Good Teams Are More Than The Sum Of The Parts

Have you ever wondered if your team is any good? Not just competent or functional but actually good, in the sense of being able to realise its full potential.

Over 90-percent of employees believe teams are critical to the success of their organisation but less than 2-percent of them consider their own teams to be very effective.[1] In well researched domains of team performance, such as aviation and healthcare, the consequences of poor team work are stark. 70-percent of aviation accidents and adverse medical effects stem directly from failures of teamwork[2].

In business, up to 60-percent of start-up companies fail due to issues with the team[3] and arguably that figure is even higher, since almost every failure in a business, at root, can be traced to the failure of a team to either understand a problem or execute a plan.

From an employee point of view being part of a good team is a deeply satisfying experience. Being part of a dysfunctional or poorly performing team, in contrast is awful. Good teams increase productivity, improve decision-making, problem solving and innovation, have higher employee engagement and retention, greater efficiency, less waste and deliver better customer outcomes.

Despite the value and importance, most businesses and organisations are clueless when it comes to creating the kinds of teams that make a difference and that people want to be a part of. Rather like the disassembled car in the image above, we have all of the parts but no real sense of how to put them together to unlock the potential of what we have. Talent without teamwork is very expensive.

How does I, become us, so that we, can solve it? That is the equation we are trying to solve but the answer is not to be found in magic or luck. Good teams are not simply a consequence of assembling talent. Talent helps but is not sufficient. Leadership helps, but few leaders know how to build teams. They can drive the car but have little idea how to put the engine together. Experience teaches much but you couldn’t alight on a more inefficient and uncertain route for improving or building a team.

At Metris, we have spent over a decade refining how to build good teams within the real-world time constraints of business. We have a research proven methodology for building and accelerating the development of teams that can be initiated in hours and maintained within minutes.

If you think that teamwork matters, if you’re looking for a route to design and build teams that give you a stand-out competitive advantage and would like to hear more, get in touch to find out how we can help.

‘Not finance, not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and rare.’

Patrick Lencioni

[1] You First: Inspire Your Team To Grow Up, Get Along& Get Stuff Done by Liane Davie

[2] Joint Commission. (2005, April 3). Health care at the crossroads: Strategies for improving the medical liability system and preventing patient injury.  Patient Safety Network. http://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/18/

Medical_Liability.pdf

[2] Taggart, W. R. (1994). Crew Resource Management: Achieving Enhanced Flight Operations. In N. Johnston, N. McDonald, & R. Fuller (Eds.), Aviation Psychology in Practice (pp. 309–39). Ashgate

[3] Klotz, A. C., Hmieleski, K. M., Bradley, B. H., & Busenitz, L. W. (2014). New venture teams: A review of the literature and roadmap for future research. Journal of Management, 40(1), 226-255.