Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 5)

This continues from Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 4).

PART 5: Inspecting a Failed Team

Team Genius offered out some most important questions to ask as a team member or leader for a failed team. These question act as a post-mortem for fail teams as reflections.

1. In retrospect, did the team have a viable strategy that would have worked without any interferences or any incompetence from the senior management (or the higher ups above the team leadership, if any)
2. Did the team function harmoniously throughout the span of operation of the team, including even the interval when its impending failure is apparent?
3. When it encountered the event that would prove fatal to the teams' efforts, did the team recognises it as such, or were the members oblivious?
4. How did the team react to this news of impending failure? Did it try to react? Develop a new strategy? or just surrender to it?
5. Did the team leader keep the team on point in the aftermath of the shock?
6. Did the team research for new & relevant talent in its response to the crisis? Was that talent quickly incorporated into the team's operation?
7. Did the team leader swiftly and decisively present the changed solution, with alternative responses to the senior management - or did he or she and the rest of the team attempted to cover it?
8. Was the blame casted and recriminations made among members for the failed outcome?
9. Did the tram leader help the team members with recommendations in the aftermath of the failure (ie. rescue the disruption that have already happened)? Or were the members jettisoned and forgotten?
10. For the decision maker: Not knowing what was to come, would you have done anything differently?

Extra points that was stated in the book on the success and failure of teams:

1) Life does not offer that many wins, take them while its reachable.

2) Better off achieving a guaranteed success, especially one that accomplishes more than expected, than try to push a failing team to the finish line.

3) Failure breeds failure, just as much as successes do. So planting a winner in a team does not do much in turning things around.

Other notes

• Putting everyone into similar tasks (a waste of resources) is a grave mistake for almost any type of teams --> Lack of much needed resources for the most potential wielded + Not all people are suited for the same task;

• Put the project as the main foundation stone for the group, not the people or the organisation itself. Make sure that the directions of the group is clear at all stages of the progress. It is a danger to have any member losing track of what needs to be done or what's next.
• Put only people that have the interest and heart to do the job, to join the team. Putting people for the sake of it or to claim the title, or even just basing on the eligibility of the person only make the team worse.

Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 4)

This continues from Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 3).

PART 4: The Keys in Team Formation and Functionality

(I) The Keys in in Team Formation

Forming teams can be as easy as publicising the intentions of the group to be formed and getting interested people from a corridor. However, Team Genius pointed out that there are some algorithms in getting the right people in the right team:

• Diversity: Look past surface differences such as gender, race. Focus on read differences in culture, life experiences, skills, thought processes.
• Proximity: The closer members are in terms of social distance, more productivity can be leveraged. If there are instances where members can't be placed in the same room, find communication tools to close the gap if possible.
• Size: Always determine the smallest size for the task. Recruit the tram of the size or not too over the numbers. (see below)
• Hierarchy: Layers of management increases efficiency but not necessarily productivity. Keep leadership to the smallest number of managers and the fewest layers of control. For a mid-size team (see below), There should not be more than 2 levels of leadership. It would be very helpful if members know each other well on a personal basis.
• Resist the desire of team members to recruit friends into the team. Even if the person is talented, it might reduce the diversity in the team unless it is a conformity that it won't likely happen.
• Someone from a healthy team in the recent past, or a proven leader coming off a "successful failure" is a good suit of a leader for the team, for they have the necessary experience and knowledge that they pick up form the former team that are applicable to the current.
• Resist the strategy of letting the leader choose his own team (since often than not it's his/her preference and this might just create homogeneity in the team in terms of ideas and way of work)

(II) The Proven Size of teams

Team Genius stated out some of the proven perfect numbers for a good team:

Small, delicate teams: 5- (+/-)7

Mid Size teams: (+/-)15

For large size teams, the author put 150, 1500 strong as a point of saturation for teams, which is based on the amount of control that the leadership of the type can handle, especially for communication. 

One thing to note is that the amount of communication nodes increases exponentially with the amount of members in the group (just like how permutation works). The author effectively used the example of Hewlett-Packward company in the 1960s to explain the numbers, as the founder cum director started to realise that he cannot relate well to his employees to effectively convey concise and personalised instructions once the numbers go past 150. (It's the point that even remembering names and work division would be hard for an average person on the ground)

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Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 3)

This continues from Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 2).

Well then, what is the key to forming the right team? The book dived in next to highlights the prerequisites of a team to be effective in its way.

PART 3: The Right Conditions for Securing Team Success

1. Compelling direction: a team with great drive requires them to have a very clear division of labour (i.e. having a very clear team tasking), which are usually challenging and consequential at team level or individual level. Members are compelled to work when they know that the task poses a great impact to the team and that consequently it is something they want to do that is up to take their ability to test.
2. A bounded team with stable membership and strong identity. This is quite similar to a sense of pride that we often term it as. In this setting, members of the team are inter-dependant in terms of interaction, where there is close linkages between members in terms of the task. Take note: this does not mean the task would overlap, or in layman term having 2 or more people doing the same job. It meant the tasks have clearly defined lines, but closely affects what the others do (or at least the members can sense the changes that his/her task can bring in the big picture).
3. Right mix of members and guiding-values. This does not mean like minded individual don't form good teams. It just means that introducing differing backgrounds and values bring along a broader spectrum of ideas. Again, it brings back to the question of diversity stated in Part 2.
4. Supportive organisational context that allow access to vital materials and resources. So in a school context (for example), it comes in the form of the amount of support from the teacher in charge, school management in terms of funding, mentor-ship, good networking of supportive individuals that can offer external help etc.
5. The viability of becoming a coached teams that are guided by a mentor with expertise on the subject. This is especially important when the teams is venturing into a new sector with no members having adequate experience and network to offer concrete direction and resources.

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Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 2)

This continues from Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 1).

PART 2: A Snippet: The Double-edged Sword of Diversity in Forming Teams

Guess most of us would always here that diversity is a favourable trait of a good team. But Team Genius listed out some of the contentions of having diversity just for its sake. While having too common backgrounds (regardless of physical attributes) can limit creativity in teams, in a diverse group, members may view each other through a biased scope of stereotypes on social categories (not just the usual stuffs like physical build, but more of backgrounds and experiences). This can be a problem especially when members start to fail to identify themselves with the group.

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