Enabling High Performing Teams

The topic of high performing teams is a popular one in the agile community. Arguably, in part, because we often see organisations adopting agile practices as some sort of instant guarantee of high performance. Most of these efforts don't consist of much more than wrapping existing work and plans up into Sprints or the blind adoption of new terminology such as squads and tribes. They'll probably also have a tonne of post-it notes and whiteboards floating around and everyone will start standing up for the their morning status updates. Needless to say, not much comes from it.

High performing teams need to be cultivates, not just instantly declared into existence. 

This post takes a look at how we might grow high performing teams though enabling certain conditions. Specifically it takes a look at the model as outlined by Richard Hackman in his seminal 2002 publication, Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances.

Hackman's work sets out five conditions for enabling effective teams, which we can also view as tidy and relevant areas of focus for any agile coach looking to unlock high performance.

Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman in their 2005 paper, A Theory of Team Coaching, outline the following proposition:

Competent coaching interventions (i.e. those that foster collective effort, task-appropriate performance strategies, and good use of member knowledge and skill) are more beneficial for groups that are well structured and supported than for those that are not; poor coaching interventions (i.e. those that subvert team performance processes) are more detrimental for teams that are poorly structured and supported than for those that are well designed.

In other words, coaching on it's own is not enough. With effective foundations (enabling conditions) in place we can expect to be better positioned to benefit from expert coaching. Moreover, we can also view the formation of these foundations as a function of coaching itself. 

1. Being a REAL Team

A real team consists of interdependent members within a clear boundary and with a shared purpose for which the collective is responsible and stable enough to exploit differences and work well together.This means that the team works as a collective unit and fails or succeeds as a collective unit. The focus is a on the output of the team as a whole and not on the individuals within in. The various members of the team are dependent on each other and need to work together to get their work done, they're bounded by the need to collaborate rather than a loose application of semantics. The team is also clearly defined, it's clear who's in the team and who isn't and they're given the time and trust that they need in order to carve out effective working strategies.

In an Agile context this will look like long formed stable teams, shaped around a product area with an accompanying and clear vision, a cross-functional focus and the empowerment they need to self-organise and shape their working practices. There are no back-end or front-end 'teams' passing work between themselves, real teams in an Agile setting are feature teams and can complete work and deliver value on an end-to-end self-contained basis.

2. Compelling Direction

A team with a compelling direction may have a clear vision communicated to them but they will not be told how to get there. That's the say that the vision is ends specified but not means specified.

This in turn enables self-management and goal directed teamwork, the team will work together to find the best way forwards, examine the options available to them and make appropriate plans for moving forwards.

In an Agile context this will be a real team working towards outcomes over outputs. They'll likely have an owner of the vision in a role such as Product Owner, but they will be part of the team and will work collaboratively with the team to communicate the vision and map out how to move forwards. There are no detailed requirements dropped into teams or giant backlogs or pre-formed outputs  to follow. The team is trusted to find it's own path and it embraces principles of transparency and feedback to inspect and adapt that path as it moves forwards.

3. Enabling Team Structure

An enabling team structure refers to a structure that facilitates effective team conduct, work strategy and task design. This covers not only the composition of the group but also basic norms of behaviour and conduct.

The general rule of thumb for an Agile team is that their size should be around seven, plus or minus two people. Anything much beyond this can lead to communication overhead and a level of complexity in individual interactions that can reduce the effectiveness of the team as a whole. 

Alongside team size is the issue of diversity. A real Agile team requires enough diversity in skills and competencies in order to effectively self-organise and facilitate the production of working, full tested and potentially shippable software  Glenda Eoyang in her work on self-organisation in human systems talks about containers, differences and exchanges as conditions for self-organisation. In other words, a high performing Agile team requires enough differences in skills, experiences, insights and human competencies in order to drive effective interaction within the team and thus  driving them towards high performance.

This enabling condition can also be seen to extend from an an enabling team structure to an enabling infrastructure. In other words, an effective agile team requires the provision of technical infrastructure which supports the continuous integration and delivery of working software.

4. Supportive organisational context

In order to be successful a team requires the support of the wider organisation and a desire by that organisation to engender an environment and set the conditions for success. Hackman outlines the following as specific success factors that an organisation should look to enable:

- Environment - One that rewards favourable consequences for good team performance.
- Information – Data needed for the work are available for the team.
- Education – Any training or technical consults needed are available for the team.
- Resources – Material resources needed for the work are sufficient and available to the team.

A real Agile team works for the team as a whole, not for the individuals within it. For an organisation 'going Agile' the decision needs to be one underpinned by investment (n people, skills, knowledge, tools, technology etc) and not just a mere empty declaration. As such an environment that encourages, motivates and rewards team performance and is supported by  sufficient and appropriate investment to give the teams what they need to get the job done is essential when looking to engender high team performance.

5. Available expert coaching

Available expert coaching is important but it's own it isn't enough. Research by Hackman and Wageman suggests that that effective coaching as the most benefit with well structured and supported teams whilst poor coaching is most detrimental to poorly structured and supported teams. On the flip side, teams that are well structured are unlikely to be significantly damaged by poor coaching whilst poorly structured teams are unlikely to significantly benefit from effective coaching.

In other words, when it comes to the provision of effective (or otherwise) coaching, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.

When undertaking an Agile transformation or initiative an organisation may focus almost solely on the provision of team coaching. The thinking above suggests that agile coaches should actually be focused on getting the other four pillars in place to enable the coaching to have maximum benefit. Arguably then, the first priority of an agile coach finding themselves in an ill structured and under-supported environment should be to get these foundations in place - only then can they, and the teams they work with, truly excel and enter the realms of high performance.