Wrong Box, Wrong Time - Mike Peckham

How many times have you heard the expression ‘a team’ or looked through the glossy brochures of outdoor development companies promising the ultimate team-building experience? How many times have you felt the pangs of disenchantment with teams, team-working and team building courses?

This article challenges the idea held by many that all teams are the same. The premise is that just as people are not all alike, neither are teams, and further, different teams have different needs, all of which has implications for the future of empowerment in organisations.

Whilst acknowledging the seminal work of Belbin, Margerison and McCann, and Katzenbach and Smith as useful sources for sorting out roles and relationships within teams - as well as describing the fundamentals of establishing them - a little known text, and one which I hope will enjoy a revival, is the work of Larson and Lafasto - Teamwork: What Must Go Right, What Can Go Wrong.

Team Types

This slim volume certainly helped me understand the differing nature of teams. Based on individual experiences of good and bad teams, their well-grounded research produced some interesting findings. High performing teams have:

• Clear and elevating goals.
• Results-driven structures.
• Competent members, technically and personally.
• Unified commitment.
• Collaborative climate.
• External support and resources.
• Principled leadership.

While these alone are not revolutionary, more important was the research that uncovered a difference in need per team type. Larson and Lafasto proposed that teams could be defined as being:

1. Tactical fire station crew, military team, production team, for example.
2. Problem-solving continuous improvement team, project team and research team.
3. Creative product design teams, innovation teams and strategic planning teams.

They suggested that each of these had different needs as follows:

• Tactical teams require role clarity.
• Problem-solving teams need autonomy.
• Creative teams want freedom.

Thus, the principal need of a tactical team like a fire station crew is role clarity, since everyone needs to know what to do. In a problem-solving team such as a continuous improvement team, members need to know what the problem is and then be given the autonomy - or bounded freedom - to tackle it. This is in contrast to the creative team which would have total freedom and no boundaries.

Figure 1:  The problems and solutions windows.

While the above work is very interesting and is applicable to some teams, it can be something of a false fit. Working with a variety of teams, it became clear to me that they played different roles according to the moment. Teams would often start as a creative team before moving into problem-solving and, finally, into implementation when they became a tactical team.

This cycle produced a shift of need from freedom to autonomy and ultimately to role clarity. Once appreciated, each individual was able to understand some form of behavioural expectation.

Developing the Model

I then set to thinking about this simple model in a wider organisational context and revisited some work by Creswick and Williams  - Using the Outdoors for Management Development and Teambuilding, on problems and solutions

In this, they did the usual consultant/academic modelling of fitting almost anything to a series of quadrants. In this instance, it was problems known and unknown versus solution known and unknown, as shown in figure 1.

Box 1 represents the easiest situation to operate in, where both problems and solution are clearly known. In Box 2, while the problem may be known, the solution is unknown. And in Box 3, we enter into an area of maximum uncertainty in which both the problem and solution are unknown. Finally, the curiosity of Box 4, in which the problem is unknown and yet a solution is available, is intriguing.

I have likened this to trying to fit the same solution to whatever the problem - the quote, ‘If you only have a hammer then everything looks like a nail,’ applies here! I know some trainers who operate in this box a lot.

Putting these two pieces of research together with some of my own, and reflecting on my personal practice with senior teams in pursuit of an empowered workforce, led me to develop a model which attempts to match different teams with differing needs. This is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2:  The team type window.

Some of the work of Kotter around organising styles is also relevant to the model and the difference related to complexity of task and feedback rates

One could tentatively suggest that in Box 1, the tactical team needs good administration, if roles are clear, whilst in Box 2 the problem-solving team may need management to co-ordinate the various parts and achieve a solution perhaps only in Box 3, when uncertainty is greatest with neither problem or answer in sight, creativity, forward thinking and true leadership – by whatever definition – becomes necessary. It is also possible that at the extreme poles of Box 3 the organising style needs to be either facilitation or transformational leadership.

It became apparent to me that once above the midway line, teams and individuals cross a threshold of uncertainty and, as they move further towards Box 3, the uncertainty increases. In presenting and discussing the model, groups suggested that, as far as possible, our natural instinct is to drive anti-clockwise from box 3 towards Box 1 – from maximum uncertainty to maximum certainty.

The model highlights a paradox. We are so often told that we should love change and be able to cope with uncertainty, yet our instincts are often the complete opposite. This may be why managers seem to be uniformly bad at managing uncertainty.

Equally, true empowerment is only possible when we cross the threshold of uncertainty. Teams need to have some degree of discretion to be empowered – ‘What can I really be empowered about if I am in a tactical team?’

It is worth emphasising that teams can be all three team types at different times and, providing this is appreciated, it should be possible for members to understand how to behave and which leadership style needs to be displayed.

[diagram]

At an organisational level, the model presents some interesting thoughts, as in figure 3. Rapidly changing markets, globalisation and the general quickening of everything, means more and more organisations are reluctantly finding themselves in the area of Box 3.

Smaller companies may be able to cope better in Box 3 because of their ability to move quickly and, with less history, they may be able to extrapolate more broadly than their larger competitors. The challenge for large companies is to break things down into smaller, faster moving businesses, the ultimate form of which, of course, is teams.

Increasingly, senior teams must operate in Box 3 leading their organisations and spending time attempting to look into the future to see what it might hold. To quote Jim Kouzes: ‘Leadership is about taking people to places they have never been.’

In the past, organisations could reasonably predict and create their own futures. However, with fewer certainties and fewer ready solutions, the challenge now is to develop strategies that balance targeted achievement with organisational fitness.

I like Vaill’s analogy of organisations being like a raft on a river of whitewater. There are periods of whitewater and rapids, interspersed with deep, calm sections. In periods of calm, organisations need to prepare themselves for the whitewater which is just around the corner.

Organisational structures, symbols and systems need to be aligned to enable individuals to operate in Box 3 when appropriate. Unfortunately, appraisal systems and performance related pay, often concern themselves with only that which is measurable, which tends to be the preserve of Box 1. This may be despite espousing visions and values from Box 3.

Organisations could usefully decide who, when and how they should divide their people and their time between the boxes – right box, right time!