Tracking Team Performance

How do you know you’ve been successful, that your team has been effective?  Ask an athlete.  The first thing any of them will tell you is that if they’ve won they’ve been successful.  How effective they are shows up in the box score and win-loss columns every day.  

So how do we define winning in our (usually) more benign organizational contexts?  Ask whether your clients are happy.  Did you meet, or even exceed, their expectations?  If the answer to that is “yes”, then that’s the same as winning the big game.

The second thing you’ll hear is that the team got better.  There was an increase in capability.  The team is moving up in the standings.  Or maybe a dynasty is forming.  The teams that are truly effective find ways to sustain and improve their high performance.

At our workplaces, effective teams find new ways to delight their clients.  They develop new products and services or better ways to deliver the old ones.

And finally, individual team members learn, grow, and find satisfaction in the work of the team.  After all, if there’s nothing in all this for me, why would I stick around?

The very best, highest performing teams hit on all these measures of effectiveness consistently.  The good ones get it right on at least a couple of them most of the time.  The bad ones, well…. Where is your team?

(Source: Richard Hackman, Leading Teams (2002))

In the coming days, we’ll look at some of the things you can do to help your team hit these measures more consistently.

Seeing Through the Eyes of a Child

When I was in high school English class, I learned that as a literary device children are truth-tellers (drunks, too, but that will have to be for another time…).  That meant whenever a child spoke, you could count on whatever came out as being the real story.

Here at the beach on vacation with my family, our big activity is reading, and I just finished Emma Donoghue’s best-selling novel, Room.  It is a most remarkable story of an absolutely horrific situation told entirely through the eyes of a five year old boy.

Beyond the obvious social and psychological implications of this book, there is the boy himself, Jack, an innocent who is really anything but.

What is it that makes Jack so compelling, and so relevant?  It is a short list of characteristics that we pursue all the time: clarity, curiosity, and being totally present.

Jack was all about the integration of these three simple characteristics:  

• He was always tuned in to what was happening in the current moment and asking if it made sense (being present).  Trying to discover the meaning.  
• If the meaning was not immediately apparent, he looked elsewhere for it (curiosity).  
• And then, if he was frustrated in his search, he figured out how to carry on anyway (clarity).

How many misunderstandings have you been part of where the central issue had to do with “lack of clarity”?  And how often do these situations result from paying attention to something other than that which you needed to pay attention to?

Our lives are so complex with so many important things demanding our focus that it becomes easy to lose sight of what is right in front of us.  Somehow, because it is right-here-right-now, it becomes easy to overlook.

The next time you find yourself struggling with an apparent lack of clarity, frustrated because the situation is turning out to be something other than what you intended, look closely at your circumstances and ask whether you are really paying attention to what is most present, most meaningful for you right now.

Creating Impact: Making It Stick

Continuing our ongoing conversation about leading change ...

Once you have established some sense of shared meaning (see earlier post here), and then clarified the future you want to create (earlier post here), the final phase in the cycle can be the most challenging: how do you get the new thing to stick?

What do you need to do, right now, to make the change that is required?

Is that enough?

People are notoriously fickle creatures.  Despite all their good intentions, breaking comfortable habits is a very hard thing for them to do.  

This is only compounded by the fact that you can’t MAKE anyone do anything.  (Granted, you can threaten people into submission.  However, I think we can all agree that weak compliance like that is no way to run a railroad.)  People have to want to change.  

Fortunately, there are a couple of ways you can encourage this wanting.  

The first is to hold conversations of accountability.  The questions above are a start to that.  They get individuals and the team to make (in public) the tough promises that are needed to start them moving toward the future you have agreed is the desirable one.

The second way is to create the conditions for success.  Make it possible for your people to make different choices, and provide rewards when they make choices that fit with the new situation.

What kind of rewards?  It depends on the circumstances and on your people.  The biggest, most important part of managing anyone -- employees, team mates, your kids, the dog -- is knowing what makes them tick.  How do you figure that out?  Pay attention to them.  Ask them about it.

What will help you sustain the change?

How will you assess your progress?

Remember, this is a cyclical process.  As you reach the end of this stage, it is time to notice what you have created by asking: “What (or where) is the new tension?” 

And the whole process begins again.

Staying in the Moment

How many of you are old enough to remember this classic line from the not-so-classic 1976 movie “The Gumball Rally”?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjGXn249Fc0

Perhaps it is too much of a stretch to turn Franco’s (played by a youthful Raul Julia) flamboyant utterance into a philosophy for living and working, but through a certain lens ….

I hear the line as a call to be present, to stay in-the-moment with what is happening right now.  If you’re wondering about what could have, should have, or might have been, you are somewhere other than right here.

In most of the organizations I work with, too much time is spent unproductively looking at the past, trying to assess blame for something that has not turned out exactly as planned.

If there has been a mistake that merits some focus, far better to ask “What needs to be different in order for this not to happen again?”

I’ll grant you, sometimes the past (“what’s behind me”) IS important.  After all, that’s what makes each of us who we are.  It is the target for reflection and learning.  And what about the famous adage that those who don’t know their past are condemned to repeat it?

All very good points.

BUT, the past is valuable only insofar as it helps us understand our present moment and informs the decisions we make about the future we want to create.

That’s very different from looking in the rear view mirror all the time, worried about who (or what) is coming up behind us.

Going Beyond: Engage a New Conversation

Continuing our ongoing conversation about leading change ...

Once you have established some sense of shared meaning (see earlier post here), it is time to start a new conversation.  One that will take you beyond your current level of skills and experience.  This new conversation is a look at and into the future you intend to create.

What needs to be different for you to be at your best more often?

If you had three wishes for your team, what would they be?

There are a few ways you can create one of these new conversations.  I like to think of a conversation as having three dimensions, so changing one of these dimensions ought to move you in a “new” direction.

First, you can change what you are talking about, or the topic of your conversation.  Second, you can change the people who are talking with you.  Third, you can change the way you are interacting, or yourprocess.  

Changing the topic of conversation or the people you are talking with are less trivial than they sound.  Many times, an interaction is not as productive as it could be because you are talking about the wrong thing.  You should be talking about x, but it is easier to talk about y.  In addition, you prefer to engage with a third party rather than go directly to the one person with whom you have the issue.

You stay stuck because we don’t look for a way out.  Maybe you don’t want to find a way out.  It’s comfortable here, in your stuck place.

The thing is, if you are serious about going beyond where you are now, you have to do this.

Starting with the process of interaction is often most effective.  One way to begin is to listen.  A lot.  Ask questions to give you something to listen to.  Your objective is to learn the other’s story.

As this unfolds, you will probably find opportunities to share your story -- slowly at first, maybe even a little tentatively, as you continue to listen and find ways to connect your perspectives and ideas to those of the others who are engaged with you.

This may start to feel like a dance, though one where you are inventing the choreography as you go.  It is especially important to do this when you believe you have a lock on the one best answer for the change you are looking to make.  You may find that your answer really isn’t the best one.

The question at the heart of this stage is:  What is the future you want to create together, and what are you able to do in order to move in that direction?