Setting up high performance teams

For many years I´ve had the opportunity to work with talented people and highly competent teams. Doing so was not just a lucky circumstance, but a planned and reflected process to foster high value through merging skilled individuals in a high performing team. I often realize that managers spend an enormous amount of time on tasks and results of their teams, but do not spend enough time on their team members. Although it may seem obvious: choosing, training and developing individuals is much more important, than to overview the actual assignments.

The make it even more obvious here are my basic rules for successful team management:

1. Surround yourself with the best people
2. Train them
3. Look ahead and imagine how your team can evolve in time and prepare them for it
4. Promote them

1. Surround yourself with the best people

"A chain is as strong, as its weakest link"

 or

"A team is more than just the sum of its individuals"

 - you've heard it all, but do you really work by it? Look at your teams and ask yourself if everybody is at the top of his art. A team is a very complex structure and you have to understand each and every individual as well as the links between them to make the team work.

In times of major reorganization - how many times did you make the organizational layout already thinking about the people in your organization to occupy the slots? How often did you build a team in view of a specific objective, getting the best individuals in your organization to build the right team? Often our starting point are the actual team members and as "human" as it may sound, it's the worst starting point, because by definition it will be an underperforming team and hence not interesting for you as a manager and probably neither for the team members.

Just get the best team members, choose them wisely and set up a team that fits to the task - that's your major challenge as a manager. If you have to change an existing team, don't be afraid to let underperforming people go. As cruel as it may sound neither your organization nor the individual is gaining something by accepting mediocrity.

Now it's not the topic of this blog but just let me tell you one thing - if you choose the best guys for your team, pay them what they are worth!

2. Train them

Through the crisis of 2009 most companies had some tough decisions to make. Let's look at two major choices and think about which one you would choose to cut costs:

1. Reduce the number of employees, but continue to train the existing ones
2. Keep all employees but cut on training (and all other expenses like travelling etc.)

What is the right choice?

Under the premises that both decisions would have the same impact on cutting costs I would always go for the first. Not training your teams will cost you more over time than what you could have saved on training expenses and even with a lower staff coverage, well trained and motivated teams will always be better performing than untrained (even higher staffed) teams.

Training can be done on and off the job and like so many things the right balance is crucial. On the job training is often not really perceived by the employee, unless you assign him specific "training" projects, which you debrief with him/her under the angle of training/development. Off the job training is important as it gives the employee time to reflect and free himself from daily work. It can also be a great opportunity to build networks, share experiences and why not watch out for future talents.

3. Look ahead and imagine how your team can evolve in time and prepare them for it

Once you have the best team and they work on their assignment start to think about the next moves. Above all in bigger teams there is constant change and even if it looks like there isn't, the risk is always there of somebody getting pregnant, being picked by competitors, moving away etc. By thinking about the next moves you can enhance your reactivity to change and reduce the risk of vacancies or unprepared people.

By preparing team members for a possible next steps you enhance their commitment and motivation as they see by leading examples, that it is possible to evolve in the organization and therefore work harder to achieve it.

Assign specific tasks to your team member that go beyond their regular scope to check if they got what it takes for their next step. There again it can be very motivational for them to see that you encourage their evolution and for you it is the best way to get a grip of their capabilities to go further. I specifically made very good experiences by assigning team leadership tasks to team members that had no management function and hence got the chance to lead a team before getting into a management position. It quickly shows if they are capable of organizing, assigning or delegating work and overview the team and the progress of the project, without losing the overall sight of the given objective.

4. Promote them

Now you got your high performing team and it works just perfectly, so what do you do next? Often I see that managers, by stressing the need of continuity, tend to slow down team change, once a team is set up and working well. Why? Maybe because it makes the job as a manager easier, but it's risky and in view of the future the worst thing to do.

If you have talents, then promote them and do it quickly. It's not a question of age or experience on the job, but above all of getting the assigned job done, showing to be ready for the next step and the will to move forward. That's what should decide about the timing of the next step. Make your organization dynamic and it will pay you back by being quicker, more dicisive and always a step ahead in thinking.

And even if the team member should leave the team for the next step, let them go, just make sure you get again the best one to fill the spot and as you are always on the lookout in other teams for your next team member there will be a continuous flow of people also at your disposal.