Like many San Francisco Bay Area residents, I too have been entangled in pointless, post-Super Bowl “what went wrong” discussions. One theory considered the inherent conflicts to team success brought on by personal, high-stakes objectives and agendas held individually by players, coaching staff and ownership. Certainly, at the highest level everyone wants to win and is ”on the same team.” Yet the very skills bringing each person to a team and defining them as exceptional are the same things that must sometimes be subordinated to best truly help the team. For example a great receiver may just need to be a convincing decoy in some plays, or, a fiscally astute manager might sometimes need to pay a higher price to get exactly the right player the coach really needs. And, so it is with all managers and team play in every business.
Despite the fact that individuals are often promoted because they are capable of operating effective teams and groups, they must also be selfless as team players on their boss’ staff. The very strength of your (leadership) skills, if not carefully managed, can sometimes be a liability to your skill as a team player (and vice versa)!
People who invest in companies, products, and groups are very concerned that the team representing their interests are the best available. Regarding teamwork they care, What is the team’s:
Track record (what have they accomplished?)
Ability to work together (do they get along well?)
Ability to adapt (how well do they adapt to changing business goals and situations?)
Most sporting interests and every modern business purports to believe in empowered teams, with varying degrees of influence through less (or, sadly, sometimes more!) authoritarian managers. The motivation to establish such teams is the expectation they bring benefits including:
Motivated participants
Access to ground-level ideas
Environment of sustained progress
Nimble action
Ability to adapt
Improved communications
In addition to capturing the above-listed benefits, such effective, empowered teams free up the manager for higher-level tasks. Additionally, these teams should require only light management and oversight to ensure no overshoots in mission and/or responsibilities taken on by the team. Motivational rewards and recognition should always be built into the operation of such groups. (Only) when operated correctly, powerful examples of such teams are the quality circles particularly visible in the automotive industry.
In business there are really only three types of teams that might be established by management:
- Tiger teams/task forces. Groups temporarily established in order to address specific issues and/or resolve particular problems within defined timelines, resources and goals. They may be cross functional or organizationally vertical.
- Standing groups/committees. These continue through time to fulfill a mission or set of responsibilities. They also have defined problems to attack, with specific resources and goals, but without particular timeframe; again these may be either cross functional or vertical in their focus.
- Informal teams. Often self-assembled but sometimes created by management with occasional and ad hoc participation from within the group. They are good for facilitating informal communications, motivating participants and are capable of identifying underlying problems and highlighting concerns to management. Their informal nature means results are unpredictable as no specific goals are assigned unless one of the above team-types is created to seek specific results. Discussion groups organized around identified issues or particular professional disciplines are examples of this type.
When establishing any team it’s essential to make sure it’s correctly missioned and developed. The right leaders need to be in place, issues explained, any resources made available and relevant goals clearly defined. After commissioning there should be regular, adequate yet unobtrusive oversight, without undue direction. The team must track actions and have obstructions and impediments removed appropriately while thoughtful risk-taking and team action is encouraged. As always, the team should have their results showcased when needed and be rewarded/recognized appropriately.
Now, all of these principles work really well in business, and as I think about the analogies in professional sports I can see that many of these same principles (certainly not all!) are embraced in that environment, too. For example, half-time talks are meant to adjust a team’s plans and review what is and is not working well. Team leaders play a role in these discussions and the entirety is normally overseen and managed by coaching staff. In some cases troubling scenarios are reported where ownership/investors, engage, too! Not surprisingly, this is remarkably like any other business, even down to the crisis management and frighteningly short time-frames often required for adjustment.
It seems sports teams are highly tuned to respond to sudden changes, as indeed are some businesses; the face-to-face customer service function in general comes to mind. I just wonder if much of what has more recently entered the business world as team development and crisis management came from sports or was it vice versa? In either case, that Super Bowl loss is still weighing on my mind. So, like many other sufferers it only remains for me to read the reviews, accept the most plausible explanations, file them away and get over it!
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