In this latest episode of the ‘Bite-sized conversations – What makes people tick?‘ at Realising Potential, Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones delve deep into the key to high-performing teams.
In a well-functioning team, no single behavioural type takes precedence over another. This episode explores why tailoring a team’s composition to the nature of their work is paramount to their success – and ultimately that of your organisation. Here is a snapshot our discussion:
Through insightful discussions and real-world examples, we illustrate the importance of harmonising your team’s behavioural composition with their mission. By doing so, you set the stage for success and avoid common pitfalls.
Remember: A well-aligned team is a powerful force—one that propels organisations toward their goals
Why not listen to the entire episode now and explore the other instalments in the series.
If you’d like to find out more about the scientifically-validated Team Discovery tool in our toolbox to help you explore whether your team is optimally aligned to their strategic goals, we’d be very happy to demonstrate.
At RPX2 Ltd, we are passionate about helping people and companies realise their potential. To explore more about the services discussed in the episode, please visit www.rpx2.com.
If you prefer to read a transcript, here is a summary of the conversation:
Neale James: Here’s what’s on today’s edition of Realising Potential with Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones.
Fiona Brookwell: And I think that the balance is the critical piece here because in thinking about teams is to have an appreciation that there’s not one type of person or one set of behaviours that’s more important than the others.
Michael Jones: The work determines the shape of the team, and we shouldn’t try to have homogenous teams that are all things to all people.
Fiona Brookwell: If your organisation is focused on nice people who provide lots of lovely service and keep things safe and secure, so they’re involved in your retention aspect, but you’ve got no innovation going on, then you’re going to have a business that stagnates.
Neale James: Michael, let’s talk about roles within a team, how you might fit in as an employee, or if you’re an employer, finding somebody you believe will fit well with your team.
Michael Jones: I think it’s really important, to first of all identify what’s the work that the team is there to do. Because then if we can start with that, we can start to design the team appropriately so that we have a group of people who could all be very different, but collectively they have a behavioural orientation that is going to mean that the work that the team needs to do, the strategy, the objectives that the team needs to achieve is going to be much more easy to do so because the strategy will excite this group of people because we know how they’re constructed. So that for us is a kick-off point, you know, what is the team there to do?
And then it’s about identifying what are the roles within the team that are necessary for the team to achieve its objectives. And then what we need to start doing is looking at the individual members of the team within the context of the roles that they inhabit. And then we all have particular superpowers, and I think it’s really important, for example, that not everybody on the team looks the same, because that is usually a recipe for some form of disaster.
Because, you know, you may want a group of people who are delivering a very strategic, uh, risk orientated strategy, but you will still need other people on the team who ground and balance that type of behaviour.
Fiona Brookwell: And I think that the balance is the critical piece here because in thinking about teams is to have an appreciation that there’s not one type of person or one set of behaviours that’s more important than the others.
So, if we, if we take a work stream, for example, putting some context around it. Let’s say as an organisation, your organisation, um, the problem was our transport costs are too high. And that’s the problem that the team or the organisation needs to solve.
So, classically, what you might do is, you might get people with an orientation towards sort of innovation and agility, out of the box thinking, brainstorming, chatting ideas, taking risks, etc. You might get these people together initially and say, ‘Hey guys, we’ve got this problem’.
So, they have a good old chat and a good old brainstorm. And then they turn around and say, ‘Do you know what? Triple decker purple buses. That’s the way forward. Triple decker purple buses.’ And everybody says, ‘Yay, fantastic idea. Let’s, let’s do it. Let’s go for it. Great idea.’
However, if you don’t have people who are a bit more grounded, who want to do less talking and a bit more thinking in a bit more detail to actually build these buses profitably and sell these buses profitably, then it’s a complete waste of a good idea.
So, you still want people that are driven towards this new objective in this new agenda but maybe talking in less broad general terms and actually getting into the specifics of the thinking and the planning and the detail and so, great idea, triple decker purple buses, but you need people to build and sell these buses profitably or it’s a waste of an idea.
You’ve sold all these buses. Have you got any mechanics that actually know how to keep the wheels on the bus?
Who are your people that keep things legal and keep things safe and secure and make sure that you’re, you’re doing things by the book, and that you’ve got qualified people to actually retain all of this good stuff that you have just created? So, where are the mechanics that actually know how to keep the wheels on this bus?
Then you’ve got a quadrant of people that again are focused on retention. But these are the ones where you might say, ‘Oh, by the way, have we actually taught anybody how to drive our buses? Have we actually spoken to our customers to find out if they like our buses? Have we actually spoken to our staff to find out how they feel about building and driving and selling these buses?’
So, there’s different people that you need to achieve and make things happen in a work stream. So, you need new ideas. And you need innovation and new things to happen, or your organisation will stagnate. If your organisation is focused on nice people who provide lots of lovely service and keep things safe and secure, so they’re involved in your retention aspect, but you’ve got no innovation going on, then you’re going to have a business that stagnates.
Lots of, uh, remember in the dot come era that happened. So, lots of new innovation and great new ideas, etcetera. And when you reflect back on that now, you actually see, well, there’s people, entrepreneurs and typically entrepreneurs don’t pay a lot of attention to dotting Is and crossing Ts. That’s why they’re entrepreneurs. Think outside the box, challenges status quo.
So, coming up with some great ideas and building and selling all this amazing new product, but not thinking enough about the retention strategy. Okay, so, they’ve got this amazing bucket and they’re filling it with water, but there’s huge, big holes in this bucket.
The other analogy I use is creating an organisation which is like a Swiss cheese. So, the external of it looks amazing and, you know, very attractive and there’s a great brand on it. But if the holes in the middle of the cheese are too big and you don’t have the right infrastructure and you haven’t got the processes and the mechanics behind it and the service orientation to retain the customers you’ve already got, you make the holes in that Swiss cheese too big. And it collapses.
Where are a lot of the dot com enterprises that happened a few years ago? Where are they nowadays? A lot of them didn’t last very long. Why? From an organisational and a team perspective, too much focus on one side of the agenda, and not enough focus on the other side of the agenda.
So, the opposite to that happens is when you look at some of the big department store groups.
You look at some of the big retailers that have been on a high street for years and years and years. If you really think about it, why are they no longer there? And they’re no longer there because they had amazing service in store and they had all of their policies and procedures, which didn’t make them very agile when it came to ‘new’.
So, they didn’t have the right internet package behind them to, to actually put their brand and put their product on the internet and all of this, you know, new quick internet shopping competition came on and stole their business.
Michael Jones: But that that kind of says, Fiona, that you’re suggesting perhaps that teams should have all of those, you know, broadly speaking four areas represented in the team. And I would argue that’s probably not the case because the reality would depend on the type of work that the team is there to do.
Because if you have a broad spectrum of people who represent all of those areas, the chances are that’s a team that’s really going to struggle to get anything done because they’ll be internally competing. The reality is, the reason I suggest we start with the work is, if the team does have a mission to be agile and innovative, you do need more people like that on the team to make that happen.
If the team is there to deliver on process and procedure and to deliver work to a high quality consistently to a high standard, then you need more people like that. But what we’re saying is, is that the work determines the shape of the team. And we shouldn’t try to have homogenous teams that are all things to all people.
The ultimate goal, the reason the team has been constructed, will determine, I would suggest, how the team looks.
Fiona Brookwell: And I think, I think you’re absolutely right. And I think there is two things. So, there is the piece that says, what is the makeup of the team? Depending on the work that you want, you actually want them to do.
But then there is the piece that says, well, what is the organisational structure? So is the, that broader strategic piece that says, okay, you know, there’s, in a finance team, for example, you don’t want many out of the box thinkers that don’t pay a lot of attention to detail. You want technical experts that keep the wheels on the bus and that will drive some innovation in finance but within a framework as such.
Whereas if you take a sales team, then classically, you’ve got those that want to hunt the new business, but you’ve got those that actually want to farm and retain the business that you’ve got. So, it’s, I think you’re absolutely right there, it is about what do you need and want that team to do. But from a broader organisational perspective, it’s about ensuring within your organisation, you haven’t got too much focus of certain types of people in certain areas and actually you overvalue.
So, my point really, that I was trying to make was don’t assume that innovation is king. And that retention doesn’t add value to your business. And don’t fall into the trap that we’re nice and safe and secure and let’s just keep with our retention strategy and it will be fine, because the competition will come in and snap at your heels and before you know it your business is gone.
So, it’s about from an organisational perspective appreciating within a range of departments and divisions within your organisation, you have to have a balance, because if you haven’t got a balance, you end up with my Swiss cheese analogy.
Neale James: I think, Michael, you have a story about this. Tell me about the company.
Michael Jones: It was a multi-billion pound organisation, international organisation that flew its team members into the UK. And I was facilitating the session with them and all of them, I think, with one except, with one exception, all of them were the people that we’re talking about innovators, agile, competitive, assertive, goal orientated. You know, people who generally, like us, don’t like being told what to do or getting very, very excited about their vision, their strategy, the fact that we’re going to go out there and share this brand new vision with thousands of people that worked with them who were probably in the main, I mean a huge generalisation here, differently constructed.
These are people that had been there for long periods of time, that appreciated consistency and clarity and certainty and didn’t necessarily respond well to risk. And I remember saying to them, you know, you’re going to have a big challenge here, because you are talking a particular type of language that potentially may not land the way that you think it’s going to land because you’re thinking like you, you’re not necessarily going to take people with you because they think differently to you.
And I said what they will be saying is ‘Here we go again. We’ve heard this before. Here’s the new vision. Here’s the new strategy. They’ll be gone in two years, and we’ll have another group coming in to do it’. And the CEO, she, she disagreed with me and the one person on the team who was differently constructed stood up and she said ‘He’s right. I’m not like you guys. I’ve been here a lot longer than you guys’. And she’s hugely successful at what she does, but she said: ‘We have heard it before, they will be thinking about this. And I suggest that if we want to take people like me’, she said, ‘with us, we need to think about how we, we talk about that’. Because the danger is, is that too much of a preponderance of people in one area means that sometimes the quieter voices get forgotten about.
Neale James: Realising Potential with Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones. For more information about our services and organisation visit www.rpx2.com