"I don’t want to get messages saying that we are holding our position. We’re not holding anything. We are advancing constantly, and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy!" - George S. Patton (as portrayed by George C. Scott in the movie Patton)

Thought I’d share this question-and-answer exchange between myself and another leader. Our subject – TEAMS.

Q: What is the biggest challenge facing teams in organizations right now?

A: I believe the enduring challenges for teams are engagement, ownership and accountability -- Engagement with the team's purpose and with the power of teams generally; Ownership of each person's role, capacity, and responsibility to make a contribution; Accountability to the other members of the team and to the larger organization/business or community/stakeholders being served. These are the things that separate teams from groups, and meaningful progress from a series of meetings.

Q: What have you found to be the best way to encourage individual team members to recognize and then set aside individual ego's and agenda's in service of the greater team goal?"

A: Tough question! We build cultures that evaluate and reward individual performance, and then seem puzzled when teams don't blossom. The road to good teams begins with creating a team-honoring culture.

Second, I believe that without a compelling vision for the whole organization, nothing moves forward. Tell them we need to "go to the moon" and all of a sudden you can get lots of people working together to create and respond to challenges.

Lastly, when people see the team as "extra," disconnected with their primary responsibilities, or encumbering their personal objectives, the team is destined to fail. This is a particularly difficult challenge -- we build our workforce on specialists, with a rigid sense of personal "job description" instead of group goals, and then we turn around and ask people to operate as generalists and work collaboratively in teams.

But in direct answer to your question - the best way I have found to get people to work in high-impact teams is to convince them that (1) the team has an important purpose, (2) the team can accomplish way more together than as individuals, and (3) that the team has lots of room for servant leaders, and for wildly responsible people, but not for disengagement, selfish egos and agendas. Teams must focus on what they can create together. Teams are not about personal power - they are about shared responsibility and increased effectiveness.

Bob Johansen, past president of the Institute for the Future and author of Leaders Make the Future recently gave some criteria for a forecasted future (i.e. vision, strategy, forecast, etc.) during a American Management Association presentation. “It is not whether or not a forecasted future occurs, it’s whether or not that forecast provokes insight that leads to a wise future decision. Forecasts, at times, are to be avoided.”

Peter Drucker said that, “Planning is not masterminding the future. Any attempt to do so is foolish; the future is unpredictable.  In the face of uncertainties, planning defines the particular place you want to be and how you intend to get there. But it will not substitute for judgment or leadership.”

“The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.” – from the book A Separate Peace by Carlos Cataneda

Don’t underestimate your capacity. According to recent brain science, your brain is capable of having more ideas than the number of atoms in the known universe!

This website has lots of useful resources for getting your (or your team’s) creative juices flowing. Use it for your next meeting, or during your next mid-afternoon slump.

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/busadmin/entre/teacher/creative/index.htm

In his book “The Back of the Napkin,” Dan Roam shows his readers way to quickly look at problems, understand them more intuitively, confidently address them, and more rapidly communicate those ideas and discoveries to others – all using pictures. The thinking is based on years of research by people like Allan Collins, and in a organizational culture addicted to long, wandering meetings, and ineffective PowerPoint, it is a breath of very fresh air. Pick up a copy, and learn ways to make your strategic and problem-solving discussions more efficient, more effective, and lots more fun!

In another post, I encouraged you to “plan with people, not for people.” I whole-heartedly believe in that principle. But have you ever tried to do a successful brainstorming session with a group of people? The process can leave you exhausted, off-track, and vowing to “never try that again.”

Next time, you might try using mind maps to collect information and guide the discussion. Mind maps are a great brainstorming and “group-think” tool, allowing you to list, connect, and interlink thoughts as they emerge from the group. The format is much more easy to follow that simple lists, and allows you to show relationship between ideas or groups of ideas. Plus, the visual nature of a mind map bolsters the creative thinking of the group overall. Check out http://www.12manage.com/methods_mind_mapping.html for more information and some examples. Then pull out your whiteboard, easel pad, and markers and get started!

“People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.” - Mary Kay Ash