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.