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.