X-Teams

How To Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, And Succeed

Deborah Ancona, Henrik Bresman

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781591396925
• eBook ISBN: 9781422148068
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Development
• Index: Business

Why do good teams fail? Very often, argue Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman, it is because they are looking inward instead of outward. Based on years of research examining teams across many industries, Ancona and Bresman show that traditional team models are falling short, and that what’s needed--and what works--is a new brand of team that emphasizes external outreach to stakeholders, extensive ties, expandable tiers, and flexible membership.The authors highlight that X-teams not only are able to adapt in ways that traditional teams aren’t, but that they actually improve an organization’s ability to produce creative ideas and execute them—increasing the entrepreneurial and innovative capacity within the firm. What’s more, the new environment demands what the authors call "distributed leadership,” and the book highlights how X-teams powerfully embody this idea.

PART I

Why Good Teams Fail

ONE

Into a Downward Spiral

How Our Old Models Lead to Failure

WHEN TEACHING EXECUTIVE PROGRAMS on teams, we often start the session by asking participants, “What do you think is most important for creating successful teams?” Without much prompting the answers pour out: clear roles and goals, managing conflict, trust, team spirit, rational decision making, keeping the team on track, focused meetings, accountability, allocating work to the right people, rewards for teamwork. The list goes on and on.

While lists differ somewhat from one session to the next, the pattern of responses is clear. The major message is that team members need to support each other and figure out how to work together. They need to set goals and figure out a structure and way of working together to meet those goals. The participants in our sessions aren’t slouches. They’ve done their homework, and their answers mirror the top-selling books and management guru views of what makes a team effective. In one best seller, for example, the authors argue that teams can be high performing to the extent that “they are a small number of people with complementary skills who are equally committed to a common purpose, goals, and working approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable, and who are deeply committed to one another’s personal growth and success.”¹

The key message that is drilled into all of us in team-building sessions and training guides—and what we’re all used to practicing in our organizations—is that effective performance depends on what goes on inside the team. The camera lens sits on the team boundary and looks inward. Here team members try to figure out what the task is, who they are, and how they will work together to get the job done.² This is the basic model of teams that most of us carry in our heads. It is the model that guides our behavior in choosing team members and setting up their basic modes of work.

What’s more, this inward orientation comes most naturally to us in a team setting. Teams by their very nature seem to create anxiety in individual members and therefore a focus on the team itself: Will I be liked and accepted by the other members? Can we get the job done with these people? Will we get along? How will we coordinate our efforts? Can we finish the work on time?³ These are questions that haunt all of us as we enter teams, and we want answers as soon as possible. And so to deal with this anxiety and these questions, team leaders and members try to find areas of agreement, ways to coordinate, goals to achieve, and a sense of camaraderie, accomplishment, and hope early in the process. That’s how team members find an identity and sense of belonging, as well as a direction that calms their anxiety and focuses their activity.

These are good things. Good internal team functioning is important for success, so it isn’t wrong or surprising that teams focus inward. The problem is that it isn’t enough. And, in fact, an exclusively internal focus can be dangerous for teams and their goals.

An inward focus, then, is only half the story when it comes to high-functioning, successful teams. The crucial other half is about the external work of teams—the X of the X-teams of our book title. This is the half that stresses managing upward and outward, outside the team’s boundary as well as inside it. This is the half that looks at the role of the team not solely as a setting for teamwork but also as an agent for innovation and a vehicle for organizational leadership in action. For this role, people need to monitor, market, and manage across the team boundary as well as engage members and build strong ties and processes within the team. But how do we know this is true?

The Half-Done Hospital Team and Other Unfinished Business

Doubts about the internal model of teams started back in the late 1970s in a quality of work life project in a major New York hospital.⁴ One part of the project focused on improving the satisfaction and performance of nursing teams. Turnover and conflicts in the teams were high. Enter a consulting firm. The consultant concentrated on training team members in skills such as problem solving, communication, supervision, group decision making, and conflict resolution.

A lot of time and energy went into the training. The consultant emphasized the importance of understanding teammates’ feelings and viewpoints and coming to consensus on what the team really wanted to achieve. During the course of the project, the unit did improve communication and increase problem-solving capabilities. People felt more pride in their work, individuals learned interpersonal skills, and the number of work conflicts decreased. Unfortunately, after spending thousands of dollars and many hours of time, the consensus was that these changes would be short lived. Furthermore, it became clear from nursing audit data that there was little clear proof of any improvements in the performance of the nursing teams because of these interventions.⁵ And even though the hospital sponsored many other projects in this quality of work life improvement program, team performance did not change.

More proof that internal process was not enough came in a study of a hundred sales teams in the telecommunications industry. Here the focus was on whether teams with effective internal processes performed better. These were teams that followed the guidance of best-selling texts and had clear roles and goals, practiced open communication, considered how best to weigh individual input, and supported one another. The results showed that though such teams’ members were more satisfied, and though they thought themselves to be high performers, it was not internal processes that differentiated high- and low-performing teams. In short, team performance, as measured by revenue attained by the team, could not be predicted in any way by looking solely at how members interacted with one another. The old model that we all believe in simply did not tell the whole story; it was not enough.⁶

And then a study of forty-five product development teams in the high-tech arena started to answer the question of what did affect performance. ⁷ Teams that scouted out new ideas from outside their boundaries, received feedback from and coordinated with outsiders, and got support from top managers were able to build more innovative products faster than those that dedicated themselves solely to efficiency and working well together.

Still more support came from studies of consulting teams and pharmaceutical teams. The consulting teams that were more externally focused performed better in terms of client satisfaction and ratings of top management than did teams that focused only on their internal interaction. It’s interesting to note that although teams that were primarily internally focused were more satisfied and performed well during their early months, over time both satisfaction and performance fell. The pharmaceutical teams that were externally focused were better able to identify usable molecules and evaluate those molecules’ potential for the company than were teams that focused on their own knowledge base.⁸

By now, other team studies have replicated these results.⁹ When a team task requires information, cooperation, resources, support, and expertise from outside its boundaries, then a sole focus on internal interactions is simply not enough. When adaptation in response to changing external conditions or working with top management to implement a new strategy is needed, an exclusive internal focus can be lethal. When success depends on keeping up with technology, markets, competitors, and other external stakeholders, then some external focus is essential.

And yet, despite twenty years of research to the contrary, it is the internal models that remain lodged in our brains and our actions. In executive sessions we hear again and again that team performance pivots around exclusively internal processes. In fact, when we are starting a team, it is that internal focus that takes over—even though we know that the data tells a different story. The numbers that support external activities in addition to internal ones are there in black and white and have been for some time, but they have been largely ignored.

Why does the old model linger? Perhaps because it remains tacit and unexamined. We do not question it and so continue to believe in it. Or perhaps there is some evolutionary value to an internal focus. Early humans probably survived more easily if they stayed in groups that developed trust and worked efficiently together. Perhaps these ancestors found an identity in their group, which gave them a drive to survive, to fight with and for each other in the face of adversity. Inward-looking groups could protect themselves more than individuals could, and so this propensity has been passed along to us when we set up our teams. Furthermore, if the world at that time was reasonably stable—technology was not rapidly changing, threats were constant but predictable, the activities of securing food and shelter were ongoing and repetitive tasks—then external activity was not crucial for survival. In fact, external exploration was probably fraught with danger. In such a world, why threaten internal security and cohesion by going outside? Or perhaps, more simply, the old model lingers because our individual and collective need for safety and identity outweigh all other considerations.

For whatever reasons, an exclusive internal focus is clearly no longer the recipe for survival and success. Rather, the solution to this problem is to add a more active role in relating to people outside the team’s boundaries. But first, let’s delve more deeply into what happens in these exclusively internally focused teams to set them on such a misguided path—and keep them moving in the wrong direction.

A Tale of Two Teams

The road to dissolution is not straight or quick. Rather, things often seem to be fine at the start and then slowly unravel. Of course, each team evolves in its own unique way, but nonetheless, some patterns for fully internally focused teams seem to emerge. To explore these patterns, let’s compare two consulting teams from their formation through to the ultimate dissolution of one team. Both teams were newly formed and their task was to consult to school districts in a particular geographic area, so we will call them the Southeast and Northwest teams, with leaders Sam and Ned, respectively. The teams were created as part of a new strategy developed by the organization’s president to improve consulting services to geographic regions. The Southeast team followed an exclusively internal focus; the Northwest team melded the internal and external in a much more integrated way. The Southeast team saw itself as a team set up to satisfy its members and complete a task. The Northwest team saw itself as a change agent working with top management to create innovative new solutions for district problems. Thus, there was a different orientation right from the start.

Why Sam chose to focus inward and Ned chose to move externally as well, to be part of a larger organizational change, is not entirely clear. What’s clear from our work with many teams over the years is that some teams in almost every organization do take on this more integrated approach and that some leaders set their teams up to engage in external, as well as internal, activity. These are the teams that have outperformed others. These are the teams that have provided us with the lessons in this book. The stories of the Southeast and Northwest teams show how little decisions made at the beginning can set the stage for how teams will evolve over their life spans. Specifically, the integrated approach enables both greater internal satisfaction in the long run and better external adaptation and performance.

In interviews before the teams even had their first meetings, Sam and Ned communicated very different strategies for how they wanted their teams to operate. Sam was concerned that team members might be uncomfortable with the new organizational structure, and he wanted to give them time to get to know each other and to figure out the work that they needed to do. After this team-building period, he intended to get more active in the districts and explain all the wonderful things that the team could do for them. But first he wanted the team to be a safe haven in the midst of change. Ned, too, wanted to build a strong, cohesive team, but he also wanted team members to get out into the districts right away. He thought that the team needed to start by diagnosing the districts’ various needs and then experiment with solutions. These different strategies set the teams on different paths that would never converge.

Two Teams, Two Strategies

When first interviewed, Sam underscored his internally focused strategy—his desire for the Southeast members to come together as a team and study material about their districts. He saw his role as that of a facilitator and support to the team as people learned about each other and shared the information that each had about the districts. He said that somewhere along the line they were going to need a lot of exchange with the districts, but he viewed this activity as secondary to building the team, figuring out how members would work together, and sharing existing information about the districts.

Ned differed from Sam in wanting a more integrated strategy for his Northwest team—to get first-hand information about the districts and to get out there right away. His rationale for this approach was twofold: first, to see the districts and their needs with new eyes (as members of this newly formed team, not from the vantage of their other jobs) and, second, to build credibility with the people in the districts who would have to sign off on the new approach. And he saw his role as the primary proponent of this new approach with the districts’ local leadership, superintendents, and principals.

Ned was quite articulate in his interviews about seeing the districts in a new way and learning what they really wanted so that the team could meet those needs and gain credibility. He argued, “Even though I have knowledge about every district up there, I have been looking at them from one point of view. We all need to broaden our perspective and see what the districts see their needs to be. The first task is to get them to express their needs for services. We need to customize our services to these people: this is what we can bring you; tell us what your needs are, and we will design something to address those. If we do not do this, we lose our credibility.”¹⁰

From the outset, then, Sam and Ned envisioned different strategies for their teams. Sam had a primary goal of creating an enthusiastic team with open communication. Initially, the level of interaction with the region would be low; only at some undefined point in the future did he envision a lot of interaction with the field. Even when Sam discussed interacting with the region, he referred to the data the team members already had, rather than that from primary sources and newly collected information. What’s more, communication would go one way—with the team letting the region know what it was going to do.

Contrast that strategy against Ned’s, whose primary goal was to improve service to the regions as outlined by the president. Ned was much more in line with the strategic goal of the new organizational design—he and his team would be the ones to figure out how to make the new strategy a reality. He anticipated high levels of two-way communication with the regions intended to broaden the perspectiv...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION - When Bad Things Happen to Good Teams
• PART I - Why Good Teams Fail
• PART II - What Works
• PART III - How to Build Effective X-Teams
• NOTES
• INDEX
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS