Why Creating a Star Team so Important
“It took just 600 Apple engineers less than two years to develop, debug, and deploy OS X, a revolutionary change in the company’s operating system. By contrast, it took as many as 10,000 engineers more than five years to develop, debug, deploy, and eventually retract Microsoft’s Windows Vista”, says Michael Malkin.
Great teams can do phenomenal work, enabling companies to beat their competition. Star teams are often three or four times or more productive as ordinary teams and that millions of dollars are saved through their productivity. But how do you go about creating a start team?
It Starts from the Top
Star teams need certain things in order to excel. And these can only be provided by executive leadership.
- To excel they need an environment in which experimentation is allowed (encouraged) and failure is accepted as a cost for doing great things. Success comes from failure. Ridiculing or punishing failure sends a strong signal to individuals and teams to only use tried and true methods. And doing so is a recipe for mediocrity.
- Without experimentation, without taking risks, individuals and teams will not learn and the company won’t grow. So, first leadership must create the right environment.
- Along with the enabling team to take risks, management also needs to also provide an environment of straight talk. One where individuals and teams are held accountable for results and no one receives special treatment. At the same time individuals and teams can take actions to achieve the desired results. Individuals need to trust management there is a level playing field for all.
Key Attributes of a Star Team
While it important for individual contributors to be productive it is even more important for the team as whole to effective. What determines this? There are several important attributes for an effective team according to Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a few of which we will highlight here.
- Diversity of Skills – its respect for the different skills on the team. This is key in cross-functional teams. The brilliant software coder who sits by themselves, has just as much to contribute as the premier sales leader. That respect builds upon itself. Team members are willing contribute to finding a solution when their ideas and themselves are respected.
- Resilience – there will be hard times in an organization and difficulty within a team. Resilience shows how well a team and an organization hold together through tough times.
- Synergy – goes to how well team members play off each other’s strengths to create a cohesive unit, an esprit de corps. The talents and contributions of the team far exceeds that of the individual. In other words, the sum of the whole is greater than the parts.
When a team works well together a lot will be accomplished, as we saw in the Apple illustration. There is an energy that is created. The team loves challenges and will take on larger and more difficult tasks. Individual team members will step up their game without anyone asking them to. They do this for a couple of reasons: 1) They see other team members stepping up, so they do as well so that they don’t let down their team. 2) They themselves have grown in their abilities, so their confidence has increased. Their contribution is respected and the pride that comes from recognition of the team encourages them to do even more.
Accountability
On top of these attributes is accountability. Everyone will know the role they play as an individual contributor and part of a team. The individual needs to know what they need to do to be successful (accountable) and the importance of contributing to the team.
How to do this?
The key is communicating what needs to be done and how it will be measured.
The best way for measuring is to apply metrics to the position and the associated processes and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Service Level Agreements are the agreement, the goal, that is to be obtained for a certain process or task. An SLA can be “product shipped to the customer in 24 hours” or “all POs issued within 24 hours of approval”. In practical terms this means an employee doesn’t go home until all the product that needs to be shipped to meet the SLA, have been shipped, or all the POs that need to be issued that fall within that 24 hours of approval are sent that day.
Go beyond what needs to be done and explain why. Explain why creating POs within 24 hours is so important. Explain how the PO creation fits in with the rest of the processes for this area. Explain how this work enables the business to excel.
In addition to individual metrics, team metrics would be created as well.
Team and company goals are to minimize silos and get different departments working together. Tying the individual goals to the team and process goals, tied to the corporate goals show an individual how their work contributes to the overall success of the business.
So How do you Identify a Star during the Interview Process? Check the Attitude
An interviewee needs to understand from the very first interview, that it is important to have the right attitude. An attitude of taking ownership of an area, agreeing to the metrics (SLAs) and even improving the process and the metrics as needed.
Going back to the PO example, first explain how they will be successful in their position (e.g. creating POs in 24 hours) and how it will be measured. Second, explain how their area contributes to the success of the PO process and how the overall process is being measured. Third, explain how this area, this process contributes to the overall success of the company. Describe what their area does and how it contributes to the success of the company. Explain how the teams and processes will be measured.
If they are a team player, their eyes should light up and their heads nod as you go through this part of the interview. How the interviewee reacts will tell you a lot about their mindset concerning being measured on their and the team’s performance.
Customer Focus
Part of the discussion with the individual is to emphasis the concept of customers. Everyone has customers, whether they are internal or external. Create the mindset that we want to do our best for our customers. Creating SLAs tells a customer (even internal) what they can expect for your department. It tells them how you will measure your success at serving their group. It communicates accountability for delivery.
Of course, the person must have the necessary skills, however, hiring someone with the right attitude, the right mindset is paramount.
Actions:
- When hiring, picture where you see the interviewee in two years. Think about your current team and how they not only fit in, but how this person would contribute, and would they make the current team even better. Trust your gut. Trust your emotions when you think through what the interviewee would do interacting with the rest of the team. Often our feelings pick up something that our conscious minds miss, something that we can’t quite put our finger on it . Just be sure to hire a diverse team. A team of different backgrounds, different skill sets, different ethnicity and genders in order to have the best team possible.
- Related to number 1, determine if you can see this person growing, again, where would they be in 2 years. You want to hire someone that will grow with your team and your company. Someone that is willing to do that. The person in front of you may be very qualified for the current position, but are they the type of person that is willing to learn and grow as team and company does?
- Understand that the effort to find the right person is worth it. The right person will be worth many times what you are paying them, and the wrong person will cost you far more than what you are paying.
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