Exam 9: Building Effective Teams and Teamwork

If a team member is in a blocking role, what is she doing?

Losing to a Weaker Foe What began as a heavily conventional military campaign to unseat the regime of Saddam Hussein had become a bitter, unconventional struggle against frustrated Sunnis who increasingly coalesced around a charismatic Jordanian who had taken the name Abu Musab al Zarqawi . . . The Joint Special Operations Task Force, although lavishly resourced and exquisitely trained, found ourselves losing to an enemy that, by traditional calculus, we should have dominated. Over time we began to realize that more than our foe, we were actually struggling to cope with an environment that was fundamentally different from anything we'd planned or trained for. The speed and interdependence of events had produced new dynamics that threatened to overwhelm the time-honored processes and culture we'd built . . . (p. 2) Since its inception, the Task Force has conducted a regular cycle of training exercises . . . to refine the force's ability to execute missions. Relentlessly, quarter after quarter, year after year, intricate solutions to seemingly impossible situations have been developed, planned, rehearsed, and practiced around the world . . . (p. 117) We could not claim we were mismatched against a world-class team. Honestly assessed, Al Qaeda was not a collection of supermen forged into a devilishly ingeniously organization by brilliant masterminds. They were tough, flexible, and resilient, but more often than not they were poorly trained and under-resourced . . . If we were the best of the best, why were we unable to defeat an under-resourced insurgency? Why were we losing? (p. 4, 19) These factors are not unique to Iraq, or to warfare. They are affecting almost all of us in our lives and organizations every day . . . (p. 19) When I joined the Ranger Regiment as a young captain, the standard operating procedures (SOPs) I followed were almost laughably detailed. My rucksack had to be packed with exactly the same equipment as every other Ranger's, and that equipment had to be in exactly the same pocket of the ruck. A folded entrenching tool was clipped to the left side and further held with parachute cord tied with prescribed knots. Failure to follow the SOPs brought immediate correction, and sometimes the punishment of a Saturday twelve-mile foot march-carrying the now correctly configured equipment. Such overweening rigor may seem ridiculous . . . but most of these regulations developed for a reason. Under fire and often in the dark, Rangers must be able to locate water, gauze, and ammunition in seconds. A correctly packed bag can mean the difference between life and death. (p. 35) Basic SEAL training has earned a reputation as one of the toughest trials in the military. Of the 160-some students in each entering class, around 90 will drop out before the course ends, most in the first few weeks . . . The formation of SEAL teams is less about preparing people to follow precise orders than it is about developing trust and the ability to adapt within a small group. The purpose is not to produce supersoldiers. It is to build superteams. The first step of this is constructing a strong lattice of trusting relationships . . . (p. 95, 97) When we first established our Task Force headquarters at Balad, we hung maps on almost every wall . . . But maps in Balad could not depict a battlefield in which the enemy could be uploading a video to an audience of millions from any house in any neighborhood, or driving a bomb around in any car on any street. In place of maps, whiteboards began to appear in our headquarters. Soon they were everywhere. Standing around them, markers in hand, we thought out loud, diagramming what we knew, what we suspected, and what we did not know. (p. 24, 25) Every time we thought we had landed a debilitating blow to the organization as a whole, removing a ranking leader whose loss should have derailed them, they bounced back . . . from our vantage point, Al Qaeda should have devolved into an internal anarchy. But it didn't. It continued to function as persistently and implacably as ever, demonstrating a coherence of purpose and strategy. (p. 26) To beat Al Qaeda, we would have to change into a type of force that the United States had never fielded. There was no manual for this transformation, and we had to conduct it in the middle of a war . . . Just as Al Qaeda had watched and learned from us at the start of the war, we would have to swallow our pride and learn from them. The messy diagrams on our whiteboards were not glitches-they were glimpses into the future organization of adaptable teams. (p. 84) Our entire network-our teams across Iraq, intelligence agencies back in the United States and in the United Kingdom, headquarters of partner units across the region, and more than seventy liaison teams that the Task Force had positioned in headquarters, offices, and other critical locations-joined the effort. Across the network, teams coordinated the questions asked, shared the answers received, proffered suggestions, and exchanged insights. (p. 238) The Task Force still had ranks and each member was still assigned a particular team and sub-sub-command, but we all understood that we were now part of a network . . . The structure that had, years earlier, taunted us from our whiteboards as we failed to prevent the murder of men, women, and children in attacks . . . had been repurposed . . . (p. 251) A few years earlier, detainees would smugly dismiss our limited understanding of their organization. Now, they marveled at our intel, asking interrogators, "How are you doing this? How could you know that?" The answer was not some secret treasure trove of Al Qaeda data we stumbled across or a technological breakthrough in surveillance; it was the very edge that Al Qaeda had once held over us: a revolution in the mundane art of management. (p. 242) (SOURCE: Excerpts from General Stanley McChrystal's (2015) Team of Teams. NY: Penguin.) -What role do purpose, vision, trust, and Everest goals play in developing a high performing team?

In the past few weeks you notice that Tom has not said a word and has refused to interact with his teammates. What role is Tom playing?

The Tallahassee Democrat's ELITE Team Fred Mott, general manager of the Tallahassee Democrat, the only major newspaper left in Tallahassee, recognized that further growth could never happen unless the paper learned to serve customers in ways "far superior to anything else in the marketplace." There were many challenges to overcome. Ad errors persisted, and sales reps complained of insufficient time with customers. Customer surveys showed that too many advertisers still found the Democrat unresponsive to their needs and too concerned with internal procedures and deadlines. People at the paper also had evidence beyond surveys. In one instance, for example, a sloppily prepared ad arrived through a fax machine looking like a "rat had run across the page." Yet the ad passed through the hands of seven employees and probably would have found its way into print if it had not been literally unreadable! As someone commented, "It was not anyone's job to make sure it was right. If they felt it was simply their job to type or paste it up, they just passed it along." This particular fax, affectionately known as the "rat tracks fax," came to symbolize the essential challenge at the Democrat... Mott decided to create a special team of workers charged with eliminating all errors in advertisements. He made Dunlap the leader of the team that took on the name ELITE for "ELIminate The Errors." A year later, under ELITE's leadership, advertising accuracy, never before tracked at the paper, had risen sharply and stayed above 99 percent. Lost revenues from errors, previously as high as $10,000 a month, had dropped to near zero. Ad sales reps had complete confidence in the Advertising Customer Service department's capacity and desire to treat each ad as though the Democrat's existence were at stake. And surveys showed a huge positive swing in advertiser satisfaction. The impact of ELITE, however, went beyond numbers. It completely redesigned the process by which the Democrat sells, creates, produces, and bills for advertisements. More important yet, it stimulated and nurtured the customer obsession and cross-functional cooperation required to make the new process work. In effect, this team of mostly frontline workers transformed an entire organization with respect to customer service. ELITE had a lot going for it from the beginning. Mott gave the group a clear performance goal (eliminate errors) and a strong mix of skills (12 of the best people from all parts of the paper). He committed himself to follow through by promising, at the first meeting, that "whatever solution you come up with will be implemented." In addition, a corporate "customer obsession" movement helped energize the task force. But it took more than a good sendoff and an overarching corporate theme to make ELITE into a high-performance team. In this case, the personal commitments began to grow, unexpectedly, over the early months as the team grappled with its challenge. At first, the group spent more time pointing fingers at one another than coming to grips with advertising errors. Only when one of them produced the famous "rat tracks fax" and told the story behind it did the group start to admit that everyone-not everyone else-was at fault. Then, recalls one member, "We had some pretty hard discussions. And there were tears in those meetings." The emotional response galvanized the group to the task at hand and to one another. And the closer it got, the more focused it became on the challenge. ELITE decided to look carefully at the entire process by which an ad was sold, created, printed, and billed. When it did, the team discovered patterns in the errors, most of which could be attributed to time pressures, bad communication, and poor attitude… Commitment to one another drove ELITE to expand its aspirations continually. Having started with the charge to eliminate errors, ELITE moved on to break down functional barriers, then to redesigning the entire advertising process, then to refining new standards and measures for customer service, and, finally, to spreading its own brand of "customer obsession" across the entire Democrat... Inspired by ELITE, for example, one production crew started coming to work at 4 A.M., to ease time pressures later in the day... To this day, the spirit of ELITE lives on at the Democrat. "There is no beginning and no end," says Dunlap. "Every day we experience something we learn from." ELITE's spirit made everyone a winner-the customers, the employees, and management. -How do you explain the team's reaching a high-performance condition? What were the major predictive factors?

A vision statement containing the following language, "We are all part of a journey to create an extraordinary corporation ... we want to be the catalyst for discovering new ways for people to do things," would be most appealing to team members from countries where which culture is predominate?

As a leader of a team, skills on how to manage conflict would be extremely useful in the storming stage of team development.

Not wanting to make a serious judgment error, you convene a meeting of your team. In the process of discussing an issue, George, Harpreet, and Werner voice agreement over alternative 1, whereas Bill and Trinh have not spoken. If you accept alternative 1, what potential mistake would you be making?

Which is a good example of an Everest goal?

Providing negative feedback is easier if one focuses the feedback on behavior related to a specific situation.

Which of the following behaviors is least likely to result in building credibility and influence among team members?

Which is an effective principle for providing feedback?

Your best friend in another department remarks that the team members in her group are very self-conscious. Also, she indicates that she has yet to speak up in the meetings. What stage is her group most likely at?

Research indicates that, in many cultures, team composition has more influence on team effectiveness than does the leadership skills displayed by a team leader.

Explain the principles that have been found to be effective in providing feedback to others.

As a team leader, Ginger's team has recently been assigned to develop a new product that is viewed as a risky assignment in her company. To build credibility, what is best for Ginger to do?

The Tallahassee Democrat's ELITE Team Fred Mott, general manager of the Tallahassee Democrat, the only major newspaper left in Tallahassee, recognized that further growth could never happen unless the paper learned to serve customers in ways "far superior to anything else in the marketplace." There were many challenges to overcome. Ad errors persisted, and sales reps complained of insufficient time with customers. Customer surveys showed that too many advertisers still found the Democrat unresponsive to their needs and too concerned with internal procedures and deadlines. People at the paper also had evidence beyond surveys. In one instance, for example, a sloppily prepared ad arrived through a fax machine looking like a "rat had run across the page." Yet the ad passed through the hands of seven employees and probably would have found its way into print if it had not been literally unreadable! As someone commented, "It was not anyone's job to make sure it was right. If they felt it was simply their job to type or paste it up, they just passed it along." This particular fax, affectionately known as the "rat tracks fax," came to symbolize the essential challenge at the Democrat... Mott decided to create a special team of workers charged with eliminating all errors in advertisements. He made Dunlap the leader of the team that took on the name ELITE for "ELIminate The Errors." A year later, under ELITE's leadership, advertising accuracy, never before tracked at the paper, had risen sharply and stayed above 99 percent. Lost revenues from errors, previously as high as $10,000 a month, had dropped to near zero. Ad sales reps had complete confidence in the Advertising Customer Service department's capacity and desire to treat each ad as though the Democrat's existence were at stake. And surveys showed a huge positive swing in advertiser satisfaction. The impact of ELITE, however, went beyond numbers. It completely redesigned the process by which the Democrat sells, creates, produces, and bills for advertisements. More important yet, it stimulated and nurtured the customer obsession and cross-functional cooperation required to make the new process work. In effect, this team of mostly frontline workers transformed an entire organization with respect to customer service. ELITE had a lot going for it from the beginning. Mott gave the group a clear performance goal (eliminate errors) and a strong mix of skills (12 of the best people from all parts of the paper). He committed himself to follow through by promising, at the first meeting, that "whatever solution you come up with will be implemented." In addition, a corporate "customer obsession" movement helped energize the task force. But it took more than a good sendoff and an overarching corporate theme to make ELITE into a high-performance team. In this case, the personal commitments began to grow, unexpectedly, over the early months as the team grappled with its challenge. At first, the group spent more time pointing fingers at one another than coming to grips with advertising errors. Only when one of them produced the famous "rat tracks fax" and told the story behind it did the group start to admit that everyone-not everyone else-was at fault. Then, recalls one member, "We had some pretty hard discussions. And there were tears in those meetings." The emotional response galvanized the group to the task at hand and to one another. And the closer it got, the more focused it became on the challenge. ELITE decided to look carefully at the entire process by which an ad was sold, created, printed, and billed. When it did, the team discovered patterns in the errors, most of which could be attributed to time pressures, bad communication, and poor attitude… Commitment to one another drove ELITE to expand its aspirations continually. Having started with the charge to eliminate errors, ELITE moved on to break down functional barriers, then to redesigning the entire advertising process, then to refining new standards and measures for customer service, and, finally, to spreading its own brand of "customer obsession" across the entire Democrat... Inspired by ELITE, for example, one production crew started coming to work at 4 A.M., to ease time pressures later in the day... To this day, the spirit of ELITE lives on at the Democrat. "There is no beginning and no end," says Dunlap. "Every day we experience something we learn from." ELITE's spirit made everyone a winner-the customers, the employees, and management. -Make recommendations about what Mott should do now to capitalize on the ELITE Team experience. If you were to become a consultant to the Tallahassee Democrat, what advice would you give Mott about how he can capitalize on team building?

During which stage of team development do you find yourself asking these questions: Do I want to maintain my membership in the team? How will we handle dissension?

You want to ensure that your team is effective. Which behaviors should you practice? (1) Change members regularly in order to keep the team revitalized, (2) maintain close supervision in order to avoid the negative effects of autonomy, and (3) foster independence of team members.

The task of the team in the forming stage is to clarify direction.

The Tallahassee Democrat's ELITE Team Fred Mott, general manager of the Tallahassee Democrat, the only major newspaper left in Tallahassee, recognized that further growth could never happen unless the paper learned to serve customers in ways "far superior to anything else in the marketplace." There were many challenges to overcome. Ad errors persisted, and sales reps complained of insufficient time with customers. Customer surveys showed that too many advertisers still found the Democrat unresponsive to their needs and too concerned with internal procedures and deadlines. People at the paper also had evidence beyond surveys. In one instance, for example, a sloppily prepared ad arrived through a fax machine looking like a "rat had run across the page." Yet the ad passed through the hands of seven employees and probably would have found its way into print if it had not been literally unreadable! As someone commented, "It was not anyone's job to make sure it was right. If they felt it was simply their job to type or paste it up, they just passed it along." This particular fax, affectionately known as the "rat tracks fax," came to symbolize the essential challenge at the Democrat... Mott decided to create a special team of workers charged with eliminating all errors in advertisements. He made Dunlap the leader of the team that took on the name ELITE for "ELIminate The Errors." A year later, under ELITE's leadership, advertising accuracy, never before tracked at the paper, had risen sharply and stayed above 99 percent. Lost revenues from errors, previously as high as $10,000 a month, had dropped to near zero. Ad sales reps had complete confidence in the Advertising Customer Service department's capacity and desire to treat each ad as though the Democrat's existence were at stake. And surveys showed a huge positive swing in advertiser satisfaction. The impact of ELITE, however, went beyond numbers. It completely redesigned the process by which the Democrat sells, creates, produces, and bills for advertisements. More important yet, it stimulated and nurtured the customer obsession and cross-functional cooperation required to make the new process work. In effect, this team of mostly frontline workers transformed an entire organization with respect to customer service. ELITE had a lot going for it from the beginning. Mott gave the group a clear performance goal (eliminate errors) and a strong mix of skills (12 of the best people from all parts of the paper). He committed himself to follow through by promising, at the first meeting, that "whatever solution you come up with will be implemented." In addition, a corporate "customer obsession" movement helped energize the task force. But it took more than a good sendoff and an overarching corporate theme to make ELITE into a high-performance team. In this case, the personal commitments began to grow, unexpectedly, over the early months as the team grappled with its challenge. At first, the group spent more time pointing fingers at one another than coming to grips with advertising errors. Only when one of them produced the famous "rat tracks fax" and told the story behind it did the group start to admit that everyone-not everyone else-was at fault. Then, recalls one member, "We had some pretty hard discussions. And there were tears in those meetings." The emotional response galvanized the group to the task at hand and to one another. And the closer it got, the more focused it became on the challenge. ELITE decided to look carefully at the entire process by which an ad was sold, created, printed, and billed. When it did, the team discovered patterns in the errors, most of which could be attributed to time pressures, bad communication, and poor attitude… Commitment to one another drove ELITE to expand its aspirations continually. Having started with the charge to eliminate errors, ELITE moved on to break down functional barriers, then to redesigning the entire advertising process, then to refining new standards and measures for customer service, and, finally, to spreading its own brand of "customer obsession" across the entire Democrat... Inspired by ELITE, for example, one production crew started coming to work at 4 A.M., to ease time pressures later in the day... To this day, the spirit of ELITE lives on at the Democrat. "There is no beginning and no end," says Dunlap. "Every day we experience something we learn from." ELITE's spirit made everyone a winner-the customers, the employees, and management. -What were the stages of development of the ELITE Team? Identify specific examples of each of the four stages of development in the case.