Working Better Together: Why FlexPod is a Team Sport

I can be bit competitive. It’s a useful trait to have in the sales business, but only if you put it to work in the right way. It can be tempting to go solo, working to smash sales targets and out-sell your colleagues. But from athletes to musicians, even individual superstars are surrounded by people who help make them awesome. That’s why FlexPod is a team sport.

Great teams achieve great things

From a practical perspective, teams get stuff done. You don’t need to believe me—basketball legend Michael Jordan said it with more finesse: “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”[1]

Together, the FlexPod team has grown our business over the past three years, turning FlexPod into a billion-dollar-plus business. No one builds a billion dollar business alone. We did it by working with our technology partners at Cisco, our partner channel, and our NetApp and Cisco sellers, and by building relationships across our engineering, support, marketing, and sales groups. The collaboration makes our team stronger, and it amplifies our ability to succeed.

Why does teamwork make such a big difference? According to the experts, there are a few different factors at play.

Many hands make great work

Teamwork isn’t just about lightening the load. It’s about working together with a common purpose and bringing out the best in each other. Work by research firm McKinsey, which looked at what business leaders can learn from the most successful musicians, found that “the best bands — the ones that last — achieve levels of teamwork and collaboration that business leaders would envy.”[2]

As co-authors Scott Keller (senior partner at McKinsey) and David Fishof (founder of the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp) describe, musicians tackle teamwork with ROCK: role clarity, objectives, communication, and a killer attitude. The end result is something bigger than any one person could dream of.

Teamwork makes people happy

Who doesn’t want to be happy? Thankfully, research confirms that working in a positive environment is good for our health and our personal growth. A survey by Atlassian found that “when honest feedback, mutual respect, and personal openness were encouraged, team members were 80 percent more likely to report higher emotional well-being.[3] Their research also found that 69 percent of teams with a high sense of well-being are able to own their mistakes—a characteristic I believe is critical for learning and building trust.

Happy people do better work

Researchers at the University of Michigan have also shown that positive teams are more productive. Companies that embraced positive practices—such as providing mutual support and kindness, avoiding blame, and treating each other with respect, gratitude, and trust—generated higher levels of organizational effectiveness, financial performance, and customer satisfaction. The researchers also found that positive practices buffer against stress, which improves employees’ ability to bounce back from challenges.[4]

Teamwork starts from the top

At NetApp, we’re proud to have a corporate philosophy that empowers people to get the job done. Within the FlexPod team, I have worked hard to refine that by creating a subculture that enables people to do their best work in their own way, in an environment based on trust, teamwork, and adaptability.

I know that working with a great team makes me a better leader and a better person, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. As I work to grow NetApp’s global FlexPod business, nothing is more important to me than building a winning team that achieves great things because we’ve created a positive culture that brings out the best in everybody. Rock on!

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/high-performing-teams-a-timeless-leadership-topic

[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organization-blog/how-to-make-your-team-rock

[3] https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/the-importance-of-teamwork

[4] https://hbr.org/2015/03/positive-teams-are-more-productive