Professor Ray Regans and his colleagues did an interesting investigation of
the success of hip and knee replacement surgeries at Carnegie Mellon hospitals.
It's interesting to note that these surgeries are completed by
teams of doctors.
The key predictor of how successful the surgery was
in terms of fewer patient complications, speed of discharge, and
so on, is not based on how famous or successful the doctor was.
Or even how many surgeries that doctor had performed.
Rather, it was based on how many times the team had performed the surgery together.
A similar study which looked at commercial flight incidents found that the absence
of disasters was determined by how many times the crew had flown together.
We're going to raise three questions about building teams.
First question!
What is a team?
If you said group of people, think again.
A group is an aggregate of people.
A team is an interdependent group of people working towards a shared goal.
There are two key parts to that definition.
Interdependent means that none of the team members
can successfully accomplish the goal by themselves.
They need each other.
A shared goal means that all members have the same desired objective.
Too often teams do not have the same goal.
Second question.
What are the key ingredients for team success?
To be successful teams need three things.
Expertise, engagement, and execution.
Teams need a triple e degree.
Seriously, teams need talented people, expertise.
They need to be motivated, engaged.
And they need to get the work down, execute.
Third question, should all teams be designed the same way?
The answer is no.
Team design depends on what the goal of the team is.
So, let's talk about three types of goals that teams may have.
To do this, we're going to use Carl Larson and Frank Lafasto's Typology
of Teams to distinguish three types of work that teams do.
Tactical, problem solving, and creative.
Tactical teams, like the surgical team,
the flight crew, a basketball team need clarity and
the more time they spend practicing together, the better they perform.
Professor Linda Argote and
her colleagues had teams assemble AM transistor radios together.
Easy, right?
Wrong, when she removed the printed instructions.
However, the teams that did the best
with no instructions were the teams that had trained together the previous day.
Teams who had done the same amount of training, but
with different people, made a lot more errors.
The key for tactical teamwork is training together.
But sometimes we're not simply on tactical mission.
We're trying to solve a problem.
For example, one of my management students had a problem.
How to increase customer engagement?
When the goal is to solve a problem that does not have a well defined solution,
this is known as a problem-solving team.
Examples might include teams attempting to stop the outbreak of Ebola, most
task forces, or for that matter any team that's facing a challenge good or bad.
These teams need a lot of trust.
Think back to 2014,
when the West African Ebola outbreak was sweeping across the globe.
Scientists, medical personnel and
travel experts, had to share information quickly and accurately.
The World Health Organization and the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency response,
teamed up for a 90 day comprehensive plan to control and
reverse the outbreak with a goal of 100% isolation of cases and
safe burial of all casualties by January 1st, 2015.
By all counts, this team was highly successful in ending the epidemic.
When you ask people what they care about most in teams, they always say trust.
There are two types of trust in teams.
Benevolence based trust and competency based trust.
Benevolence based trust means I trust your intentions.
Competency based trust or respect means I trust your expertise.
For problem solving teams to be effective you need both.
A third type of work that teams do is creative teamwork.
Examples might be a new product development group or writing team.
These teams need a lot of autonomy.
For example, when Pixar makes a move like A Bugs Life or
Toy Story 2, the development department
assembles small incubation teams that are left alone to create.
Pixar puts judgement aside during this incubation period.
During the incubation stage,
you can't judge teams by the material they're producing because it's so rough.
There are many problems and open questions.
Bottom line, as a team leader,
know the goal of your team so you can set
the stage for optimal performance.
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