The basics of high performing teams
I'm working with a big company that's trying to create a high-performance culture.
It is not going well.
Not because we're not doing good work, but because the company has a misguided idea about what it really means to be high performing.
They want everyone to be comfortable all the time ("psychologically safe"). High performance is rarely comfortable.
They want everyone to figure out for themselves what their roles should be in this new culture. High performing teams have clear roles and responsibilities, not a free for all.
They want to promote high performance by driving toward unrealistic KPIs. High performance comes from a realistically set goal with a reasonable (15%) chance of failure - not a pie-in-the-sky number that sounds good but can be completely missed if one month doesn't go well.
What's worse, they refuse to weed out the people who drag the team down. The C-level players who consistently under-deliver and never have consequences will kill high performance faster than Usain Bolt runs 100m.
The harsh truth is that most leaders say they want high performing teams, but are unwilling to do the work they need to do to make it happen.
Which is a real shame, because pushing the team to be their best is high value for both the company and the employees or performers themselves. Who doesn't want to be a part of a team doing their best work?
If you want to get to a high-performing team, here's a simple framework to start:
Set clear roles for team members. Connect how those roles contribute to the bottom line.
Set realistic goals for the team. Not too hard, not too easy. Just right.
Weed out the bottom performers. As quickly as you can. Your A players will leave sooner if you don't, and you'll be stuck with the people you wish would move on.
Give them a playbook. The technical term for this is "shared mental model." Help them figure out how to operate together, and get out of the way.
Give quick feedback, learn, iterate, and repeat.
To get started…
Pick one of these areas to address and make the single, simplest change you can make to move the team forward.