Teamwork Makes the Dream Work! It seems collaboration is the buzzword of 2019. Everyone in business is talking about teamwork, collaboration, cross-functional teams, and more. But what does all of that really mean, and how does it indicate business success?
Research from the firm PearlHPS founded by Gene Tange proves you can predict business outcomes from teams up to 12 months into the future. With 90% of all business initiatives driven by cross-functional and/or virtual teams, it’s imperative to know what works and what doesn’t. We’ve narrowed it down to the 3 most important elements in creating a framework for a team’s success.
1. Team Leadership Capability
TLC used to mean “tender lovin’ care,” and while that is still important to create a great team, today it stands for Team Leadership Capability. What’s this new TLC? It’s basically finding the best talent to fill the role the team needs, not just to fill the role based on requirements. But how can you quantify TLC? After at high performing firms, PearlHPS proved that the team whose members complement each other’s skill set and those employees who are the highest performing members have the highest TLC. One team member’s strengths can fill in for another’s weaknesses. Leaders who recognize this and include members across multiple functions and skillsets will have a higher TLC, leading to greater success.
According to David Windley, CEO of IQTalent Partners, collaboration and psychometric diversity are critical in today’s enterprise. “Most of the work is knowledge work that requires judgment and problem solving, explains Windley. “Studies have shown that teams with good collaboration make better decisions and come up with better solutions to problems than individuals. Innovation is increased by team members with different perspectives who collaborate well.”
2. Team Continuity
Keeping a great team (one with high TLC) together, Team Continuity, throughout the duration of a project, directly correlates to the successful outcome of the project at hand. In some cases, organizational leadership may not realize that by moving members in and out of teams, thereby breaking up team continuity, they are decreasing the likelihood of success. Keeping high TLC team members together is imperative to the outcome of the project.
Often, replacing a key person on a team with a different employee who doesn’t have the same TLC as the initial member can be catastrophic for the team. Team continuity can take a project from 3 weeks behind to 2 months ahead and effect corporate revenue generation by millions of dollars.
3. Team Goal Load
The third variable in predicting a team’s success is Team Goal Load. TGL is the average number of goals carried by team members. Sounds simple, right? But after further analysis, it is far more complicated. When functional priorities conflict with cross-functional or virtual team goals, the team goal load can exceed what can be reasonably achieved and hinder a successful outcome.
In medium-sized, fast-paced organizations, as well as large multidivisional corporations, this conflict is becoming more common, resulting in the best people (the top talent, those with high TLC), serving across multiple teams and working on all or most of an organization’s critical projects. When this TGL is exceeded, it has a counterintuitive result: failure on all teams. According to statistics, new product launches have achieved only a 46% success rate in recent years. Much of the success (or failure) could have been predicted by applying the metrics and methodology in evaluating the teams working on the launch.
Collaboration is at the heart of business success in the future. HR processes should be looking ahead to evaluating employees and new hires within the framework of collaboration and TLC. Business execution tools that incorporate team elements will be useful to organizations building cross-functional and virtual teams. “Communication and knowledge sharing tools will be critical to helping facilitate collaboration within teams and between teams across the enterprise,” concludes Windley. “Business intelligence tools that provide insight through unstructured data will add new insights into predicting a team’s success.”
This article was originally published on the IQTalent Partners Blog.
About Chris Murdock:
Chris Murdock is the Co-Founder and Senior Partner of IQTalent Partners. Chris has over 12 years of executive recruiting experience and leads search execution and client relationships along with supporting searches across the firm. Prior to Founding IQTalent Partners, Chris was a sourcer with Yahoo!’s internal Executive Recruiting team in the corporate offices in Sunnyvale, California. Previous to Yahoo!, Chris was an Associate in the Menlo Park, California office of with Heidrick & Struggles, where he recruited for software, hardware, professional services, and semiconductor clients. Before Heidrick & Struggles, Chris worked in the Retail Practice of TMP Worldwide in Atlanta, Georgia. While with TMP Worldwide, he worked on CEO, General Merchandise Manager, and various VP and Buyer level searches. Chris earned a bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University.
