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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
An inspiring, practical and progress-oriented blueprint for energetic achievement.
Amid constant swirl, uncertainty, and complexity is your team capable of doing big things? Too often people are pulled together, labeled a “team,” given a directive, and expected to deliver results quickly. Soon, however, due to lack of focus, increasing pressures and competing priorities the team suffers from DSD: distracted, hopelessly stressed and disconnected from one another. Predictably, the team flatlines and the energy needed to succeed is lost.
Based upon research of what successful teams do to overcome severe odds, Do Big Things presents an intuitive, seven-step process that equips teams with how to quickly and consistently operate in a manner necessary for success.
Team members develop the self-awareness and ability to:
- Bring their best to every situation
- Bring out the best in others in every interaction
- Partner across the business to deliver common objectives
Filled with practical tools and engaging stories of teams today, Do Big Things equips leaders with “the how” to quickly identify and activate the behaviors needed to achieve more than you or your team ever thought possible. Idea and information exchanges interlock the hand, head and heart of each team member to get everyone moving toward a common goal. Increasingly, individually and collectively, the team becomes emotionally stronger and more productive as they do their work.
Do Big Things provides your team with the common language necessary to be authentic, empathetic and transparent, so that potential barriers to success come to light – faster. This empowers the team to be more accountable with an enterprise mindset, because they can have the profound discussions needed to adapt quicker to unforeseen challenges and demonstrate an innovative reflex.
By applying the concepts in this book, the team’s daily interactions are transformed, focus is sustained, and energetic progress toward your goals is triggered. Every member of your team wants to succeed. Do Big Things provides a straightforward method to bring greater meaning to the work everyone does so the team delivers extraordinary performance together.
You know what your team can achieve—now use the proven method to enable them to do it.
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Seitenzahl: 375
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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Contents
Cover
Praise for Do Big Things
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Read Me First
Disclaimer!
Chapter 1: Teams That Do Big Things
Why Many Teams Can't Do Big Things Today
Is Your Team's Whole Heart in It?
How Legendary Teams Succeed in Doing Big Things
Going Deeper Than Behavior Basics
A System for Creating the Thinking, Actions, and Outcomes Necessary for Success
The Do Big Things Framework
The DBT Framework from 30,000 Feet
What Success Looks Like
The Important Requirement of You
Chapter 2: Teams That Flatline
A Team in Trouble
The End of Teamwork (As We Know It)
A Big Story to Tell
Chapter 3: Commit to the Human Imperative
Respect Is Not Enough
What It Means to Make an Epic Impact
What the Human Imperative Sounds Like
How to Determine the Team's Human Imperative
When the Big Things of Two Different Teams Collide
When We Are Exponentially More Effective
Chapter 4: Embody Success (and Leverage Failure)
Your Team Either Has Confidence—or It Doesn't
Preparing for Success
Who's in Control of Your Team's Confidence?
How to Put Intrinsic Motivations into Action
How to Leverage Failure
Staying Inspired When the Team Misses Their Target
How to Know If You're on a Team That Embodies Success
When the Future Becomes Now
Chapter 5: Choose to Contribute, Activate, and Connect Across the Business
Teams That Do Big Things Make Three Big Decisions
Your Most Important Role
Doing Big Things Is an All-the-Time Thing
The Contributor Decision: A Closer Look
The Activator Decision: A Closer Look
The Connector Decision: A Closer Look
Do-or-Die Teamwork
Chapter 6: Exercise Your Barrier-Breaking Authority
The Barriers to Success
Authority: Take It or Leave It
Using the Contributor Decision to Break Through Barriers
Using the Activator Decision to Break Through Barriers
Using the Connector Decision to Break Through Barriers
The Path to Doing Big Things Is Open
Chapter 7: Focus on What Matters
Distracted, Hopelessly Stressed, and Disconnected Teams
What Matters Most
How to Focus on What Matters: The 3 Mind Factors
Collecting Evidence to Prove You Can't Succeed
How to End Doofusing
We Need Each Other
Chapter 8: Energize Around a Shared Reality
How to Energize the Team Around a Shared Reality: The Energy Map
Stop Trying to Be So Positive
Leveraging the Back Side of the Energy Map to Develop the Team's Ability to Move Forward
Using the Middle of the Energy Map to Create an Emotionally Neutral Space
Using the Front Side of the Energy Map to Put Values into Action
The Energy Map: The Direction Needed to Successfully Innovate
The Power of a Shared Reality (Dude, What Planet Did You Come From?)
Chapter 9: Mobilize Hearts and Minds Forward
Leave the Abstract and Make an Impression
End the Suspense: Make the Unknown Future Known
How to Mobilize Hearts and Minds Forward
What Does Your Team Anticipate?
To Execute Masterfully, Use these Classes of Mobilizing Questions
Achieve Something Bigger
Chapter 10: Is Your Team Ready to Do Big Things?
Stop Trying to Be a High-Performing Team
Your Assessment: The Team Heart Quotient
The DBT Framework, Beginning to End: How a Team Went from Worst to First
The Only Reason Big Things Are Achieved
What Big Things Will Your Team Do?
Key Terms And List of Tools
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Figure 1.1
Figure 2.1
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Figure 3.2
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Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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“ . . . changing and elevating behaviors is not an intellectual exercise. It's the business of the heart.”
Praise for Do Big Things
“I love this book. I love it because it's refreshingly original and unique. I love it because it's delightfully well-written. I love it because it's full of captivating tales that bring to life the struggles and triumphs of high-performing teams. I love it because the practices and principles are based on years of up-close-and-personal experiences and empirical evidence. And I love Do Big Things most of all because Craig Ross, Angie Paccione, and Victoria Roberts remind us that successful teams are not about star players or outsized talents, but about relationships where people exhibit caring, humanity, and heart. They show us how it's the human imperative that builds and sustains excellence. If you want your team to do big things, it's imperative that you read and apply Do Big Things.”
—Jim Kouzes, coauthor of The Leadership Challenge and the Dean's Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University
“People don't mind being challenged to do better if they know the request is coming from a caring heart. Do Big Things has a clear message: People in high performing teams need to care for one another. We can do big things together when we understand that relationships are just as important as results.”
—Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The New One Minute Manager® and Collaboration Begins with You
“We all know that teamwork is important work . . . but it's also hard work! Craig, Angie, and Victoria have somehow cracked the code with the Do Big Things framework. Not only do they challenge us to rethink our beliefs about what makes a successful team, but they have also given us a powerful set of easy to use practices that any organization can use, if they are courageous enough.”
—Andrew Collier, Head of Leadership Development, Nestlé
“Do Big Things is a clarion call to think big and accomplish feats that matter. This book can serve as your guide to changing your attitudes and actions to bring you farther down the road to success.”
—Daniel Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human
“This book captures the magic of extraordinary teams and gives you a roadmap to navigate and accomplish your toughest challenges. I've seen the tools equip good teams to become great teams—by shifting how teams move from an individual focus to a collective force to achieve amazing results.”
—Lisa Bacus, EVP Global Chief Marketing Officer, Cigna
“Do Big Things offers a simple and heart-based approach to elevate teams beyond high performing. If you want to open hearts and minds in your business, arm your team with this book . . . and maybe you'll all live a little more deliciously.”
—Chip Conley, NY Times bestselling author of Emotional Equations, Airbnb Strategic Advisor for Hospitality & Leadership
“This book serves as validation and a how-to for successful teams that are beyond high performance. The teams that master this approach are unstoppable.”
—Marshall Goldsmith recognized as a Top 10 Most Influential Business Thinker in the World, best-selling author of What Got You Here Won't Get You There and Lifestorming: Creating Meaning and Achievement in Your Career and Life
“The Do Big Things approach and steps are very powerful and transformative. Leaders and teams who choose to apply them can make a huge difference to their business and organization. It is a must-read for any leader wanting to play big with high impact.”
—Anne Watson, Global Human Resources Leader, Fortune 500 Company
“Ross, Paccione, and Roberts cut through the typical to the atypical, with an approach that embodies effectiveness and engagement, wrapped in—of all things—heart! A must-read for those who want and need their teams to do big things.”
—Lynn M. Gangone, Ed.D., Vice President, ACE Leadership
“Do Big Things is different. Because of our commitment to following the steps in this book, I am seeing how collectively, as one team, we will re-invent the way we innovate. These steps are simple, immediate, and authentic. The tools shared in this book have become a common language that allows us to lead with clarity and optimism like never before.”
—Franck Leveiller, VP, Head, R&D Surgical Franchise, Alcon
“Craig Ross taught us the power of comradery. In this new book, the authors teach us about the power of chemistry. It's powerful.”
—Jack Stack, Founder and CEO of SRC Holdings, author of The Great Game of Business
“Unlike other teaming books I've read, this book immediately improved the way I interact with colleagues. Ross, Paccione, and Roberts have inspired me to focus on the process and even more on the people—to lead less from my brain and more from my heart.”
—Mariah Burton Nelson, MPH, CAE, is in charge of innovation for ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership
“The practical Do Big Things Framework gives teams a map to be their best—and accomplish innovation by working across the business on a shared goal. I've seen this book come to life and it's powerful and a game-changer when you experience more potential being activated in your leaders and teams.”
—Kevin McEvoy, Former CEO, Oceaneering International, Inc.
“Do Big Things contains simple yet powerful tools that are timeless and work for any team. I've seen and personally experienced teams achieve incredible innovation and organizational transformations by applying the principles outlined by Ross, Paccione, and Roberts.”
—Terence Calloway, Vice President R&D, Chief Technology Officer, Energizer
“Do Big Things is a guide for any team. Grounded in research focused on the human element, Do Big Things combines a trusted process with proven tools to serve as a catalyst that inspires teams to reach amazing heights.”
—Mike Bloomfield, Former NASA Astronaut, Shuttle Commander
“Do Big Things includes an approach that supported our team in navigating market conditions, being agile, and shifting our strategy—and doing so in a way that improved the lives of our team and community. It's equipped us to live, lead, and care while successfully having the greatest impact on our culture, community and business.”
—Patrick Criteser, President & CEO, Tillamook
“The Do Big Things approach equipped our team to leverage our solid foundation in culture to achieve even greater business results (sales and margin growth)—with leaders showing up wanting to be their best ever, transforming our organization, and moving us forward faster. If you're not using these tools, you're already behind.”
—Matt Reid, CEO & President, SupHerb Farms
“Few books offer quick insights that impact teams immediately. Do Big Things, and the approach in its pages, shifts teams in dramatic ways. I've experienced first-hand the power of these tools in support leaders and teams to be adaptable.”
—Eric Stockl, VP, Ecolab
“I am a big believer in giving the ‘how’ to managers and individuals alike. There are too many articles and books that address the ‘what’ and many individuals are floundering because they agree with that, but don't know the steps necessary to make the change. Thank you Craig, Angie, and Victoria, for making this a great ‘how’ book and providing enough examples that resonate with any leader or any individual in any team in any organization. Wow!”
—Beverly Kaye, Founder: Career Systems International; Co-Author: Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People to Stay and Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want
“The introduction of this terrific book lays down the gauntlet: ‘We . . . are not here to be inconsequential or do small work.' You already up for that challenge, I know. But you can't do it alone. You need good people with you. You need a team. And sadly, good teams are hard to find. 70 percent of employees report being part of a dysfunctional team. If you'd like to change that up, this may be the book for you. Do Great Work, Do it with a great team.”
—Michael Bungay Stanier, author of The Coaching Habit and Do More Great Work
“You will find not only practical ideas that can be implemented immediately, but evidence-based strategies that provide a compelling framework for action. Look elsewhere for the usual management bromides in which talk is a substitute for action. This is a book about decisions—deciding to be great, deciding to take responsibility, and deciding to make a difference.”
—Douglas Reeves, Ph.D., Founder, Creative Leadership Solutions, author of the best-selling The Learning Leader
“Using real-life examples from their multiple decades of consulting, Craig, Angie, and Victoria deliver a pragmatic way to inspire and earn high performance from every organization's most precious asset, the human beings who work there. I recommend this book to anyone looking to find the precious balance between high performance and humanity.”
—Henry J. Evans; Co-Author of Amazon Top 10 Business Book Step Up-Lead in Six Moments That Matter, and author of the best-selling Winning With Accountability-The Secret Language of High Performing Organizations
“In life and business every new undertaking is a venture into the unknown. Craig, Angie, and Victoria have written a book that serves as a valuable roadmap for any leader who's looking to do more and be more. This book shows a way to achieve greater results with deeper satisfaction.”
—Bryan Miller, author of the forthcoming book, Power, Productivity & Peace
Do Big Things
The Simple Steps Teams Can Take to Mobilize Hearts and Minds, and Make an Epic Impact
CRAIG W. ROSS | ANGELA V. PACCIONE | VICTORIA L. ROBERTS
Cover image: Amy Shenton
Cover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2017 by Craig W. Ross, Angela V. Paccione, and Victoria L. Roberts.
All rights reserved.
Verus Global® is a registered trademark of Verus Global, Inc. WE EQUIP TEAMS TO DO BIG THINGS™ is a trademark in process.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Ross, Craig W., author. | Paccione, Angela V., author. | Roberts, Victoria L., author.
Title: Do big things : the simple steps teams can take to mobilize hearts and minds, and make an epic impact / Craig Ross, Angela V. Paccione, Victoria L. Roberts.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017019102 (print) | LCCN 2017029984 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119361169 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119361176 (epub) | ISBN 9781119361152 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Teams in the workplace. | Organizational behavior. | Organizational effectiveness.
Classification: LCC HD66 (ebook) | LCC HD66 .R6685 2017 (print) | DDC 658.4/022–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019102
Read Me First
We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not.
—Major John Wesley Powell, in 1869, as the crew of explorers at his command descended into the unexplored Grand Canyon of the western United States1
Your team is expected to deliver—big. Like Powell's crew nearly 150 years ago, perhaps you're even embarking on an ambitious plan to do something that's never been done before. Your Grand Canyon in front of you is deep and fraught with risks. And if you're like most, you begin your journey amid swirling changes and scarce resources.
Even though you may believe you personally have what it takes to deliver on your responsibilities, you wonder: Is every person on the team truly committed and capable of bringing their best? Will the members of the team productively work together and become larger than the sum of individuals? And will the team be able to work its magic in a company culture that at times lacks alignment and is careless about valuing the people doing the work?
Does your team have a chance to succeed?
“I have no question that a team can generate magic. But don't count on it,” observed renowned team dynamics expert and professor of psychology at Harvard, Richard Hackman.2 Volumes of research on the topic support his claim. As a sampling, consider that 70 percent of the workforce say they are a part of a dysfunctional team,3 while the experts who assess team effectiveness say 75 percent of cross-functional teams function below their potential4—in some cases, by significant margins.
Is your team telling itself the truth? The fact is, in most cases the odds are stacked against you and your team. But it's not like you're going to throw your hands up and quit. Within you is the belief that big things can be achieved when the right things are done. This powers you internally. So you choose to step forward. (Doing so makes you feel alive.)
Your team doesn't have to meet an inglorious fate. History, including as recently as yesterday, includes teams that have overcome the odds and achieved extraordinary feats. We know this, because we've spent over two decades obsessed with teams that do big things. Specifically, we've pursued answering one question: How do they do it? Specifically, how do members of a successful team function together—in the midst of churn and constant change—to succeed when it seems they don't have a prayer of delivering your business imperative?
We found the answer. As a part of an expanding team of professional development specialists, consultants, and coaches, we've invested over 65,000 hours observing and studying what teams do (and don't do) to deliver on their business imperative. Our work includes supporting leaders and teams at global companies including P&G, Nestlé, Novartis, Cigna, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and others, as well as start-ups and those in academia, government, and nonprofits. In addition, we've studied teams in the world of sports, exploration, entertainment, and more. In each case, we found a common and undeniable pattern of steps, a code, successful teams use on their way to making a meaningful impact.
Just like Powell's team left us all with a map we can now use to safely navigate the Grand Canyon, so there is a replicable framework with clear steps that your team—any team—can take to succeed and do big things. We want you to have and experience that process. That's what this book delivers.
Teams that are ignorant about the severe odds they face, or choose to deny the facts, risk more than business results by rushing to their boats shouting, “We have to succeed!” Because such teams are ill-prepared for the perilous whitewater rapids that are most certainly ahead, the careers and happiness of teammates are at stake.
Your solution is more than people-centered; our work with leaders and teams around the world makes clear that big success occurs when the best of each teammate is brought forth in relation to the people around them. To that end, your team can and should be one of the greatest levers to improving the leadership of every team member.
Whether you're curing cancer, building buildings, developing software, selling widgets, organizing a charity, mobilizing first responders, coaching Little League, or huddling with financial experts, your team is influencing your organization's health in significant ways. The imperative is that this is done productively, where your team impacts other teams in ways that enable them to also do big things.
This book, and its valuable map for team success, is designed and written for you. Whether you're a team leader (or aspire to be), or you play a different role and are committed to doing your best to help your team succeed, we've delivered the content so theory can more easily be put into practice.
We as human beings are not here to be inconsequential or do small work. We are here because we matter. And we want to matter more. It is in our control to do the extraordinary, and it is our fortune to do so as a team.
While history creates its heroes out of individuals (insert your favorite here), even their work would be forgotten if it hadn't been for a team coming together around or behind them to do something more significant than any one of them alone. Indeed, people working together—a team—is usually the only reason big things are achieved.
Your team can make an epic impact—and in the process have an epic impact on you. Your Grand Canyon awaits.
Disclaimer!
Because the proven methodology in this book works, as your team quickly begins to do bigger things, your team is going to stand out. And here's why.
This book doesn't conform to the established thinking and doctrines of most other business books. For starters, being a high-performing team is not the ultimate objective. There's more. (Heresy? Perhaps, but you're about to prove that today's teams must go beyond mere basics to succeed.) Nor do we pontificate about the importance of trust, communication, alignment, accountability, and every other well-studied dynamic of successful teams.
That's because we have proven that teams that do big things don't do what's normal. They do what is exceptional. Specifically, developing your team to be trustworthy, communicate more effectively, and so forth isn't what your business is asking you to do. (More heresy!) Your business is demanding results.
Transformation occurs when you enable your team members to better deliver what has to get done by equipping them to be their best, bring out the best in others, and partner across the business to deliver shared objectives. When people are enabled to be their best, the business does its best. Now, because of your boldness, you will see an increase in the greatest practices of humanity, including trust and all the other values your team and organization cherish.
This is about the heart of the matter—being who we all know we can be—together. That's how big things are done.
Notes
1.
A quote by John Wesley Powell, 1834–1902,
www.qotd.org/search/single.html?qid=71838
.
2.
Diane Coutu, “Why Teams Don't Work,”
Harvard Business Review
, May 2009,
https://hbr.org/2009/05/why-teams-dont-work
.
3.
University of Phoenix, “University of Phoenix Survey Reveals Nearly Seven-in-Ten Workers Have Been Part of Dysfunctional Teams,” UOPX News, January 16, 2013,
www.phoenix.edu/news/releases/2013/01/university-of-phoenix-survey-reveals-nearly-seven-in-ten-workers-have-been-part-of-dysfunctional-teams.html
.
4.
Anita Bruzzese, “How to Create Trust Among Cross-Functional Teams,” QuickBase (Blog), September 6, 2016,
www.quickbase.com/blog/how-to-create-trust-among-cross-functional-teams
.
1Teams That Do Big Things
Those who know history increase their ability to make it. Here's a brief look at a team that made an epic impact. These seemingly unexceptional people demonstrated that together most any team can do big things. And they left a map for you to do the same.
At 1:00 P.M. on May 24, 1869, a team of 10 explorers pushed their boats into the water and floated away from Green River Station, Wyoming. They were determined to do something that had never been done: travel and chart the Green and Colorado Rivers of the western United States. At this point in history, the details of the nearly 100-year-old country's map were largely complete—except for one conspicuously large space. In an area the size of France, cartographers had simply written “unexplored.” The region was unknown. And for good reason.
Downriver, danger lurked. To begin with, the desert terrain was nearly all rock and sand. Native Americans roamed the untamed and unknown territory. And the river—it was already legendary. Tales were told of waterfalls that made Niagara look small. Others claimed the river disappeared completely like an enormous snake vanishing down a hole.1
The last portion of the journey would take the explorers through what is now known as the Grand Canyon, a gouge in the earth 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and a mile deep. Today, tens of thousands of people apply for the chance to raft the river for sport; occasionally, some lose their lives as they do so. But to the team pushing their boats into the water that day some 150 years ago, the wild Grand Canyon wasn't there for fun. It was a job, something they were hired to do. It was something they had to do.
The leader of the band was a short, one-armed Civil War veteran named Major John Wesley Powell. As a would-be scientist, he had little experience in the Wild West. Still, he beamed with optimism. He'd assembled nine other men, all with varying degrees of experience as explorers and hunters, to complete the party. Some joined the team just days before their launch, motivated by the need for adventure and a paycheck. Altogether, these men weren't the best of their time, but they were all Powell could afford.
Prepared with supplies and food to last 10 months, the team reflected their captain's confidence. What they didn't know—couldn't know—is that they had prepared for the wrong trip. Their approach and planning were suited for entirely different circumstances. How they thought about their environment and each other was based upon the only resource they had: past experiences.
But there was nothing like the land they found themselves in. No river could compare to the one they were floating down. To achieve their objective, they'd have to do what they'd never done before.
The purpose of the expedition was to map unknown territory. For Major Powell, there was an additional objective: fame. The big thing he wanted to accomplish was earning a reputation as a legitimate scientist. While celebrity and fortune appealed to the members of Powell's crew, their primary objective was altogether different, yet equally clear: survival. While they'd never been on this particular river before, they knew enough from legend that they would be tested and pushed like they'd never been before. Success was not certain.
We'll return to Powell's journey into the great unknown shortly. First, though, consider the team you're on or the team you lead. What's your Grand Canyon? What's the significant objective the team must accomplish to positively and meaningfully impact the business? What's the transformation or big change or launch or innovation the organization is demanding you deliver?
And now, the question this book will equip you to answer in the affirmative: Is your team equipped to deliver big things?
A word of caution: Many who have gone before you into uncharted territory have mistakenly thought that the key to their team's success (survival!) was a matter of equipping themselves with a new structure, software, process, (quick, make another Gantt chart), or rearranging where people sit or dine. Most of those teams have not been heard from again. Their work was at best marginal, and therefore, forgotten.
That's because it is not merely how your team is structured or the equipment and resources in your hands that you'll need for success today. It's something more—much more.
Why Many Teams Can't Do Big Things Today
Well-intentioned organizations everywhere are sending their teams into the great unknown future riding inflatable floaties—the same type you give to children in the backyard pool. Companies spend an inordinate amount of time determining what they must accomplish, then slap acronyms on those goals, like S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely) and WIGs (wildly important goals).2 Knowing your team must conquer its Grand Canyon, without being equipped with how to do so, however, is reckless (if not madness). Teams are increasingly desperate for knowing how as humans they'll achieve the what. We're functioning in what the U.S. military coined a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous)3 world. The disconnect is obvious: Employers are pulling employees together, calling them a team, giving them a directive, and expecting them to deliver results quickly.
But such teams can't. This isn't an inflatable backyard pool your team must get across. Your objective today is its own Grand Canyon. The way teams came together before won't work in today's intense, fast-changing world. When organizations fail to grasp the wisdom that the method for teaming successfully has changed, their approach can look like the antiquated change model depicted below:
Step 1: Announce the new initiative the company needs to meet lightning-quick changes in the market.
Step 2: Form teams and assign people to roles.
Step 3: Tell people what to do and give them half the resources needed to do it.
Step 4: Remind everyone of the company values (optional).
Step 5: Apply external motivations in the form of rewards or penalties.
Step 6: Try to overcome the resistance or confusion created in Steps 1 through 5.
Step 7: Identify who is to blame for missed deliverables, milestones, and budgets.
Step 8: Disband the teams or change personnel and repeat Steps 1 through 7.
This common approach never gives teams a chance to do something significant. In moments of fatigue, as people are shuffled from project to project while enduring new demands, it's easy to think the bosses have gone mad, while the bosses get mad. They can see what needs to get done, yet can't find a way to get the team to operationalize the new vision.
Is it any wonder why so many people avoid eye contact and hurry back to the isolation of their workspace feeling despondent?
Is Your Team's Whole Heart in It?
Who are we kidding? Nearly all of us lose a bit of ourselves each time we're forced through the eight dysfunctional steps of the antiquated change model. It's an unsustainable formula: We diminish ourselves while the magnitude of our work increases in volume, complexity, and speed. We used to finish the work we started; we used to celebrate jobs well done; we used to have meaningful relationships with those with whom we worked. But now? What used to make us feel alive is too often absent for too many. We are sapped of a certain sort of energy necessary to do big things.
inbIt's clear that there's a new requirement to succeed as a team today. The solution is refined and raw, sophisticated and practical, genius and basic, elegant and simple: It's heart. The ability for teammates to be at their human best and become bigger than anything they face. This is what many teams are starved for.
Is your team's whole heart in it? It's not enough for one or two individuals to have heart on a team of 10 people, as an example. In fact, that's tormenting as emotions usually erupt or apathy sets in. Teams rise above this and significantly increase their odds of achieving big things when their whole heart is in it. Defined, this is the point at which the members of the team fully commit to bringing their full self to the team and its efforts to ensure successful outcomes—unconditionally. Now, with the personal integrity of each team member in action, the purpose of the team transcends personal position, ambition, and recognition.
Whether your team has been together for years, you're a newly formed team, or every team member only knows each other virtually, can you quickly develop this whole heart, where the best of each person on the team is amplified? Teams we've observed functioning at this level describe it this way:
Whole heart occurs the moment we act on the wisdom that we are stronger together.
It's the valor and collective grit that shows up even when times are tough.
It's the juice we experience when we're up against severe odds, yet somehow summon the strength to win.
This whole heart is what collapses the idealistic into the realistic. Teams that possess it passionately own their plan to deliver on the big thing in front of them. They get off the fence and refuse to allow the circumstances to determine their thinking and actions. They say no to whatever tempts them away from their goal. These are the teams where people speak straight, and remain optimistic when the data say they shouldn't—because they know what they are capable of and what's possible.
This ability for any group of people to quickly unite and operate with a shared, energized focus that brings out the best in all of us is the defining need of our time. If we all tell ourselves the truth, this need transcends business. In too many arenas and communities, people are experiencing self-inflicted wounds through persistent attacks on each other. The tolerance for divisive actions in humanity is reaching a breaking point.
As all of us drop deeper toward our own Grand Canyon, we recognize and agonize over the wisdom inside of us: We are better than this. Our leadership, talent, culture—in other words, who we are as people—all merge at a space called team. It is here that we discover our darkness and our brilliance. It is only here that we get serious work done.
WTF (Want the Facts)
In case you have a teammate who's been out of town for a while and missed what's going on, and they want the facts to better understand the reality of the situation faced by all, share this data with them:
84 percent of employees are “matrixed” to some extent, meaning they serve on multiple teams.
4
21 percent of executives are confident in their ability to develop cross-functional teams.
5
92 percent of companies are going through reorganization.
6
70 percent of transformation efforts fail.
7
When team members were asked to describe their team, fewer than 10 percent agreed about who was on it.
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How Legendary Teams Succeed in Doing Big Things
Take this quiz. Consider these now-classic tales of glory and identify what they all have in common. What exactly enabled these teams to succeed?
The Apollo 13 space mission team, including those at mission control in Houston, Texas. After an explosion on board, the astronauts had to scrap their plans for exploring the surface of the moon and divert all their resources to getting a hunk of malfunctioning metal—and the lives it carried—safely home. In what some consider a miracle, they prevailed.
9
The 2016 Chicago Cubs. They faced a history book full of 108 years of failure that said they were losers. But in this magical season they made it to the championship of baseball, the World Series. After four games in the best-of-seven series, they found themselves down three games to one. With perseverance, they overcame long odds and fought their way back, forcing a final and deciding game. In what became an instant classic, the game required extra innings to determine the winner. The Chicago Cubs dug deep and found the strength to win. Legions of fans around the world could finally say: Our team is the best.
10
The team called the “brain trust” at Pixar, the computer animation film studio known for producing smash hits like
Toy Story
,
Finding Nemo
,
Monsters Inc.
, and many others. Pixar founder Ed Catmull says, “Early on, all of our movies suck.”
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Yet, the brain trust and other teams within the company have the remarkable ability to produce and deliver feature films to the market that regularly win Academy Awards and almost always make the list of top 50 worldwide highest grossing animated movies.
For more than two decades, we've been obsessed with answering one question: How do you equip a team to deliver big things? We've studied teams like those just mentioned and observed and worked with thousands more—with a singular lens: What is the how? Specifically, the human how? In other words, how did they create the behavioral dynamics that make the team seemingly superhuman?
When teams are enthralled with an idea, they are relentless in their learning, experimentation, and practice. We certainly are, which is why we've insisted on going far beyond team basics in our work. For example, nearly everyone knows that for a team to succeed they need a purpose, agreed-upon goals and objectives, a strategy, customer, charter, resources, role clarity, clear responsibilities, processes, and all the other fundamentals.
Here is the key question, though: If each of us knows these basics, and many teams fulfill those requirements, why do so many teams still fail to do anything significant at all? The truth is that a lot of organizations are in peril for one striking reason: Dynamics exist that stop employees from being who they really want to be: great people, particularly in relationship to the other members of their team.
Good teams can repeat back a strategy they've read on paper. They can watch the slides and listen to leaders at the town hall gatherings. But if the team's plan isn't reflected in their hearts, they're likely doomed to be overwhelmed by an avalanche of priorities and mixed messages about how they should do their work. In addition, the seemingly ever-changing direction of the company creates a dizzying swirl of confusion. A pressure to reinvent oneself while still delivering what the team was told to do yesterday overwhelms capacity and crushes confidence.
Under such circumstances, even though executives can see the strategy clearly on the whiteboard, without the ability to be better together, employees with glazed eyes ask with increasing frequency: Where are we going? Who are we becoming?
Going Deeper Than Behavior Basics
It's painfully clear that it's far more than revising the team charter or redesigning the reporting structure that's going to get any of us through this. As well, the solution requires going further than platitudes about needing to model organizational values.
The answer to what's necessary for teams to do big things today lies in going deeper than the behavior basics. A first step is examining how the members of extraordinary teams behave together. For example, let's go back to the quiz of legendary teams. What did you see as the common thread in the success stories cited earlier? Most people come up with a list that includes these behaviors:
Trust
Collaboration
Respect
Vision
Strategy
Accountability
Empowerment
Communication
These characteristics or behaviors indeed are demonstrated in nearly every story of team success. (Come on, though, admit it: Did you have a sense of déjà vu when you read the list? We did because it's a list distributed nearly word for word in countless books and within organizations around the world.) There's no surprise here: These qualities are necessary for a team to succeed.
But there's more. (And once you see and apply it, everything changes.) These values and behaviors are inherently intangible. What's necessary are reliable methods to create tangible behaviors. In nearly every success story, there's a pattern—a way the team approaches their objectives and team members interact with each other—that serves as a mechanism by which the behaviors on the list above become a reality. Those who can see this pattern and these dynamics and replicate them dramatically improve the arc of the team's destiny.
The key to seeing the pattern requires understanding that the values and behaviors we've all been conditioned to believe are the Holy Grail (in other words, if you have them, the world is yours) aren't the end-all resolution. The values and behaviors successful teams demonstrate, while important, are in reality just one of two steps toward the solution. To illustrate, consider pi.
The values and behaviors we listed for successful teams are not wrong; they're merely incomplete. For example, if you ask someone, “What's pi?” and she answers, “3.14,” you wouldn't jump up and down and claim she lied or was incorrect. Likely, you'd explain that there's more to the numerical value: It's 3.14159…and so on from there.
Recall that we asked what exactly enabled these exemplary teams to succeed? At that moment, most of our brains did the same thing. It defaulted to describing
what
the teams did to succeed (3.14 = trust, courage, collaboration, and so on). To complete the answer, however, we must dig into
how
the teams functioned to create the
what
, the trust, courage, collaboration, and more (3.14159 = the how).
What's important is rarely achieved until a team knows how to do it.
A System for Creating the Thinking, Actions, and Outcomes Necessary for Success
None of us have been told a lie. The talented people in HR and organizational development know what they're doing. Values and behaviors and
