© Stuart Miles | Dreamstime.com

A recent article by Nathan Wiita identified the following differences between successful and less successful teams (HBR Nov 2017).

Successful teams spent:

  • 20% more time defining their strategy
  • 12% more time aligning their organisation
  • 25% more time focusing the organisation
  • 14% more time checking their progress
  • 33% more time optimising talent
  • 54% more time setting direction
  • 36% moe time sequencing actions
  • 25% more time influencing stakeholders
  • 13% more time planning

Unsuccessful teams spent 83% more time fire-fighting

Developing successful teams requires setting focused challenges and empowering them to design improvement plans and accelerating delivery. A coaching approach is required to assist a team design an improvement plan.   A project approach is needed to accelerate delivery.

Building the required capability will require teams to have access to skills on a just in time basis. On-line training will become an increasingly important resource. Management coaching will be necessary to provide support.

Benchmarking is a important tool to assist teams identify gaps. A levels of work framework will be useful to guide the development of level specific challenges. Technology assists managing complexity, ensuring coordination and accelerating delivery.

Building successful teams will require significant changes to the current development model.