check in, clarify, provide micro direction, assist with tactical work

90-120 Days. Reach Mid-point, provide external support, your team is now moving from decision to execution

120-180 Days. Team achieves self managing capabilities (Become your team's Chief Cheerleader) 

180 Days and Beyond.  Change your leadership focus to long term
issues, begin succession planning

High performing teams are the ultimate competitive advantage. They function as the engine of an organization's ability to innovate and deliver first, fast and best. Global organizations striving for competitive advantage are increasingly incorporating the use of high-performance teams to deploy complex business strategies. High-functioning teams are not the result of coincidence, they achieve greater levels of participation and collaboration because their members trust one another, share a strong sense of team identity, and have confidence in their abilities and effectiveness.

A good leader can take this blueprint and create their own high performing team. A great leader will take this same roadmap and create high performance team leaders, who will go on to create more high performing teams and so on. 

What will you do?

Day one, starts now.