“Dry pasta, scotch tape, cotton string and a marshmallow. How the kindergarten beat Stanford”
Peter Skillman (an engineer, designer and former Nokia employee) set out to test what the characteristics of high-performing teams are. His test involved the ingredients mentioned in the headline. The task was to make the marshmallow sit on top of the tallest possible structure you could construct with these ingredients. The same materials were handed out to every team. And surprisingly, the kindergarten kids won against the Stanford students. Author Daniel Coyle set out to understand not the characteristics, but why teams perform at a high level. He wrote a great account of his findings in “The Culture Code — the secrets of highly successful groups.” Simply put kindergarten kids just dive in, do rapid iterations, lots of interactions, trial and error without fear of mistakes, whereas adults are much too concerned with power, structure and organisation.
If hiring is the King of building a great company, then building high-performing teams is King Kong. In my experience, we rarely discuss how great teams are built. We build them every day. We also take them apart sometimes. These teams are the lifeblood of our success. Many employees are often members of several teams at one time. Now, why is it that some teams perform better than others?
In brief, some of the characteristics Daniel found in high-performing teams : 1) there is safety in the team, 2) you can share vulnerabilities, and 3) there is an established purpose. Points 1) and 2) are really about trust and being able to foster an open dialogue. They are also about drawing out people and their views, getting the shy or more introverted person to contribute. It is basically about creating the right energy in the team. You know when you walk into a room with a team at work if it goes well. You feel it. How is the energy? High? Medium? Low? Is there tension? How do you create urgency? Stress and urgency are not synonymous. Under stress, we revert to our stereotype personality, becoming less open. You want to have urgency and energy, but you also want to minimise stress to foster the right dialogue.
This is hard to get right. Are we really spending enough time paying attention to ensuring that our teams are truly working in the best way they can? Teams are sometimes virtual, adding to the complexity. Teams also make decisions. Some decisions can be critical to the future of your business. This is not only true of the C-level team. The same is true of product teams, customer teams or finance teams.
Off-sites, can be a great way to take down barriers and get people to know each other as people, not just as programmer, product dude, HR, or accounting. Knowing somebody is a basis for building trust. Shared experiences are a basis for building trust. Organisational hierarchies manifest themselves in teams, though this may not be the way to reach the best result. Navy seal teams, for example, often reconfigure themselves based on situational awareness and skill sets.
We know from many experiences and sources that the best teams are diverse, sized at 4–6 people, know each other, and enjoy mutual trust. How do you get there? One of the brilliant advisors I have worked with taught meabout the phases teams go through. They don’t just start working by themselves. She taught me about the four phases of team development : Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.
Briefly, each phase is characterised by :
· Forming : kick-off, excitement, looking forward to the task at hand, positive energy
· Storming : conflicts, uncertainty, different interpretations of tasks
· Norming : ground rules understood, metrics in place, facts being analysed
· Performing : strong commitment, self-improving, using measurable metrics and feedback
It takes time to get to the Performing phase. Also, if you introduce new members to a team, you often take a step or two back, as the new member(s) need to find their feet in the group, so performance may dip for a while.
Do you pay enough attention to how your teams are performing? How do you monitor? How do you course correct?
It is time to get the kindergarten into the work place!
