First Team and Divided Loyalties
Here’s a fun activity: Walk around in your organization and ask random people this question: “How many teams are you part of?” You will get interesting answers, ranging from “I have no idea” till “a dozen or so?”. Usually the number gets higher the more senior the interviewed person is. And whenever I have asked a manager this question, the answer often was mind boggling.
There are several interesting aspects to this:
We have a tendency to call every collection of humans a team.
We have many different initiatives in flight.
We want to avoid saying no to people. So when we get asked to join yet another “team”, we might say yes, without really being able to commit to this new initiative.
Not Every Group is a Team
The word “team” has a very positive ring to it. Teams are where people collaborate to make great things happen. Just think about all the slogans that praise teams: “In a team one plus one equals three.” or “It takes teamwork to make a dream work.” It’s true: effective teams can achieve remarkable things. And it’s also true that building an effective team is hard and that many groups we call teams are “teams in name only”. Without getting into definitions, it’s safe to say that a real team requires at least a shared goal, commitment to this goal and interdependence between the team members. Not all groups fulfill these criteria, and that’s okay. Not everything needs to be a team, and we should stop overusing the term “team”. There are also committees, working groups, councils, communities of practice and many more. Some of these names might not sound as sexy as teams, but they are often more appropriate descriptions.
Many Initiatives in Flight
It’s common for organizations to have more initiatives in progress than they can reasonably staff. This almost naturally leads to a situation where people are members of many different initiatives - and each initiative needs a “team” working on it. This effect is even stronger for specialists and very senior people, as they are usually rare in an organization and many initiatives have a demand for them.
The problems with many ongoing initiatives are not new, and most of us might have experienced them first hand: stress, frustration and disappointment, poor quality and long lead times.
Saying No is Hard
If someone asks us if we want to be part of a new initiative, it’s easy to say yes. Whoever asked us to join will be happy, we don’t have to explain ourselves, and we seem to avoid a potential conflict (in reality we often just postpone it). If we, on the other hand, look long and hard at our capacity and all of our ongoing commitments, we should not sign up for yet another initiative. But now we have to tell someone no, which doesn’t feel great. It might even trigger anxiety about being excluded from interesting projects in the future or getting that promotion we are working on.
“One of the most important things that members of a leadership team have to do is understand which team that they are a member of is their top priority.”
The First Team
I find the concept of the First Team (Patrick Lencioni calls it Team#1) quite powerful to create more clarity, focus and commitment. The idea is quite simple: While we can be part of multiple groups, we can only fully commit to one team. This first team is our highest priority, and whenever this team needs our help, we will immediately support them (of course there are exceptions).
A very powerful exercise when (re-)forming a team is to ask: “Do you want this team to be your first team? If yes, what would be the consequences for your other teams?” As the adage goes, you can’t have your cake and eat it. So if this is your new first team, something else hase to give.
I asked these questions to one newly formed leadership team I was working with. They were all very committed and agreed this needed to be their first team, in order to have a real impact. Then one person said: “If we are serious about this, I will deprioritize 1:1s with my direct reports, whenever I am needed in this team.” This was followed by a minute of awkward silence, where you could almost hear people gulping, as they realized what this really meant for them. These 1:1s were a very important part of every manager’s job, and nobody would cancel / reschedule them lightly. And if these precious meetings were up for discussion, what else might there be? In the end they all agreed to this being their first team, even if it meant making hard choices. And although it did not work perfectly in the beginning (old habits die slowly), they eventually got to a place where this really was their first team and you could easily observe that this was a big step towards them becoming a high performing team.
Of course the decision doesn’t always have to look like this. In another scenario some of the members might have said: “I really want to be part of this initiative, but this can’t be my first team. If push comes to shove, I will prioritize other initiatives.” The consequence might be that some people need to leave the group. Or that the group decides that this group can not be a real team at this point, but rather a forum for information exchange etc. In any case, it’s a valuable discussion to have.
“Your divided loyalties would become a problem.”
Takeaways
People often assume they are part of many different teams, which can lead to stress, frustration, poor quality and long lead times. In order to create clarity and focus it is helpful to have a discussion about folks’ first team. When folks have to prioritize, which team will get their attention? It can only be one. And what happens to the other teams? Are they even real teams, or should we call them something else and be happy with the fact that not everything can be (and needs to be) a real team?
Schulung zu modernen Unternehmensstrukturen
Am 18./19.12.2024 gebe ich mit meinem Bruder Stefan eine Schulung in Hamburg. Dort werden wir mit vielen Praxisbeispielen erörtern, wie man Unternehmen auf Effektivität, Flow und Innovation ausrichten kann.