In my work with teams to help them increase their performance outcomes through collaborative approaches, one team clearly stands out for what it has taught me. This team was facing a very clear performance challenge as laid outlined within their organization, and five individuals from across the organization picked up the challenge and ran with it. Over time they self-organized into a very high-performing team. The team is co-located; it’s not virtual, and that gives them some advantages in this case. In this paper I want to share the lessons I’ve observed from in-situ ethnographic and anthropological engagement and observation.

Lessons in High-Performance
Each member of the team has an individual job description and set of projects and activities that pull at their attention. They are not able to focus just on one thing; they focus on many throughout each day, and are supposed to deliver good-to-great outcomes on each. Most of their work is individually-oriented and individually performed; they are at different levels of the organization. They do, however, work together on a couple of projects over time, and it is this working together that has resulted in very high performance on joint projects.

For the performance outcome of this project, the team members could approach the project merely as a loose affilitation of individual people, but they have self-organized into a collaborative team in order to consistently deliver high performance. They have made a conscious choice to work together for the good of the whole, rather than to work alone for the glory of the individual. They clearly see that the team is smarter than the individual, and they’re not worried, offended or put-out by that.

The team has no “leader”, but rather leadership is broadly shared amongst the members of the team based on competence in the moment. There is no concept within the team that a leader is even necessary; they’re offended when an outsider dares ask “who is the leader?”. The clear performance outcome overrides any need for any member to wield power through a formal title.

Constant and intensive task-oriented and outcome-oriented discussion is the critical ingredient to high performance for this team. When working on the project, the team members constantly talk about the attributes and variables they’re experiencing in the environment in the moment, and are constantly seeking input from the other members on the team related to how they can perform better. Rapid fire verbal discussion is held based on what each member is able to observe in the environment, and the individual responsible for manipulating the environment through the computer has learnt to hear all of the feedback in real-time and make swift and effective decisions.

The team is very good at the new member induction process, and is able to get new members up to a high-performance level very quickly. It’s a very effective learning organization, and it doesn’t faze the team whether the new member is a junior person or a more senior manager. The chosen method of induction is two-fold: a simple explanation of the desired outcome of joint engagement, and then the intensive use of verbal language to coach and direct the new member when they start into the task. New members are permitted to start by working on easier problems in the environment, and the other members in the team remain with them to speak about what they’ve learnt in previous engagements of this type. The other members do not view coaching and directing as separate and different in nature from performing the task at hand, but rather an essential component of the task. It’s not an either/or, it’s and/and. As each member of the team talks about what they’ve experienced in the past, and correlates this with the observations of others, they themselves learn how to improve their performance in the future, and the new person doing the task in the moment is quickly brought up to the speed based on the wisdom and diverse experience of many.

Members of the team don’t mind being told time-and-time again how to achieve high-performance in the moment, even if they have noted that what they are currently facing in the fast-changing environment is similar to what they’ve experienced in previous task engagements. The background verbal coaching and direction reinforces their own previous and private learning, and helps teach everyone in the team how to deliver high-performance in such situations.

The feedback given by members of the team to other members is extremely context-sensitive. Since only one person is able to run with the task at a given time, the other members of the team gather around them and give direction and coaching on what to do based on a set of attributes and variables as observed in the environment. Once immersed in the task, there isn’t time to go off and check a database of best practices. It’s happening now; the environment is changing; the attributes and variables therein require immediate decision-making, and even though only one person is able to work directly in the environment, the whole team views high performance as a jointly-held goal. If the one succeeds, everyone succeeds.

Failure isn’t viewed as related to the individual, but rather to the team. If a new set of attributes and variables within the environment are experienced, and the past task-oriented behaviors are insufficient to deliver success, the team conducts an intensive debriefing. The team as a whole talks it through over ensuing days, and often a couple of members pair up into a subgroup for a strategy session to talk through and plan what they could do differently in the future if the same attributes and variables repeat. Key insights developed by the subgroup are presented to the wider group for review and input; weaknesses in the strategy are openly discussed with no apparent ego-bruising effects. The subgroup doesn’t feel put out if others in the team see weaknesses in their thinking. They actually see that as a great thing, because it contributes to more thoughtful action in the future.

Members of the team constantly scan their personal and professional social networks for ideas and concepts they can use to improve the performance of the team. Insights gathered from people who work on the same task and outcome in other organizations are quickly captured and broadly shared with everyone on the team. The intensity of the task for this team is such that even though they may have seen other people for years and largely ignored them, as soon as they are recognized as someone with task-specific and outcome-directed abilities, they are installed as a member of their community of interest. And since the task does not deliver competitive advantage to any specific organization, the intensive task-directed dialogue is extended to others whenever there is an opportunity.

A few weeks ago the chairman of the organization visited the local site to engage with the members of his far-flung organization. Each member of the team was so intensely focused on the task-oriented work in which they were engaged, that they invited the chairman to become involved through direct contribution. As the chairman entered their world and started to become immersed in the flow of the task toward the shared outcome on this day, and the various team members started up their coaching and knowledge-passing behaviors, the chairman was overwhelmed. He couldn’t do it. He lacked the skills to hear the directions and coaching from the team members, and the visual and computer interfacing accuity to perform the task and reach the desired outcome. He had to ask to be graciously excused, much to the disappointment of the team. The broader lesson? The most senior executives of an organization may understand the desired outcome of the task or activity, but may be unable to contribute directly for lack of task-specific capabiilty. It’s not that they aren’t interested; it’s just that their skills and abilities lie at a different place, and that they do not have the deep in-task competence that a high performing team has developed over time. But teams have to recognize that a senior executive’s lack of ability to perform in their task environment isn’t indicative of a lack of interest, even though they may be disappointed that they can’t “share” their work with them.

Conclusion
This team has achieved high-performance at a rapid pace through an intensive focus on a jointly meaningful and shared outcome, they do not view a formal “leader” as important to team performance, they are very good at inducting new members into the team through in-context coaching and dialogue, and success and failure isn’t an individual phenomena but rather the result of joint activity. And although this project is only part of their individual responsibilities, they constantly talk and strategize about how to do better in the future.

Anyone want to guess the nature of the task and the identity of the team?