Working Toward Curing Teamwork Illnesses

By Mario Moussa, PhD, Derek Newberry, PhD, and Madeline Boyer
In yesterday’s Advisor, Dr. Mario Moussa, Dr. Derek Newberry, and Madeline Boyer, authors of Committed Teams: Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and Performance, presented two of the five most damaging teamwork ills and the prescriptions to remedy them. Today, Moussa, Newberry, and Boyer discuss the final three teamwork ills.

3. Making too Many Rules
Human beings are rule-making machines—it is what defines us as a species and allows us to interact as social beings. Often, the tendency in teams is to try to plan for every possible situation and to create rules for all potential contingencies.
This is both time consuming and ineffective. Starbucks® CEO and founder Howard Schultz understood the importance of focusing on the right rules when he decided to bring back in-store bean grinding to help restore the brand’s reputation and performance.
Teamwork R_x: Focus on the few rules that are likely to have the biggest impact on your team’s culture and performance: information sharing, decision making, and conflict resolution.
4. Ignoring Reflection
One of the major cognitive biases recognized by research is outcome bias: If you’re successful, you don’t really reflect on what went well or could have gone better.
However, in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), successes are fleeting, and reflection is as imperative when things are going well as they are when they’re not.
Too often, companies and teams reserve formal reflection for annual retreats or quarterly reviews, when in reality, it needs to be taking place with much more frequency.
Teamwork R_x: Remember that check-ins need not always be huge affairs reserved for day-long retreats—they can be as simple as a weekly stand-up meeting.
5. Failing to Sell the Change
You can be right but ultimately still unsuccessful. Such was the case for Lloyd Braun, the ABC executive who was the champion and driving force behind the smash hit, Lost. Braun was so convinced that his idea would be a hit that he barreled through greenlighting the most expensive television pilot budget to date: $12 million. Braun did not take the time to get others on board with his vision, and even though his intuition was correct, he was fired before the show even premiered.
Teamwork R_x: Strength of will and charisma are not enough to push through change—work hard to get buy-in so that people want to come along with you.
In the end, good “teaming” is about being mindful about how you’re working together and making sure to check in frequently to close the gaps between what you say you want to do and what you’re actually doing.