Building High Performance Teams

Despite proclaiming that their most valuable assets are their people, many organisations pay little attention to truly leveraging the power of their employees.

Often grouped in what are called “teams” many such groups fail to meet the minimum team standard of being a group of people linked by a common purpose.

Teams normally have members with complementary skills and they generate synergy through coordinated effort which allows each member to maximise his or her strengths and minimize his or her weaknesses.

A group therefore in itself does not necessarily constitute a team and some people use the word "team" when they really just mean "a group of employees."

Ensuring that your organisation consists of teams rather than groups requires the proactive effort of the organisations management.

Many organisations struggle to achieve this minimum standard and as a consequence leave untapped a vast reservoir of organisational resources.

Organisations who have truly recognized this potential have moved the boundary of team performance to the next frontier and are leveraging the power of High Performance Teams.

The key elements of a high performance team are:
1. They share the same goals and objectives.
2. They are self managing.
3. They are empowered, skilled and resourced to deliver.
4. They trust and support each other.
5. They practice continuous improvement and learning.
6. They deliver exceptional results, all the time.

Our foundation module, “Building a High Performance Team”, takes a group of people through the stages required to become a High Performance Team.

The program establishes the necessary core competences and behaviours of “High Performance” and it is the first module in our “Building a High Performance Organisation” program.

This program module is led by a practitioner-mentor who works with the team twice a week over a 3 month period.

During this time the team develops the disciplines of operational excellence including the skills of continuous performance improvement.

The module begins by helping the team revisit and reframe their team objectives in support of the overall business strategy.

The team builds an Operations Model and Performance Dashboard for their own area that provides the evidence as to how effectively and efficiently they are currently managing their demand, capacity, service and quality levels.

They examine the teams current skill levels and identify any gaps at the individual and team level given the need to perform at the highest level all the time.

With these gaps identified they devise a prioritized development program to bridge the gaps.

With these new learning's the team are now in a position to redesign their day to day activities to begin practicing the art and science of being a high performance team.

Recognition that the group has transitioned to a high performance team will be evidenced by demonstrable changes in behaviour across the key elements of a high performance team.

Organisations who have deployed our program have show dramatic improvements in the productivity, quality and service levels of their teams.

The teams themselves have welcomed their new found skills and work practices, commenting positively on the new insight and control they have gained of their environment.

They feel more engaged and connected with the objectives of the organisation and are better able to contribute.

Organisations themselves see the benefits, not just in the increased performance of the teams at their local level , but also in the new found ability of the teams to provide value added feedback on the effectiveness of the organisations strategy, given their experience in the front line.

Many teams suffer from working with poor processes, tools and technologies.

High Performance Teams are better equipped to identify and articulate their needs and this results in a more effective return on investments when high performance teams are engaged in these investment decisions .

Finally, High Performance Teams are better equipped to support enterprise change and performance improvement programs.

With a data driven approach to managing their own area and their awareness of how they connect with their fellow teams in the delivery of excellence, High Performance Teams are vital cogs in the pursuit embedding of high performance in the organisation.

Building High Performance Processes

High performance processes are heavily dependent on the capabilities of the people working in them both in their partaking in the process and in their contribution to its design and management.

Ensuring that the people working in the process are members of high performance teams therefore is a powerful first step in creating high performance processes.

High performance processes are in turn a major requirement in creating a high performance organisation and together they provide a powerful performance advantage.

All teams serve either internal customers ( other teams in the organization), end customers or channel partners who in turn serve the end users.

In order to do this effectively and efficiently while delivering exceptional performance, the team needs to understand the needs and requirements of the customer, have the necessary tools and technologies to do so and work in high performance processes.

High performance processes have the capability to effectively and efficiently connect the extended team members (inside and outside of the organization) who together combine to deliver excellent services and products to customers.

High performance processes have zero waste and time delays and will be self monitoring.

Self monitoring processes indicate at all times their adherence to expected service, quality, cost, performance and risk criteria.

High Performance Organizations and Teams practice the Disciplines of Operational Excellence, a corner stone of which is Lean Thinking.

The 5 core principles of Lean Thinking are:
1. Specify what creates value from the customers perspective
2. Identify all the steps in the process chain
3. Make those value-added processes steps flow without interruption
4. Make only what is requested (pulled) by the customer
5. Strive for perfection by continually removing wastes

Building a High Performance Process therefore starts with identifying what it is that the customers of the process need and value.

Mapping the steps in the process and determining the level of value they contribute is the second step.

Targeting the reduction and elimination of those steps that do not add value and bringing those that do closer together without interruption (creating Flow) begins the transformation to a high performance process.

Creating a “Future State Map” of the process that mirrors perfection (or is a significant step towards perfection) is crucial to setting the expectation of perfection for the team.

With this Future State Map in hand the team can then begin the process of prioritising the effort needed to achieve their vision of perfection.

Embedding these skills in the organisation is key to developing and sustaining high performance processes.

Deciding on where in the organisation to develop and embed these skills is a key decision for the organisation.

For organisations that have a traditional Operations Function the decision is more straight forward.

Many service and knowledge worker organisations however have no dedicated Operations function and this makes the development and sustainment of a high performance capability more difficult.

Even where a dedicated Operations function exists, decisions need to be made for those areas outside of the Operations area (Sales, Finance, HR etc) as to the depth and breadth of up-skilling that is acceptable and can be sustained going forward.

At McLaw we have worked with a wide variety of organisations and we know that this is a decision that is unique for every organisation.

Recognising the need to do so can be the most difficult hurdle for many organisations or teams, particularly those in non-transactional and project based businesses such as financial services, professional service firms, the construction industry and the health sector.

Often such organisations or teams cannot see the value in the management tools, methodologies and frameworks that are primarily practised in the industrial sectors.

Regardless of the industry however, the biggest issue facing any organisations is their failure to execute their business model at the highest level.

Well executed business models will soon find the weaknesses in a poor strategy whereas a great strategy poorly executed will never achieve its true potential.

Our “Developing High Performance Process” program module assists the organisation in developing high performance processes and deciding on how best to maintain and embed this competence in the organisation.

Starting with one or all core processes, our practitioner-mentor teams will work with your management team to design a strategy and action plan that suits your level of ambition and pace.

Once formulated we work with the organisations management and operational teams to develop the skills, competences and tools necessary to deploy and sustain high performance business processes.

Organisations who have follow this path have dramatically improved their performance at all levels and continue to drive for perfection.