The Secret of Teams

What Great Teams Know and Do

Mark Miller

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781609940935
• eBook ISBN: 9781609941109
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Teams are critical to the success of every organization. Departmental, interdepartmental, cross-functional, ad hoc, task-specific—teams do everything from planning the office party to setting the annual budget to establishing performance goals. But what separates the teams that really deliver from the ones that simply spin their wheels? What is the secret of high-performance teams?As he did in The Secret, Mark Miller uses a compelling business fable to reveal profound yet easily grasped truths that can dramatically transform any organization. Debbie Brewster, the heroine of The Secret, has been promoted and is now struggling with taking her new team to the next level. Her old mentor, Jeff Brown, the company's CEO, sends her out to find the secret of teams. On her journey she learns from three very different teams—the Special Forces, NASCAR, and a local restaurant.Debbie and her team discover the three elements that all successful teams have in common. But that's just the beginning. The devil is in the details, as the story of Debbie's efforts to actually implement the three elements shows. You'll learn how to change entrenched ways of thinking and acting, what you have to do to optimize each of the three elements of a successful team, how to measure your progress, and more. Creating high-performance teams does more than just give your organization a competitive advantage. It can be a performance multiplier that significantly improves results while honoring and developing people. It may be the ultimate win-win-win that your organization is seeking.

Harder Than It Looks

After three days of intensive training, the attendees felt ready to tackle the world. Debbie’s team was elated. They could hardly wait for the pilot teams to report improved results.

At their next meeting, the agenda was focused on debriefing the event. However, during their opening community-building time, something amazing happened: Steve gave a report on what was happening in his life outside work.

“I told you a few meetings ago that things were not good at home,” Steve began. “Since you guys were willing to help me expand my role on the team, I guess I’ve been easier to get along with. My wife had moved out….” he stopped. The team seemed to be holding their breath wondering what he was about to say. “But, like I said, I guess I’m a little easier to get along with now, so yesterday, she moved back in. I’ve agreed to go with her to see a counselor. I just wanted to say thanks again for not firing me.” He tried to smile but couldn’t. “That would have been too much.”

Debbie and the entire team were delighted that Steve seemed to be getting back on track at home. They also believed it was a really good sign that he would trust the team enough to share this type of information. A major contributor to genuine community is knowing one another and allowing others to know you. It felt great to know that Steve was willing to take this critical step as he moved closer to joining their community.

“Thank you, Steve,” Debbie said. “Let us know how we can help.” She paused, and then said, “Let’s talk about the feedback we’ve received from the training.”

During the next few minutes, the team identified numerous things they would do differently the next time around. But overall, they were very pleased.

“What should we do next?” Javier asked.

“Wait for performance to improve, the big bonus checks to arrive, and all of us to be added to the Executive Team for saving the company?” Steve said all of this with a big smile on his face.

“Sounds good to me!” Bob agreed wholeheartedly.

Debbie asked, “Until all that happens, what do we do?”

Tom said, “I think we should make some visits.”

“That makes sense, but there were twenty-five teams represented. Should we try to visit all of them?”

“I’m not suggesting we visit all of them. What if we start by each of us going to see one of them?” Tom responded.

There seemed to be general agreement that this would be a good start.

“When do we make the visits?” Jo asked.

After a brief debate, the consensus was to wait sixty days. The team felt this would give the teams in the field ample time to begin implementing the ideas presented during the training. Everyone was assigned a team to visit except Jo and Steve. The team convinced Jo to stay home because of her mom’s illness. They wanted Steve to begin the analysis of the pilot teams—look at their history, compose a control group of like teams, and create the evaluation criteria. The team wanted more than anecdotal evidence from their efforts. Was the training making a difference? Steve was charged with finding the answer.

Over the next two months, the team had infrequent contact with the participants. This made it difficult to really know how things were going. However, with the visits quickly approaching, the team was about to confront the magnitude of the challenge before them.

• • •

Sally had been given the opportunity to visit a team that had been together for about five years. She arrived on site and was scheduled to meet with the team leader first and then the rest of the team. Roy, a twenty-year veteran of the company, was the team leader. His team was in the middle of the pack in terms of performance. During the training, Roy had expressed his desire to “make some changes” that would help his team grow and produce better results.

“Good morning, Sally. I’ve been looking forward to your visit,” Roy said as he greeted her at the door.

“I’m glad to be here. Thanks for setting aside some time to talk to me about the team training and how it’s working in the field,” Sally began. “Before we get into our agenda, I’d like to know a little more about you and your team. And you may have questions for me as well.”

For the next few minutes, they shared their history with the company and their lives before joining the company. Roy did, in fact, have a few questions for Sally, and she made a note of them.

“It’s great to get to know you a little better. And I appreciate your questions. We’ll get all of those answered before I leave today.” Sally looked at her list of questions, and before she jumped in, she asked, “And what time will we be joining the team meeting today?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. The team is not going to meet today,” Roy said.

“Really?” Sally tried to hide her disappointment.

“No. There’s a lot going on, and we decided not to meet,” Roy offered as his explanation.

“Okay. Well, how is it going … with the team?”

“Pretty good, I think.” Roy said.

“What makes you say that?” Sally felt she should go a little deeper here.

“We had a good meeting after the training.”

“Great!” Sally wanted to be encouraging. “What made it good?”

“Everyone came, and we talked about a lot of important topics. We also finished on time,” Roy said.

For some reason Sally felt prompted to ask Roy, “How often does your team meet?”

“Usually once a quarter.” Roy paused. “But not every quarter. However, I talk to my team members individually at least once a week.”

“That’s very helpful.” Sally made a note or two and then said, “Roy, what would it take for you to schedule a team meeting once a week?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Roy said in disbelief. “Do you know what that would cost in lost productivity?”

“What if it increased productivity?” Sally asked.

“Well, that would be a different story,” Roy admitted.

“Let’s talk about an experiment—an experiment to determine if productivity will, in fact, go up or down if you go ‘all in’ on this idea of taking your team to the next level.” Sally was willing to take a chance on this, because if Roy didn’t do something different, she knew he would always be in the middle of the pack—or worse.

The balance of their conversation was focused on the conditions of the “experiment.” Sally agreed to stay in touch and even offered to return to observe a team meeting if Roy felt that would be helpful.

As she was getting ready to leave, Roy said, “I’m sorry we’ve not made more progress. Life is so hectic.”

“No need to apologize,” Sally said.

“I wish we were further along,” Roy said in a moment of real candor.

Sally responded, “You can only start where you are right now. I look forward to the journey with you.”

As Sally drove away, the realization that Roy didn’t even have a functioning team was overwhelming. She hoped her colleagues were having better visits.

• • •

Javier had the chance to visit a team that was much newer—they had been together for about a year. He had a chance to meet with its leader, Kelly, before the team meeting. She was upbeat; her team had embraced the ideas from the training. They were just trying to figure out how to make it happen.

Javier asked all the right questions, and Kelly was basically satisfied with the training and the early progress her team was making.

“What indicators are you seeing that make you feel you’re headed in the right direction?” Javier asked.

“Several things,” Kelly began. “We have much better clarity on what we’re trying to accomplish. We’ve recommitted ourselves to helping one another win. We’ve had a couple of hard conversations about talent. We’ve become more disciplined in our problem solving. Before, we used to just talk about problems with little or no closure. We’re doing much better on that. And, I think if you ask the team, they’d say it’s more fun than it was before. It’s still challenging—still hard, actually—but more fun.”

“Thanks for a great report. I think it’s about time for us to go to the team meeting,” Javier said.

“Yes. We’ll start in about fifteen minutes. We’ll be meeting in the conference room across the hall.”

The meeting began as scheduled. It was immediately apparent that building community was a priority for the team. One of the signs was the time allocated on the agenda to connect as a group. It reminded Javier of the way Debbie normally started their meetings. The balance of the meeting was focused primarily on improving the team’s performance. Javier was pleased with the meeting. He knew that over time, this group was going to produce great results.

• • •

At the same time Javier was visiting with Kelly, Bob was with Larry, a thirty-year veteran of the company. Bob had immediate concerns about Larry’s team. In their opening conversation, Larry used the word “I” about fifty times! This fact alone made Bob both curious and fearful about how the meeting was going to go.

Bob asked Larry just before the meeting, “Who prepared the agenda?”

“I did,” Larry said. Bob was not surprised.

“Great. One more question for now: who’s going to facilitate today’s meeting?”

“I will,” Larry said, as they entered the conference room.

As it turned out, the meeting was a forum for Larry to tell everyone what to do. He not only told them what to do; he told them how to do it and when it was to be done.

After about forty minutes. Larry asked, “Any questions?”

There were none. Larry said, “Meeting adjourned.”

As everyone filed out of the room, a couple of the team members thanked Javier for coming, and that was it. Forty minutes and the only person who had spoken, other than a “Good morning” or “Yes, sir,” was Larry. It was bizarre.

In total shock, Bob wasn’t sure what to say after the meeting. Larry didn’t have a team; he had a staff meeting. It was a classic “command and control” approach. Bob thought he might begin the conversation by trying to learn more about the team’s results.

“Thanks for allowing me to sit in on your meeting,” Bob said.

“What’d you think?” Larry wanted to know.

Bob was afraid he would ask that. “Before I answer that, how are your results?”

“Solid. We’re at the top of the second quartile,” Larry said without hesitation. Bob couldn’t decide if Larry was proud of his performance or not. “Well, what does your team think about those results? Have you asked them how you might do better?”

“That’s not really my approach,” Larry said.

“Yes, I saw that in the meeting. The team didn’t have an opportunity to contribute,” Bob said.

“Well, I guess that’s why I’m the team leader.” Larry was getting a little defensive.

Bob knew he was on thin ice here, but he decided to push ahead. “Or, maybe your real opportunity as the team leader is to enable the team to be successful. I’m guessing they may have a lot of ideas on how to improve performance. One of the reasons we’ve embraced the idea of teams as an organization is that we fundamentally believe that together, we’re smarter. We think that the collective IQ of every team is higher than the IQ of individual members—even the leader.”

“I’m not sure I buy that,” Larry said.

“You said you were at the top of the second quartile.”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been there?”

“For many years.” He paused. “Decades, I guess,” Larry admitted as he glanced away.

“Larry, you and I both know that your performance is not bad. Earlier, you called it solid. But solid is not stellar. My fear is that your knowledge and experience have gotten you to where you are, and unless you get a lot smarter, your performance and your team are stuck. You have become the lid on your team—and their performance. I’m not throwing rocks here, Larry. I just hope you’ll consider what I’m suggesting.”

“And that is?” Larry asked.

“That you begin to tap into the collective wisdom, ideas, and experience of your team. If you don’t, I’m convinced you’ll never get the results you really want. Please think about how I can help—I’m willing. But the first move has got to be yours.” With that comment, Bob thought he’d said more than enough. “I hope to talk to you again soon.”

“I admit you’ve given me a lot to think about today,” Larry said as they shook hands.

• • •

Debbie’s visit was to a team that had really struggled. She wanted to observe that type of team because she thought her experience from her time in Operations might be helpful.

She met Lynn, the team leader, for breakfast before the meeting.

Lynn began the conversation. “Thanks for coming to visit. I really can use your help.”

Debbie asked, “In what way?”

“I understood most of the concepts you presented in the training. I’m just having trouble implementing them.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Let’s start with talent. I don’t think I’ve got the right people on my team,” Lynn admitted.

“How many do you have total?” Debbie needed more s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: An Amazing Journey
• Study the Best
• Truth Is Truth
• The Three Pillars
• Winning Is Hard Work
• Enlightened Self-Interest
• The Big Idea
• Course Correction
• No Wasted Talents
• The Goal: Results
• Launching a Movement
• Harder Than It Looks
• Change Is Hard
• The Real Issue
• A Second Chance
• The Journey Continues
• Conclusion: The Next Step Is Yours
• High-Performance Team Assessment
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Stay in Touch