Paul Tevis

A chart of team performance assembled out of wooden blocks

What is a High-Performing Team?

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A chart of team performance assembled out of wooden blocks“Oh, my teams are definitely high-performing.” I’ve heard this from countless managers in numerous organizations. Sometimes I wondered where they were keeping all the low-performing teams. Understandably, managers responsible for developing teams want to be seen as doing a good job. Isn’t the promise of high performance the reason we form teams? Without a clear definition of what “high performance” means, it’s easy to defend describing many teams with that term. And if a team is already high-performing, they don’t need to get better, right?

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Three sailboats racing in a sailing regatta

Not All “Teams” are Real Teams

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Three sailboats racing in a sailing regatta
On a team, members are all in the same boat together. Individual success is inseparable from team success.

Few words in the corporate world are abused and misused more than “team.” All the people who report to the same manager? They must be a team – even though their work doesn’t require them to collaborate. All the people working on a product? They must be a team – even though they all have different objectives and incentives. Most “teams” are collections of people that someone has drawn a somewhat arbitrary line around and said, “You’re a team.” Calling something a team doesn’t make it one. Teams have three essential qualities that set them apart from other collections of people.

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Arrows pointing in different direction change to the point in the same direction

Getting Aligned Through Shared Understanding

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“We want to know how aligned people are around the new product development strategy. How can we do that?”

Arrows pointing in different direction change to the point in the same directionA group of senior leaders at a software company asked me this question as I was helping them to prepare for their annual kickoff meeting. They’d just completed a challenging year of development on a new product initiative. While it had generated some impressive results, they recognized that they needed to approach the following year differently. They were bringing the core team of twenty-five or so key contributors – usually distributed across the United States – together for several days to roll out their plans for the new year. They’d brought me in to help plan and facilitate the event. I knew what I needed to do: help them create a shared understanding of the new strategy.

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Four of inkblots inspired by the Rorschach Test

Clarifying Impacts

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Four of inkblots inspired by the Rorschach Test
Vaguely described impacts are like the inkblots of a Rorshach Test – people project all kinds of things onto them.

We often describe the impacts of decisions, challenges, and plans in desirable yet vague terms. Projects will “improve communication,” “make us more customer-centric,” or “increase innovation.” This vague language obscures the importance and urgency of these actions. Why they matter here-and-now isn’t clear, so they don’t motivate people and don’t help people make decisions. Perhaps worst of all, vague language hides a lack of alignment by making us think we agree. Avoid these drawbacks by clarifying the impacts you want.

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Five speech bubbles with question marks centered over a bright yellow background

What Customer Problem Are You Trying to Solve? (And Why?)

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Five speech bubbles with question marks centered over a bright yellow background
Asking the right questions can refocus a team on creating the right customer and business outcomes

Many product teams fall into the trap of fixating on the work they need to do and forgetting about the impact their work is supposed to have. When that happens, the work often doesn’t produce the desired result. When you work as part of a product team, five questions can help you to avoid this trap by re-focusing on the customer problem you are trying to solve – and why.

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Spinning plates again a blue sky

The Realities of Task Switching

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Spinning plates again a blue sky
Plate spinning may be entertaining to watch, but it is rarely a good way to be effective.

Most people and organizations want to have an impact. They don’t exert effort for no purpose; they want to accomplish something. Waste – spending time and energy on things that don’t contribute to an outcome you want to create – gets in the way of that. Wasteful activities reduce our personal and organizational effectiveness. Waste comes in many different forms, and one of the most pernicious is task switching.

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Text Why are we here typed on retro typewriter

Start With a Clear Purpose

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Text Why are we here typed on retro typewriter

Your meeting should have a purpose, and everyone in the meeting should agree on what it is.

This is the most common advice that I give people when they ask how to make their meetings more effective. It’s also one of the most powerful.

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