Every day I encounter dozens of good articles that are worth reading and
that I'd like to pass on to others. My guess is that this is true for most
of us. My most favorite this morning is a playful piece by Bill Starbuck
on being playful. But I don't think that using the list as a vehicle for
distributing Starbuck's full article would be appropriate. These thoughts
are prompted, of course, by the article Dutch Driver sent out to everyone
on the list and I hesitate saying anything because I don't want to offend
Dutch (or anyone) or start another lengthy controversy on the use or misuse
of the list. The list is obviously for all of us and I'm confident that
there will be people who will disagree. Nonetheless, I'd like to encourage
us to distribute just citations and not full articles for unsolicited
material. Alternatively, maybe someone (Dutch?) would be willing to take
responsibility to find out everyone's favorite pieces, the must-reads we'd
all like to share, and then provide a summary to everyone on the list. If
there are any takers, I'll be glad to send you the citation for the
Starbuck piece.
Larry E. Pate
University of Wisconsin-Madison
At 05:54 PM 4/21/98 -0500, you wrote:
> Facilitation for High-Performance Teams
> By Ned Ruete emailto:
nruete@csc.com
>
>Twenty years ago, it was estimated that American businesses held a million
>meetings a year. Today, collaborative work is becoming even more
>important to achieving the innovation and performance that is needed
>simply to survive, much less thrive. Business Week has called teams "the
>essential building block of the organization of the future." In this
>environment, meetings are playing an even bigger role in organizations of
>all types.
>
>In an attempt to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of those
>meetings, many are turning to meeting facilitators to make their meetings
>more organized, more focused, and more productive. But is the facilitator
>the savior of the organization? Is he the silver bullet that will slay
>all the monsters of wasted meeting time and lackluster team performance
>results, is she the panacea that will cure all team meeting ills? The
>answer is a resounding, "Maybe. Sometimes."
>
>This article investigates the factors that influence the performance of
>teams and workgroups, the role the facilitator can play in enabling and
>supporting performance, the critical role of the organizational
>environment in either leveraging or limiting the ability of facilitation
>to extract performance from teams and work groups, and when in the life of
>a team a facilitator can effectively intervene.
>
>Team Basics
>
>The single most important factor in building a high-performance team is
>the expectation of high performance. If there is a performance demand
>that can only be met by the collaborative effort of people to produce a
>product together that no one of them can produce alone, then teams will
>form to produce that product. But if there's no need for a team, there
>won't be a team. If the performance challenge is not there, then no
>amount of team building or facilitation or exhortation will result in
>high-perform ance teams.
>
>The performance demand can be internal or external. External performance
>demands can come from high expectations on the part of management or from
>a real threat to the continued well being of the organization from the
>business environment. Internal performance challenges come from a sense
>on the part of the team leader or team members that they want to show what
>they can do, show what is possible, turn around an apparently hopeless
>situation, or turn a threat into an opportunity.
>
>The existence of the performance challenge, while it may lead to people
>getting together to try and help each other, does not necessarily result
>in a high-performance team. Many things can go wrong. Katzenbach and
>Smith (Katzenbach, Jon and Douglas Smith, The Wisdom of Teams, New York:
>Harper Business, 1993) define a team as a small number of people with
>complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance
>goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
>
>Implied within this definition are the basics of team performance. The
>successful team has:
>
> all the needed skills, or at least the talents needed to develop
> the skills and the willingness to work to develop them;
>
> a stated, inspiring performance aspiration or vision that forms
> the common purpose of the group;
>
> translation of the aspiration into measurable, achievable
> performance goals;
>
> commitment to a common approach for working together;
>
> and a willingness to hold themselves individually and collectively
> accountable for the production of mutual work products th at will
> achieve the performance goals.
>
>Without these basics, even a solid and well-understood performance
>challenge will not result in team performance. Some teams fall into these
>behaviors naturally. They have a knowledge, either from study,
>experience, or intuition, of what it takes for a group of people to work
>together. But too many teams, possibly the majority of teams, overlook
>these performance basics.
>
>The Coast Guard Total Quality Management (TQM) program uses a FADE
>problem-solving process: Focus, Analyze, Develop, and Execute. The Focus
>part is the development by the Quality Action Team of a written problem
>statement. Most teams resist this step, feeling that the charter they
>have been given adequately states the problem. But the purpose of the
>Focus step is to ensure team commitment to a common set of aspirations and
>performance goals by the team, and the formal recording of that commitment
>in a problem statement.
>
>The Facilitator's Role
>
>The role of the facilitator is to help the team find and recognize its
>performance challenge and carry through on the team basics. Often the
>possibility for an internal performance challenge is there in the group,
>but unformed and nebulous, unarticulated and disjoint, or even unstated
>because it seems "too far out" or "too ambitious." In these cases, the
>group members need help to uncover, articulate, and commit to meeting the
>high-performance goal that will make them a team. A facilitator is
>experienced at sensing and drawing out what people aren't talking about
>and getting it on the table. If the potential team starts to share and
>get excited about a common vision of what they can do, they have made a
>good start on team performance.
>
>An experienced facilitator has a broad range of skills, especially the
>team and interpersonal skills that are usually underdeveloped in people
>assigned to teams from traditional work assignments. The facilitator can
>fill in for what skills are missing on the team until one or more team
>members develop them. The facilitator must work to identify which skills
>are present, which skills are absent, and who has the ability to develop
>the missing skills, then challenge and nurture that person until the
>needed skills are present.
>
>There can be a danger in this, if the team comes to rely on the
>facilitator for that skill and fails to develop it for itself. It is
>critical that the facilitator have a basic belief that the purpose of an
>intervention is to increase the action capacity of the target person or
>group. Lao Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching, said "Of the best leader, when the
>job is done the people say `we did it ourselves.'"
>
>Once a small group of people has come together with a performance
>challenge and the potential for forming a critical skill set, then the
>potential team must start to look for its clear aspiration, performance
>goals, and way of working together. But in to o many groups, the
>expectation is that the task work will start immediately. Team basics are
>ignored until it is too late to form a real team that will add value equal
>to or greater than the time spent in team meetings. The facilitator helps
>the group avoid this too-narrow view by keeping the group simultaneously
>focused on work process, team process, and work results, shifting the
>emphasis to one or another of these areas as needed to aid the progress of
>the group.
>
>One thing the facilitator cannot do is hold the group mutually accountable
>for its work products. That must come from the group itself. In the next
>section we will see how the climate of the organization can affect that
>and other team basics.
>
> The Role of Climate
>
>The business climate in the organization, the organizational culture, has
>a profound effect on the performance of teams within the organization.
>The performance ethic and standard practices that exist in the
>organization can either reinforce or tear down the attempts to build a
>performance challenge and a focus on team basics. While most
>organizations claim to have a performance focus, there are two different
>ways that this focus can manifest itself: as a performance ethic or as a
>control focus. A performance ethic is evidenced by empowering workers
>and work groups and expecting results.
>
>Many organizations have a control focus: the way they try to achieve high
>performance is by expecting conformance to work procedures and job
>descriptions and documentation standards. In these control-based
>organizations, the expectation is safety and risk avoidance, not high
>performance. The normal business expectations in these organizations are
>individual accountability and reward; total task orientation; having
>minimal meetings and enforcing quick, agenda-driven meetings when they do
>occur; and machine-like performance. These expectations individually and
>together drive out the intuitive understanding of what it takes for people
>to work together.
>
>If an organization with a control ethic tries to institute teams, it will
>be not only the normal business expectations that discourage the teams.
>The attempt itself will probably be made with pronouncements of what teams
>will form, how they will form, how they are to work together, what
>controls and measures will be imposed on their performance, and who
>outside the team will be responsible for their results. The team charters
>will not leave enough solution space for the team members to make
>commitments to a purpose, goals, and work methods of their own. The team
>members will not feel responsible as a team for the results of the team.
>If the performance ethic of the individuals on the team is high and the
>performance challenge the team faces is significa nt enough, some work
>groups can and do overcome a control-based organizational culture and
>become high-performance teams, especially with the help of a facilitator.
>But with or without facilitation, such a team faces an uphill struggle.
>
>When to Facilitate
>
>If the decision is made use a facilitator to help with formation of
>high-performance teams, when should the facilitator be brought in? There
>are several points in the lifecycle of a team when facilitation can be of
>value. The first opportunity is before the team is ever chartered.
>Teaming has risks. Teams that fail to form and work together properly are
>serious resource drains. They often provide lower performance than loose
>work groups or individual contributors. The risk of forming a team should
>not be taken unless there is a clear-cut performance need for mutual work
>products, a performance challenge that cannot be met by individuals. An
>experienced facilitator can assess the challenges and the risks and
>provide advice on the decision to pursue a team approach.
>
>If the decision is made to form a team, the facilitator can help build a
>charter for the team. It is critical that the charter be specific enough
>to let the team know what is expected of it but leaves sufficient solution
>space for the team to find its own performance aspiration, measurable
>performance goals, and way of working together. The facilitator can help
>the chartering body find this balance point.
>
>The next point at which a facilitator can be brought in is at the first
>team meeting. A team meeting is not like typical meetings in most
>organizations. The team must work together in ways that differ from other
>work groups. The facilitator can design and conduct a meeting that
>focuses on team formation rather than an agenda of action items, thus
>making it clear that different things are expected and required of the
>team. The facilitator can also fill in skill gaps for a team that is just
>discovering who they are and what they are and are not good at.
>
>A truly high-performance team will not require a facilitator for every
>meeting. But when trouble strikes, a facilitator may help the team to get
>back on track. A common malady of teams is stuckness. This is usually
>characterized by lack of energy, shortened meetings that don't accomplish
>anything, and a sense of hopelessness. This becomes a vicious cycle,
>where the lack of progress saps the energy and commitment needed to turn
>the situation around.
>
>A facilitator can often be instrumental in unsticking a team by helping
>them refocus on team basics. Revisiting and sometimes redefining the
>agreements on aspirations, performance goals, and working approach can
>often get a team unstuck. Other times a focus on the obstacles that are
>causing the stuckness or on key events, good or bad, in the history of the
>team can help get it unstuck. Finally, choosing a modest, short-range
>performance goal and achieving it will give a stuck team a shot in the
>arm. These approaches can often start from within the team, or from the
>assignment of a new team leader or one or more new team members. But they
>can also come from an facilitator. If a team stays stuck for a while, an
>outside facilitator should be considered before the decision is made to
>put the team through the trauma of team reconstitution. If changing the
>makeup of a stuck team is warranted, the facilitator will be able to
>advise on this action after working with the team for a period of time.
>
>Finally, a facilitator can be brought in at the end of the team life
>cycle. One of the most often overlooked phases of team performance is team
>closure. There are factors involved in team endings that are critical to
>both the performance of the team and t he future of teams in the
>organization. To ensure that the team performance gains are fully
>realized, final deliverable products must be completed and distributed.
>Project reports, documentation, and lessons learned must be captured.
>Customer satisfaction must be assessed: if it is not up to par corrective
>action must be taken. To safeguard the future of teams in the
>organization, how the members of this team feel about team closure will
>affect whether they and the organization are willing to undertake team
>initiatives in the future. Completion must be celebrated, along with
>appropriate team awards.
>
>The team may decide to give individual awards to each other, but from the
>perspective of the larger organization, the team succeeded or failed as a
>unit and needs to receive appropriate team recognition as a unit.
>
>Finally, the team must formally, perhaps even ritually, disband. Although
>the individuals will probably still see each other occasionally, if the
>team members do not accept and internalize the end of their identification
>with the team, then energy and attention and commitment needed on other
>work products and other teams can be diverted to trying to "recapture" the
>relationship and sense of accomplishment that they had as part of the
>defunct team. In all of these critical aspects of endings, a facilitat or
>can help both the group and the larger organization achieve success.
>
>Summary
>
>As expectations placed on organizations by customers, shareholders, and
>other stakeholders continue to rise, more and more often a team will be
>required as the only way to achieve the needed level of performance.
>Facilitation of teams and working groups can have a significant positive
>performance impact. But the facilitator is most effective when the
>performance challenge inspires the team participants and the
>organizational climate supports the fundamentals of team behavior.
>
>
>
>[Ned is one cool and knowledgable dude who gave me his permission to
>forward this on to others.]
>
>______________________
>Great Optimism,
>
>Dutch Driver
>Abilene, TX
>Hm. Telephone: 915.698.7217
>mailto:
ddriver@cs1.mcm.edu
>