The truth about teams

Words: 447
Reading Time: 1 min. 29 sec.s

There is a lot of confused thinking about getting the best from teams. A good case in point is Duncan Brodie (http://goalsandachievements.com) who says:

“To get the best from a team you clearly have to bring out the best in each individual and get them all playing to their strengths.”

Only to say, just a few lines further on:

“The truth is that team success is largely down to a group of people who are committed to a common purpose and are willing to work collectively and support each other to get the result they desire.”

Setting aside whether you agree with either of these points, both cannot be true at the same time.

Bringing out the best in each individual is just a likely to give you a group of individuals, each pulling in a different direction, rather than a team.

Having a group of people committed to a common purpose and willing to work collectively to get the result they desire will give you a team, but will not necessarily bring out the best in each individual; that may need to be sacrificed to the common good.

Superior teams are most likely when the members share a common aspiration for the team rather than themselves and the team makes use of each individual’s strengths. That does not mean having the best individuals, since they may not place the team above themselves. It does involve each team member identifying moment to moment how the team as a whole can best deliver.

Sport is often chosen as an analogy for business, but business is rarely like that. Business is not about delivering at your peak for 48 minutes, 90 minutes, 20 overs or 5 days. It is about effective, appropriate effort delivered under all circumstances for months and years.

Business suggestions:
1) Be clear about the outcomes;
2) Be clear about how you will know if and when you have them;
3) Get buy-in from all members of the team;
4) No stigma should attach to not buying-in and being properly excluded;
5) No-one fails in a team, everyone takes responsibility;
6) Teams do not work automatically, they need work themselves;
7) Changing team members changes the whole team, earlier phases will need revisiting;
8) Ball-carriers and supporters change over time; make sure everyone knows who is who;
9) You need both ball-carriers and supports to succeed;
10) You cannot lead a team; either you are part of it, or you are not. Who leads at any one time will change with where the team has got to;
11) When the job is done celebrate the success and disband the team;
12) Different jobs need different teams.

Tomorrow is another country

Words: 217
Reading Time: 0 minute 43 seconds

All around me are preparations for the first England match in the World Cup. Whatever you may think of football – or of the England team - enormous enthusiasm is being exhibited nationwide. When we consider the record of the England team delivering against such expectations, I begin to wonder why such raving fans exist.

I believe the most likely explanation is that – once again – they have been sold, not the reality of past results, but the dream of future glory. This is not the past all-over-again; this is new territory, the dynamics are different; the possibility exists. It is hope-against-hope time and an excuse, among some, for a party.

And then there is the loyal cognoscenti who would enthuse whatever the circumstances – either for football in general, or for the England team in particular – although they are probably a minority.

What are the implications for business?

I would suggest the following lessons:
1) Don’t ignore your loyal fan base, they will keep you going through tough times;
2) Find out why your prospective supporters should care;
3) Sell the future for your customers, not the products' past;
4) Dreams overpower reality.

If business recognized and realized the way their potential supporters think, they would have many more enthusiastic aficionados and a very different tomorrow. Computer firm Apple is the classic example.

Misplacing your management skills

Words: 677 Reading Time: 2 minutes 15 seconds

As a speaker I recently delivered a 10 minute coaching slot at the beginning of a network meeting. I selected a topic apparently much loved by those aspiring to coach – Time Management. When I entered the phrase into Google I got:

* 64.4 million listings for time management skills;
* 258 million listings for time management tools; and
* 140 million listings for time management training sessions.

Clearly, I was on the right track.

Regretfully, those so intent on learning about time management are doomed to a degree of disappointment. While purveyors of advice on time management may be as tightly packed as snake oil sellers at a health-food convention there are some inherent attributes of time that ought to be pointed out first.

1) Time just happens. If I kick off a stopwatch and then ask someone to ‘manage’ the time as I talk I am not quite sure how they would do that. Note that I am asking that they manage the time and only the time, not my talk. With so many courses and techniques I am sure there must be a way to make time stop, start, increase, diminish, reverse, multiple and turn left at the traffic lights; I just haven’t come across it yet.

2) The predictability of time - 24 hours in a day; 7 days in a week; 52 weeks in a year – should probably make managing it easier. But that predictability is an illusion. There’s really 24hrs and 59 seconds in a day – hence the Leap Year. In 1751 there was no January, February or March in England and Wales. Under Napoleon there were 10 days in a week (a decade) and each month had 3 decades. The year ended (on the old Sept 17th) with 5 supplementary days to bring it back to 365 days in a year, or 6 supplementary days in a Leap Year.

3) Besides messing about with the calendar it is possible genuinely to bend the space/time continuum under an intense gravitational field; time will run at different speeds and in different directions.

4) The theory of relativity tells us that the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. If one of a pair of twins rockets off through space for a period of time, he would return younger than his sibling.

Probably time is a much more slippery subject than it at first appears.

One of the things that may prompt us to attempt to ‘manage’ time is that we view it as scarce, but there is actually loads of it. About 14 billion years have elapsed since the “Big Bang” and – as far as we can tell – time stretches for an infinite distance into the future. Whatever else may be scarce, it isn’t time.

And time is a bit like air - we have all the time that there is. We all have 24 hours and 59 seconds in a day. Nobody goes short, or is in any way deprived. There is no more to be had.

Perhaps the most helpful change we can make is to stop thinking of time as a resource, like water, minerals or money. Time is not a resource, it’s a dimension like height, width and depth and like those other dimensions its gradations are just human inventions.

Time is not susceptible to management.

That leaves us with the one component in any situation that we are best placed to manage – ourselves.

Unless we are managing our own thoughts and feelings (and nobody else can) any organizational method that is superimposed will be fatally undermined. On the myriad of courses listed by Google you can learn about diaries, schedules, systems, tidying, delegating and dumping, but without first being in control of ourselves (to some degree) all the clever plans and procedures will be like dandelions parachutes in a windstorm.

There are two very simple (not easy) elements to managing ourselves:

* Clarity – knowing exactly what outcome we want.

* Desire – an overwhelming connection with that outcome.

With those two successfully addressed we can make the most of ourselves – whatever amount of time we think we may have.