Teams fascinate me. Successful teams represent remarkably high productivity, accomplishment and satisfaction for all involved. Failed teams, on the other hand, represent underachievement, frustration and wasted resources. If we could bottle the magic potion of what it takes to consistently create successful teams, I am convinced that we would own the key to the castle of organizational success. We’ll spend this issue of The Beacon, and the next three, trying to unlock the secrets of successful teams.

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Teams are nothing more than a collection of individuals. And since each of us is unique, whenever you put a new combination of people together, you create a new dynamic. In other words, no two people are the same: therefore, no two teams are, either. This simple fact makes it difficult to build specific rules and rigid frameworks for team building.

At the same time, we live in a world that constantly seeks efficiency, process, and rules to create repeatable outcomes. We want to learn what works, and then relentlessly perform it over and over again. But you know what? That approach is very hard to apply to team building. Every situation is different, and it is nearly impossible to take the same techniques that have worked with one team and use them with another.

However, there are some broader guidelines and techniques that can be applied consistently, and we’ll address those in the next three issues of The Beacon. But before considering what does work, our discussion should first start by identifying what does not work, and why teams often fail. Once we have a clear understanding of the most common mistakes, we’ll use that information to build a playbook of best practices.

While we are reviewing the list of common and critical mistakes in this issue, I encourage you to spend some time considering if any of these apply to teams you have been on… or if any of these apply specifically to you. In our work at The Latimer Group, we invariably end up working on team communication issues, and certain themes seem to arise again and again and again.  Here’s the list of common mistakes we see teams making repeatedly:

• No Clear Group Goals: This is the primary and fundamental reason why so many teams fail. Ultimate group success is often determined in the initial planning stages. When a group of people come together and can agree on a clear goal or set of goals right away, many debilitating problems become much less likely to occur. When team alignment can be built early, it clears the way for other things to go well. Everyone knows where the team is trying to go, which creates a basic agreement of purpose that can be used to address challenges or problems as they inevitably arise. Think about every member of your team as an arrow drawn on a piece of paper. A well-aligned team has all of the arrows pointing in the same direction, at the same goal. A poorly-aligned team has the arrows pointing all over the place. Weak leaders and poor teams ignore the importance of goal setting, and this essentially guarantees underperformance.
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• Separate Agendas: Separate and competing agendas are the second most frequent cause of failed teams. Even with a clear goal or mission, clarity can be clouded when there are different visions of how the team should achieve the goal. Perhaps there are people competing for the leadership position. Perhaps there are factions within the team, lobbying for their own version of “the plan.” Or maybe there are “teams within the team,” subgroups that weaken the cohesiveness of the full group. Perhaps some members of the team are more interested in their own success or “stats” (especially apropos in a sports setting) than the success of the team. Clear goals are not enough. There also needs to be clarity of agenda. The weak leader and the poor team allow factions to develop and competing agendas to get in the way of reaching the goal.
• No Ownership: This problem often stems from poor leadership, or a micromanaging, non-collaborative leadership style. I’ll make a sweeping generalization here that human beings enjoy owning their own outcome. They want to have some say in their own future – a specific role or list of activities that they can control. And because of this simple fact, poor team leadership often ignores the importance of shared ownership within the team. You want to create a dynamic where people feel like they own what is happening. One of my favorite quotes comes from Warren Buffett: “No one washes a rental car.” Nothing motivates like honest-to-God ownership of the process. All too often, teams fail because the team members feel like they are punching a clock and just following orders. The weak leader does not create ownership. The poor team does not take ownership.
• Rigid Application of the Lessons of the Past: As I mentioned above, our society values the ability to learn from the past and apply lessons learned to present situations. Generally speaking, this path leads directly to progress. But when it comes to team building, it can lead to problems. Why? As stated above, every team situation is different. And therefore, it becomes problematic if we attempt to rigidly apply the lessons learned from a past situation to the present. If the situations are different in some fundamental way, and they almost always are, then a rigid approach can cause significant problems. We see this all the time. “Well, this worked last time, so it should work this time.” Not so fast. Change one major variable and you have a whole new situation. Change one person on the team, or even change the challenges being faced by the same team, and things are now dramatically different. The weak leader and the poor team try to execute the exact same playbook over and over again.
• No Mid-Game Communication: Even if we take all the correct steps at the outset of our team-building process, we are not yet guaranteed a successful outcome. Things change. The competition may do something different. The market environment may – and almost always will, in fact – change. Any one of a number of variables may change, and it is imperative to address these changes along the way. The weak leader and the poor team keep their heads down and keep executing the same plan without pausing to reevaluate its effectiveness.

There are many reasons why teams fail, and these are the most common pitfalls we see. Avoiding them requires a willingness to take an honest look at our teams. What challenges have gotten in your way? As we tackle the issues of building great teams over the next several months, we must first understand where the problems are. We must first understand the barriers to success before we can build a longterm game plan.

In the next issue of The Beacon we’ll consider How to Build a Great Team from the Ground Up and, in the process, draw lessons that can be applied to the problems above.