Team startup has been on the fore-front of my mind lately because we’re just about to go through a re-structure. Sitting over a coffee, I took some time to think about what sort of team I really want to be part of and create. It really wasn’t a difficult choice: a world-class team that could tackle any challenges thrown their way.

A team like this would be a well-oiled learning and discovery machine. Skills will be acquired, way of operating will change over time. The team embraces a shared vision of where they want the team to be, and what it’ll feel like to work in such a team. With curiosity in learning and improving, the team will naturally be on a journey to be world-class.

It’s my responsibility to instill and evoke this mindset onto our team. I know this is possible. It’s something greater than what we’re used to strive for, and I believe everyone has the capability to learn, adapt and change so that we reach a higher level of operation.

What makes a best high performing team?

While writing this section, I came to a realisation that there’s no such thing as the best team. The world is complex and it’s impossible to say that there’s something that’s the best. Also, a team always has something to improve on, so in reality, no one can obtain best.

Instead, what factors makes up a high performing team? What characteristics do they display? What would you experience (see and feel) being part of such a team?

This is some of my own observations from experience, which I’ve broken down into 3 areas:

• Individuals - Motivated, enjoy being there, and enjoy being in the team surrounded by other teammates.
• Team Dynamics - Communicates freely by sharing and learning continuously, build on each other’s learnings and success. Highly transparent. Trusting each other to be the best of themselves.
• The Work - Have a clear aligned goal to strive for.

These 3 areas — individuals, team dynamics and the work — make up the rest of the discussion in this post.

You may have other observations from your own experience. Please contribute to this by commenting below. I’d love to hear about your perspectives!

Individuals

Being intrinsically motivated is a big contributing factor to success when doing creative types of work — which is exactly what software development and DevOps involves. According to Dan Pink (TED video here), intrinsic motivation has 3 parts that come into play — purpose, autonomy and mastery.

During team startup should cover each of these areas. The questions to be answered are:

Purpose: This is understanding the why — why are we here? What’s the greater purpose of it all? How does the promise land look like? The team startup should help kick-start a conversation in this area, and produce something that can be taken away and refined as the team operates.

A prerequisite to understanding this is the need to have ongoing transparency in how and why decisions are made. Just knowing and understanding that brings alignment to the work, the ability to challenge the purpose and potentially change the purpose for the better.

Activities to help:

• Discovering goals at multiple levels — individuals, team, company and world.
• Having visible artifacts of planning — e.g. Impact map, vision statement, A3s.

Autonomy: Deciding your own fate means that sometimes you need to take steps that are outside of what’s currently working. For that to happen, there needs to be safety within teams. The freedom to explore, follow interests and thoughts, and to take steps outside the norm knowing there won’t be a huge shock if it doesn’t go as planned.

Activities to help:

• Create a social contract to explore the boundaries of behaviour - what’s acceptable vs unacceptable, how do we live together, how to react when things don’t work out.
• Clear process for experimentation — e.g. Improvement Kata

Mastery: Getting world-level good at something requires mentoring and coaching from your peers. You just can’t do it alone. There should be opportunities to learn — having the time necessary and having a clear direction of what skill / knowledge is missing to take it to the next level. This is a chance for individuals to get SERIOUSLY good, to be best in the team, company, industry, or even the world.

Activities to help:

• Identify skills in the team — what’s available, what’s needed and what to develop.
• Defining a structure to share learning — make it OK to take time to learn!

Team Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing

Tuckman’s stages of group development models teams in one of four stages — forming, storming, norming or performing. Teams move through these stages as they start working together, and they may bounce back and forth the stages depending on changes to team make-up.

High performance comes in the last of the stages, so how do we move through these stages quicker to get there?

Forming

Team members are still focused on themselves, because they’re trying to orientate themselves in a new environment.

Storming

This is where some conflicts may arise, as people start to voice their opinions. Some teams may skip over this stage, and some might get stuck here.

Norming

In this stage, resolving of “disagreements and personality clashes result in greater intimacy”. Real team-work and co-operation start to appear.

Performing