From http://www.maricopa.edu/learn/resources/qqupdate.html
LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
#10: Testing For Consensus
"The illusion of consensus is the most common trap to snare the unwary
[leader]-facilitator." - (Thomas A. Kayser, Team Power: How To Unleash the
Collaborative Genius of Work Teams, p. 112)
For the most part this is true because
when testing for consensus, leaders often direct their test question to the
group at large and ask members to either voice concern with the decision or
voice acceptance.
For example, the leader may ask, "Does
anyone have a problem or concern with this decision?" In response the leader may
encounter silence which might be interpreted as agreement or consensus. Thus,
there is the illusion of consensus. OR, the leader may ask, "Does everyone agree
with this decision?" In response, many members may respond affirmatively but
several members may not respond and again there is the illusion of consensus.
As you work to facilitate consensus
decision-making within various groups, consciously practice testing for
consensus. As group members share their knowledge and expertise, explore the
logical and intuitive aspects of the decision to be made and interact with one
another, the thinking of each member is influenced and has the potential to be
shifted or changed. Thus, the leader must constantly be cognizant of changes in
the thinking of individual members.
One way to develop and maintain this
awareness is to use straw voting. Straw voting is a NON-BINDING show of hands to
check for consensus within a group. Please note that if you use straw voting,
you must also strongly emphasize to the group that the process is a way to
monitor consensus and not a shift away from consensus decision-making to
majority rule.
Finally, when straw voting indicates
that there is consensus within the group, the leader needs to formally test for
consensus by asking each member to verbally indicate their support of the
decision.
Another way to develop and maintain an
awareness of changes in consensus is the Consensus Card Method. With this method
each member has a multi-colored (red, yellow and green) card folded in the shape
of a three dimensional triangle that can be used to visually indicate their
position at any point in the discussion.
- Red signifies disagreement and
cannot commit to supporting decision.
- Yellow means person may not fully
agree but they can support it.
- Green indicates the person agrees
with the decision and can support it.
After a decision has been tentatively
identified as the best option, each member places his or her card in the yellow
position. As the group discusses the viability of that decision, members can
move their card around to indicate their position. Consensus is reached when all
cards are either yellow or green. At this point the leader needs to formally
test for consensus by asking each member to verbally indicate their agreement
and/or support of the decision. (Source: Quanah Leadership ∓ Organizational
Development Specialists)
Leadership:
Nine Qualities Of A Successful Leader
"The final test of a
leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to
carry on." Walter Lippmann, in New York Herald Tribune
- Leaders help people succeed.They
don't fear developing their associates.
- Don't confuse management and
leadership.Managers focus on material resources, leaders key on people.
- Set goals anyone can understand;
state them simply.Verbose, complicated goals discourage buy-in.
- Set high standards: "Good enough"
is not good enough!Only the best succeed in today's competitive arena; leaders
must also meet the same high standards.
- There is always room for
improvement.Everyone must be encouraged to constantly seek ways to improve
procedures and product.
- A leader takes charge.Step up to
responsibility and accountability; have a plan and implement it.
- Do what is right.Develop, express
and live by a well-grounded set of values.
- Give credit where credit is due.You
may lay the foundation, but the bricks and mortar are always the products of
your associates' efforts.
- Demonstrate the virtue of
loyalty.Both up and down loyalty is an essential virtue of a successful
leader.
March Systems Thinker
Newsletter:
Value Creation and Business Success:The most successful organizations understand
that the purpose of any business is to create value for customers, employees,
investors, and that the interests of these three groups are inextricably
linked.Find out what's meant by value creation. Toolbox Article:Operational
Thinking - Fourth in a series of seven articles about the different systems
thinking skills.
Book Review "Quantum Thinking:
A New Framework for Organizational Transformation": on the book Rewiring the
Corporate Brain by Danah Zohar. Viewpoint: Technology Versus Discipline:Why I Am
Not A Systems Thinker by David Bridgeland, VP, Simulator Development, Powersim
Corporation.
LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
#5: Assess Your Leadership Strengths
∓ Weaknesses
"Whatever resolves uncertainty is information. Power accrues to whomever can
handle information. - R. Buckminster Fuller
Leadership development programs, over
the past decade have increasingly included the use of 360-degree feedback--an
experience in which a person receives, in anonymous form, ratings of performance
from peers, superiors and subordinates. The recipient of such feedback then
typically compares this data with self-ratings and receives training in order to
improve performance.
EXPLORE the idea of using 360-degree
feedback as a way for you to reflect upon your leadership strengths and
weaknesses as well as important information that you need for identifying a
leadership development plan. The following are a set of strategies that you can
use for getting and using 360-degree feedback about your leadership style and
contribution:
- Select a 360-Degree Feedback
Instrument
- Distributing The 360-Degree
Feedback Instrument - Select who you want to fill out the survey wisely.
Choose people that you respect and trust, will give you a honest assessment,
know you well and understand your role and responsibilities as a leader,
represent a range of individual perspectives and will provide a balanced
perspective of your leadership style and contribution.
- Preparing Yourself To Receive
360-Degree Feedback - According to Rick Maurer in his Feedback Toolkit: 16
Tools for Better Communication in the Workplace, feedback "can be
overwhelming. When this happens, you are likely to experience its impact in
stages." (Page 6
- Maurer goes on to caution the
recipients of feedback to "think of SARA" -- a four stage process of
SURPRISE, ANGER, RATIONALIZATION, and ACCEPTANCE. The key to reaching
ACCEPTANCE is to allow yourself the time you need to move from reaction to
reflection. Maurer explains that you cannot rush SARA, she moves at her own
pace.
- Interpreting the results
- Before you look at the results,
identify what you want to learn about yourself from the survey results.
- Assume a non-judgmental
mindset.
- Remember that the feedback you
receive from others is really about how they perceive or interpret your
behavior.
- Focus your interpretation on
identifying:
- Overall trends and patterns.
- Similarities and differences
in perception among groups.
- Both your strengths and your
weaknesses.
- Do analysis and interpretation
over a period of time in order to help you to stay open and objective
about the feedback you have received.
- Ask others that you trust (a
mentor/frien
- to validate the feedback.
- Developing a plan for improving
your leadership contribution
- Identify developmental goals
based on the feedback you have received.
- Define developmental strategies
for achieving your developmental goals.
- Outline a written action plan
for implementing developmental strategies.
- Enlist the support of others
within your organization who can help you to implement your developmental
strategies as appropriate.
- Seek out people you trust and
ask them to give you ongoing feedback.
Attributes Of A Leader
"An
Army Of Sheep Led By A Lion Would Defeat An Army Of Lions Led By A Sheep."
- Old Arab Proverb
What are the actions and attributes of
a leader? What is it that makes him/her different from others?
- A leader is always full of
praise.
- A leader learns to use the
phrases "thank you" and "please" on their way to the top.
- A leader is always growing.
- A leader is possessed with
his/her dreams.
- A leader launches forth before
success is certain.
- A leader is not afraid of
confrontation.
- A leader talks about his/her own
mistakes before talking about someone else's.
- A leader is a person of honesty
and integrity.
- A leader has a good name.
- A leader makes others better.
- A leader is quick to praise and
encourage the smallest amount of improvement.
- A leader is genuinely interested
in others.
- A leader looks for opportunities
to find someone doing something right.
- A leader takes others up with
him/her.
- A leader responds to his/her own
failures and acknowledges them before others have to discover and reveal
them.
- A leader never allows murmuring
-- from self or others.
- A leader is specific in what
he/she expects.
- A leader holds accountable those
who work with him/her.
- A leader does what is right
rather than what is popular.
- A leader is a servant.A leader is
a lion, not a sheep.
(Source: Image of Excellence,
1992, Honor Books, Tulsa, Oklahoma)
From http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/40/one.html
FastCompany
What Makes Teams Work?
From: Issue 40 | November
2000, Page 109 By: Regina Fazio Maruca Photographs by:
Mark Ostow
Ray Oglethorpe
President, AOL Technologies,
America Online Inc.,
Dulles, Virginia
What's the secret to a great team? Think small. Ideally, your team should
have 7 to 9 people. If you have more than 15 or 20, you're dead: The connections
between team members are too hard to make.
Two and a half years ago, AOL was feeling hamstrung at the technologies
level. There was a bottleneck at the top. We decided to make that division team
based, and created core teams that were empowered to make decisions about
products.
It was the best thing that we could have done. The core teams spun off
satellite teams (also made up of small groups of people) that focused on
specific projects, with specific goals and expectations.
The management challenge is to understand that the people who report to you
may get most of their direction from another person or from several other
people: their team leaders. And people can be on more than one team, of course.
It's the manager's job to think about whether this person is being stretched too
thin, or whether that person needs some special training.
Size is the key. Have the smallest number of people possible on each team.
Another rule: no delegates. You don't want people who have to take the team's
ideas back to someone else to get authorization. You want the decision makers.
Ray Oglethorpe leads AOL Technologies, which includes the network
that supports AOL's member services worldwide, as well as host- and
client-software development. Oglethorpe is responsible for maintaining and
developing AOL's core technologies and operational resources and for the
company's integrated-systems architecture. He is based in Dulles, Virginia.
Jon Katzenbach
Senior partner
Katzenbach Partners LCC
New York, New York
Teams work when they are created for the right reasons, and when they are
created in the right way. The organization that I think does the best job of
meeting these requirements is the U.S. Marine Corps. Most people think of the
USMC as a command-and-control organization. But when they put a team together,
it's in the right place for the right reasons. The corps is extremely
disciplined about assessing whether it really needs a team for the task at hand.
The notion that a team is always better is misleading, yet all too often, that's
the path that managers choose.
The critical decision for any manager or leader who wants to get higher
performance from a small group of people is determining whether the group should
try to work as a team, or whether they should be satisfied with what I call
"single-leader unit" discipline. Single-leader units are intrinsically faster
and more efficient than teams. Tasks are more clearly defined by one leader, and
members work on their own much of the time.
Most organizations proliferate with groups that call themselves teams but
aren't. It's too common for single-leader units to be labeled as teams, and it's
disturbing how many managers and leaders assume that being a team is what a
group effort is all about. That's a confusing, frustrating, and costly
assumption. And it causes big problems in the workplace. If a group tries to
become a team when the performance challenge requires a single-leader approach,
performance and morale suffer. The opposite is equally true. In fact, both
miscues produce the dreaded "compromise-unit syndrome": weak leadership, low
levels of commitment, wasted time, and poor performance results.
Jon Katzenbach (jon.katzenbach@katzenbach.com) is a senior partner at
Katzenbach Partners LLC, a New York-based firm that specializes in leadership,
team, workforce, and organization performance. He has written Peak
Performance: Aligning the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees (Harvard
Business School Press, 2000); Teams at the Top: Unleashing the Potential of
Both Teams and Individual Leaders (Harvard Business School Press, 1998);
The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization (with
coauthor Douglas Smith) (Harper Business, 1994); and Real Change Leaders:
How You Can Create Growth and High Performance at Your Company (with the
RCL team, Frederick Beckett, et al.) (Times Business, 1995).
Michael Leinbach
Shuttle-launch director
John F. Kennedy Space Center
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Where I work, having a well-functioning team can be a matter of life or
death. The most critical element of a successful shuttle-launch team is an open
channel of communication from each member to the team leader.
With my team, I make sure that everyone knows to inform me immediately if
there's a glitch in his or her work -- any glitch -- even if it's just something
that's marginally off, but still within normal specs.
But there are a couple of human factors that can work against us. People tend
to be intimidated by those who hold leadership positions. And often people don't
want to stand out. It takes about four months to prepare for each mission. By
the time the launch date arrives, everyone wants it to go. It's natural not to
want to be the person who gets the mission scrubbed.
I tell people that being on a team is like getting a huge family ready to go
on a picnic. Say you have to get 50 or 60 people ready to go, and then one of
the kids gets sick. Picnic scrubbed. You go when the kid is better. It's as
simple as that.
I make it clear that nobody should ever feel bad about being the reason that
we scrub a launch. If we didn't launch that day, it's because we put safety
first -- and that's what is really important. We'll try to make the launch
happen later.
I also try to get to know everyone on the team in an attempt to do away with
that intimidation factor. I came up through the ranks here, so a lot of people
know me anyway. But I make it a point to spend at least half of my time in my
office in the processing area, rather than in my office in the corporate area.
It's good for me and it's good for the team, both personally and professionally.
A team works better when people are at ease with the leader. Members are more
likely to say what's on their minds. I suspect that's true of any team.
Michael Leinbach (michael.leinbach-1@ksc.nasa.gov) is the
shuttle-launch director at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he
leads a team of about 500 people. He started working with NASA in 1984 as a
structural engineer.
Martha Rogers
Partner
Peppers and Rogers Group
Bowling Green, Ohio
You can't say, "teams work because of this" or "teams don't work because of
that" -- because it depends. But if you're looking for one quality that most
good teams share, I'd have to say that it's the culture of the company in which
the team exists. Is the culture one that rewards groups? Is it one that rewards
individuals? Or is it a culture where no one gets rewarded? Look around. Watch
how people act and interact, regardless of whether they're on a team. Do people
do things for one another? Do they pick up coffee for others when they're going
out? If the culture is full of give and take -- if it's supportive and trusting
-- there's a good chance that you'll see successful teams at work.
It's also important that the leaders and the members of good teams have
realistic expectations of motive. Sometimes I work with teams that are made up
of people from all different areas of a company, with leaders who expect that
each team member is going to put aside his or her own personal goals and work
selflessly for the common good. Not realistic.
People from different parts of a company are going to have disparate styles,
expectations, and reward systems. The best teams have leaders who recognize
those differences. Communism has fallen all over the world, and it doesn't work
for teams either.
Martha Rogers (rogers@1to1.com) is a partner in the Stamford,
Connecticut-based Peppers and Rogers Group, a consulting firm that specializes
in customer-relationship management. Rogers works mostly from her office in
Bowling Green, Ohio.
Tony DiCicco
Former head coach
U.S. Women's World Cup Champion Soccer Team,
and gold-medal winning 1996 U.S. Women's Olympic Soccer Team
Wethersfield, Connecticut
To have a successful team, you must have a shared culture. My team's culture
is largely built on fitness, intensity in training, individual respect, and
respect for the group -- both on and off the field. You know you have a good
team member when she arrives at training camp fit and ready to play. That kind
of preparation shows respect -- for herself and for her fellow team members.
I'd also put an emphasis on leadership. When Brandi Chastain scored a
devastating goal for the other team last summer, team captain Carla Overbeck
walked right up to her and told her, "Brandi, we have 85 minutes to get that
goal back. We need you focused and fully into the game. Let's play."
A long-term team must have a way for new people to join in successfully. To
survive, new players have to buy into the team's culture. However, your current
team members can't be afraid of new talent or new ideas.
The natural inclination is to protect what you have and not allow a new star
to rise to the top. Team members have to fight against that. The bottom line is
that new talent can force everyone to play at a higher level.
One time, Michelle Akers was telling someone what happens when a new player
joins the team. She said, "Tony wants us to be real nice to her. And we are. But
then the next day we kick the shit out of her on the field. We want to show her
what we're made of."
When I retired, I told the team, "First, never forget how it felt in the
final against China last summer when you regained your world-champion status.
Second, never forget how it felt in 1996 when the Olympic Gold Medal was placed
around your neck. Third, never forget hearing the final whistle blow in Sweden
in 1995, when you knew you had been beaten by Norway. Remember all three
situations, because each offers incredible motivation."
Tony DiCicco (tonysoc@aol.com) is the former head coach of the U.S.
Women's World Cup Champion Soccer Team and of the gold-medal winning 1996 U.S.
Women's Olympic Soccer Team. His international record is 103 - 8 - 8. Now he is
acting commissioner for the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA).
Janine Bay
Director of vehicle personalization for automotive consumer-services
group
Ford Motor Co.
Dearborn, Michigan
A team should be made up of people who have different opinions about things,
people who approach their work in different ways. Diversity is one of the keys
to a successful team. But I'm sure that on every good team, a member has gone
home at the end of a day thinking, "This isn't going to work."
So my advice is this: Bring in a facilitator. Someone from the outside -- an
unbiased third party -- may have insights about what's working, what's not, and
why you are just too close to the project to see clearly. A facilitator may be
just what team members need to make the most of their diversity, and to help
them overcome any personal agendas or conflicts.
At Ford, we always have team-effectiveness coaches on hand. It's an unusual
skill set for Ford, but the coaches are available and invaluable. I'd recommend
that you get some.
Janine Bay (jbay@ford.com) is the director of vehicle personalization
for automotive consumer-services group at the Ford Motor Co. (www.ford.com). She
also chairs the professional-women's network within the company. She was the
leader of the Ford Mustang team for 10 years.
Thomas C. Leppert
Chairman and CEO
Turner Corp.
Dallas, Texas
A successful team boils down to two things: mutual respect among team members
and a common vision about where the team is going.
At Turner, we are completely dependent on teams -- not only on teams that
exist within the organization, but also on teams that are made up of all sorts
of people from the outside, such as architects, designers, and suppliers.
We put teams together to build stadiums and commercial high-rises. Sometimes
those teams are easier to manage because there's a clear sense of what the
outcome should be. But we also put internal teams together to work on
smaller-scale projects, such as figuring out what our new operating system
should look like. Those sorts of teams can be more difficult to create and
sustain, because the expected results aren't as clear. But in the end, it boils
down to those two elements. Respect. A common vision. That's what you need.
Thomas C. Leppert (tleppert@tcco.com) is chairman and CEO of the
Turner Corp., which is based in Dallas. The Turner Corp. is a holding company
for Turner Construction (which was founded in 1902) and other subsidiaries. Last
year, the Turner Corp. completed more than $4.8 billion worth of construction.
Among its many projects, Turner is working on the new Broncos Stadium in Denver,
the Bear Stearns building in New York, and several assignments at the Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Michael Schrage
Codirector
MIT Media Labs eMarkets Initiative
Executive director
Merrill Lynch's Innovation Grants Competition
Cambridge, Massachusetts
I view teams skeptically, because so many organizations treat them cynically.
Teamwork has become a euphemism for organizational politics. Guess what? People
sense the dishonesty there. People aren't stupid. They know when they're being
used.
The tough question that managers need to answer isn't, "How do we build
better teams?" The question is "What kind of conversations and interactions do
we want to create?" Innovative managers understand that they must do more than
manage people. They need to manage the interactions between people. That's not a
subtle distinction. The best managers get their people to interact in creative
ways.
How do they do that? It takes shared space to create shared understandings.
Shared space could be a model or a prototype of a proposed new product.
It could be the mock-up of a Web site. What gives a conversation weight,
dimension, and relevance is having a shared space where people's ideas can play
out in front of one another. The Net is the greatest medium for shared space
ever invented!
The point is that new kinds of shared space allow new kinds of collaboration
and creativity to take place. These spaces let people seriously play. Isn't that
what teams and teamwork should really be about?
Michael Schrage (schrage@media.mit.edu), codirector of the MIT Media
Labs eMarkets Initiative and executive director of Merrill Lynch's Innovation
Grants Competition, is the author of Serious Play: How the World's Best
Companies Simulate to Innovate (Harvard Business School Press, 2000), and
No More Teams: Mastering the Dynamics of Creative Collaboration
(Currency/Doubleday, 1995).
H. David Aycock
Former chairman, CEO, and president
Nucor Corp.
Charlotte, North Carolina
There are seven key ingredients to building a successful team. Number one,
the mission must be clearly defined and articulated, and everybody has to
understand it. That includes an understanding of the project's purpose, the
strategy for getting the work accomplished, the ultimate goal, the benefits
people will receive if the goal is met, the measurement system that's going to
be used, and how differences of opinion (or other conflicts) are going to be
handled.
Number two, all team members have to be positive thinkers. A team just can't
function with an excuse-driven, "no-can-do" member on board.
Number three, selfish people spell doom for a team effort.
Number four, each team member must have enough self-confidence and
self-respect to respect other team members.
Number five, the team leader must always be on the lookout for distractions,
tangents, and unproductive or ancillary issues. If the leader spots the project
going astray, it's his or her responsibility to get it back on track -- fast.
Number six, each member must trust the motives of the other members.
Number seven, the team has to be as small as possible. If you have more
people than are absolutely necessary on a team, members will start functioning
like a committee.
We do a lot of team-based work at Nucor: Teams put steel joists together;
teams work on the rolling mill; teams work in the corporate area. None of these
teams would work without those seven ingredients.
H. David Aycock is the former chairman, CEO, and president of Nucor
Corp., a company that manufactures steel products, has 7,500 employees, and owns
operating facilities in eight states. Nucor's products include carbon and alloy
steel, steel joists and joist girders, steel deck, and cold-finished steel.
Nucor's sales are in excess of $4 billion per year. Aycock joined Nucor in 1962,
when the company (then known as the Nuclear Corporation of America) bought the
Vulcraft plant in Florence, South Carolina, where he was a sales manager.
Millard Fuller
Founder and president
Habitat for Humanity International
Americus, Georgia
The most essential ingredient of a successful team is a cause that everyone
agrees on. In our case, it's providing housing for low-income families -- people
who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford a home. We operate with what we call
the "theology of the hammer." People may differ religiously or politically, but
we can all agree on a hammer as a way to help people in need.
The second essential ingredient is preparation. In our case, that means doing
all of the background work: having all of the materials, plumbers, electricians,
and so forth scheduled to be on-site. That way, the work goes smoothly, because
as soon as the volunteers arrive, they have something productive to do and
someone there who is qualified to show them how to do it.
We've had so many different types of people working together to build Habitat
houses as part of one team or another. A company's CEO and janitor can be on the
same team. And you know what? It's good for both of them.
Nobody works for nothing. Some people work for money, and some people work
for recognition. But I'll tell you this: People will stick out an unpleasant
assignment, but they won't do it again. We have a great record because it's a
good experience. Everyone who works on a Habitat house gets something of value
out of it. That's an important part of building a lasting team.
Millard Fuller (mdfuller@hfhi.org) founded Habitat for Humanity
International 24 years ago. The organization is all about teams; it brings
volunteers together every day all around the world to build housing for
low-income families. Many are church-sponsored projects. Increasingly, though,
companies are taking on the construction of Habitat houses as team-building
exercises for their own organizations.
Jonathan Roberts
Managing director and partner
Ignition Corp.
Bellevue, Washington
Teams mostly come down to the classic "good guy" question: If everyone on the
team is able to say "I can work with this person" about everyone else on the
team, then you've got a good thing going.
Generally, a good fit starts with shared values. Are the team members
passionate about the work that they're going to be doing together? Are they
going to try to game one another in some way? Are they political animals? Or are
they straight and true? Are they humble when it's appropriate to be humble?
There's going to be contention on any team. That's to be expected. But at the
end of the day, team members have to like one another -- and they have to like
what they're doing.
When I'm assessing a team, I use my "three 'P' " test. The "P"s stand for
people, process, and product. If everyone on the team isn't clear about the
product (whatever it is that you're trying to create) and the process (how
you're going to get where you need to be, who drives what, who is the ultimate
decision maker), then there are going to be people problems. Whenever I go into
a tumultuous situation, I always step back and ask, "What are we trying to build
here?" Then I ask, "How are we trying to build it?" Usually, debugging those two
issues will clarify what the people problem is all about. If not, you've got a
fit problem.
Jonathan Roberts is managing director and partner at Ignition Corp.,
a holding company designed to fund, mentor, and build wireless-Internet startup
companies. He works with the senior-management teams at the startups to solve
management issues and to address business-development needs. Roberts is a
13-year Microsoft veteran, and he was recently a general manager for Windows CE
for intelligent appliances.
Mike Maerz
Cofounder, chairman, and CEO
etrieve Inc.
Hillsboro, Oregon
Four things characterize a great team. One, the team members must be
galvanized by a common goal. That's what spurs people on and drives them to
excel. Two, the members need to be driven by the team's results, not by
individual results. For that to happen, you have to deal with the whole
compensation issue. People must be able to subordinate their own goals --
realistically -- in favor of team goals. Three, the team has to be diverse. The
team should be made up of people who think differently too -- intuitive thinkers
as well as logical thinkers. John F. Kennedy's cabinet comes to mind as a great
example of a team made up of diverse thinkers. Four, on the best teams, no one
hesitates to act out of a fear that what they're about to do isn't in their area
of responsibility. Good team players take action. They don't stew about whether
it's their job or about whether they're going to offend someone.
There are some common pitfalls in team building. But they're mostly the
inverse of the characteristics that I just mentioned. The biggest one is not
having a well-defined common goal. A lot of work environments are so fast-paced
that people don't take the time that they should to agree on common goals. They
get lost in the tactics before they figure out what they're trying to
accomplish. Then the team runs like an engine that's totally out of whack. The
pieces don't operate together the way that they should, and eventually --
usually pretty quickly -- the whole thing just breaks down.
Mike Maerz cofounded etrieve Inc. in October 1998 and now serves as
its chairman and CEO. He is responsible for strategic planning, partnership
development, market positioning, and team management. Before he started etrieve,
Maerz founded and served as CEO of the Palace Inc. (a virtual-world online
community where users can communicate, play, and attend events), and he was a
vice president and general manager at Intel. Etrieve Inc. (www.etrieve.com)
provides wireless email solutions that enable mobile-business professionals to
manage email communications while away from the office.
Aaron Cohen
CEO
Concrete Inc.
New York, New York
This moment in history is about individual collaborative thinking. That's
almost an oxymoron. But it means that people need to be fiercely independent and
intensely collaborative at the same time.
Teamwork is at the heart of the creative energy of the Internet industry.
It's important to take advantage of each player's best insights, but we'll all
get farther, faster, if we work together to solve problems.
Today's companies need lots of aspiring leaders. That doesn't mean that a
company needs to have 15 chief executives, but it does mean that the top manager
has to know how to check his or her ego and encourage everyone else to do what
he or she does best.
Great teams operate without their members knowing what's going to happen to
them in the future. The key is that each individual has a belief in the others
that enables him or her to carry through. Members need to believe that everyone
is working toward a common goal.
Aaron Cohen (acohen@concreteinc.com) leads a team of nearly 200
people who are focusing on a very particular part of the Internet economy:
helping large corporations build new Internet businesses. Concrete Inc.
(formerly Concrete Media) offers an integrated suite of services that includes
strategic consulting, software engineering, brand positioning, and
strategic-technology and design services.
Franklin Jonath
President
Jonath & DiMeo Inc.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Given a group of talented people and a project that is worthy, it's the
leader who makes a team succeed.
In theater and in sports, teams get a chance to practice a lot before the
main event takes place. It should be the same in the corporate world. A good
team leader will create an environment in which people can practice and make
mistakes before they're pressured to produce.
A skilled leader will also focus on managing the interactions between people,
as opposed to managing individual behavior. That allows individuals to manage
their own behavior.
A good leader recognizes that everyone is competitive to some degree. He or
she is careful to accentuate people's different strengths, rather than
stigmatize them for their weaknesses. There's no need to stop people from
competing, but that rivalry has to be channeled into cooperative
competitiveness.
The idea is for the team leader to be at the service of the group. It should
be clear that the team members own the outcome. The leader is there to bring
intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resources to the team. Through his or her
actions, the leader should be able to show the others how to think about the
work that they're doing in the context of their lives. It's a tall order, but
the best teams have such leaders.
Franklin Jonath (fjonath@aol.com) is the president of Jonath & DiMeo
Inc., a management-consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work
focuses on addressing individual- and group-communications issues. He
specializes in diagnosing individual and group problems as well as designing and
implementing practical solutions.
Jeanie Duck
Senior vice president
Boston Consulting Group
Atlanta, Georgia; Miami, Florida
Most teams are so eager to start thinking about work plans and output that
they don't spend nearly as much time as they should setting up.
Are the team members all on the same page about the project's goals? Do they
all understand how their work is going to be measured? What are they going to do
if one team member doesn't do his or her homework?
Too often, what happens is that teams get right down to work, and then some
sort of conflict arises. It gets ugly and personal very fast, because everyone
has been blindsided and no one knows what to do. Here's an example: You start
working as a team. One person is behaving like a star -- he wants special
treatment. Well, did you all talk about that possibility before you launched
into things?
My advice for any new team: Don't shortchange your startup. Take the time to
understand what you're going to do and how you're going to deal with the
possible bumps along the way. Trying to undo a conflict between two team members
when no one is prepared to handle such a situation is at least three times
harder than taking the time to set up some ground rules at the beginning of the
process.
I saw it happen in a merger, and it was painful. There were two companies,
both with the same type of business. Why would there be any conflict? I've also
seen it happen in internal teams. The ones that are particularly vulnerable are
those that try to come up with a new approach to something. Such teams are made
up of departments that have different interests. One of them has to give. Who is
the team sponsor? Has the whole team agreed that one person has the authority to
make the call?
Don't say, "It won't happen to us." Spend the time up front. Please.
Jeanie Duck, who is based in Atlanta, is a senior vice president at
the Boston Consulting Group. Duck's work mainly focuses on large-scale change.
She has a book coming out called The Change Monster: The Human Forces That
Fuel or Foil Corporate Transformation and Change (Random House, Spring
2001).
From http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/40/one.html
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