Team Assessment Reshaping of Team Accelerating Team Development

1. HBR – Leading the
Team you Inherit –
Michael D Watkins
Created By GIRISH SHARMA

2. • Experience based intuitive assessment
 Ability to tackle particular challenge
 Importance of Diverse skills
 Attributes that can be shaped
 Engagement & Focus
 Inherent Trustworthiness is difficult to develop
 Collaboration or Independent Work
• For Turn-around – People already up to the mark. Focus on skill development when things are
stable
• To sustain Team’s success – More available time to develop high potentials
• Expectations from people should be based upon Importance of Role
• One-on-One Meetings + Team Meetings + Input from stake holders
1.0 - Team Assessment

3. • Constraints
 Organizational Culture
 Leader’s Mandate
 Available Talent Pool
• Performance Behaviours
 Share information freely
 Identify and deal with conflict swiftly
 Solve problems creatively
 Support one another
 Outside unified face
• To enhance performance behaviours focus on –
 Composition
 Alignment
 Integration
 Operating Model
2.0 - Reshaping the Team

4. • Alter individual roles to match capabilities
• Revitalize people -
 Adjust scope of existing roles
 Swap jobs
 Create new positions – Carve work differently
• Replacement – Underperformers/Capability Mismatch
 Cultural and Political Problems
 Takes time and energy
 Leaders must work with inherited teams
 Only during dire conditions – Toxic personalities & incapable critical people
• During Normal Turnover – create space for desirable people
• Encourage marginal performers to take different roles
• Valuable people not a good match – other positions in organization
2.1 – Composition

5. • Sense of purpose and direction are more or less right - people are not pulling together
 What ? Mission / Goals / Key Metrics
 Why ? Vision / Incentives
 How ? Team strategy / Plans and Activities
 Who ? Individual roles and responsibilities
• Interviews and GDs to discover Hidden Incentives and Competing Commitments
 No incentives to help each other
 Teams competing for available funds
 Misaligned Incentives creating conflicts
• Develop dashboards of metrics to be reviewed regularly
• Restructuring of teams based on geography to create unified functions
2.2 – Alignment

6. • Identify how and when people come “together” to work
• Increase / decrease core members and design new protocols for follow up
• Create Sub-Teams – for collaboration b/w independent members
 Activities that require more attention and faster feedback
 Cross-functional teams to refine and execute go-to-market strategies
 Meet sub-teams weekly to reduce reaction times
• Full team Meetings – Monthly. Information sharing and strategic issues
• Strategic Meetings (SM) – Monthly. Vision / Strategy / Business Model
• Operational Meetings (OM) – Short & frequent, Forecasts, Short-term performance, Plans based
on results
• Learning Meetings (LM) – Ad-hoc. Internal failures, crisis, emerging issues, Product recalls, Major
marketing events - introduction of competing products
• OM can block SM and LM during single recurring meetings. Consequently - First define OM -
attendees & frequency, followed by less frequent SM and finally event definition for LM
2.3 – Operating Model

7. • Express confidence, rebuild trust and establish ground rules to sustain desired behaviors
• Conduct expert evaluation through anonymous survey & follow up interviews to ascertain -
 Confidence about capability matching
 Transparent information sharing
 Belief that commitments will be honoured
 Psychological safety to express divergent views
 Security that confidences will be maintained
 Unity around decisions once people agree
 Share the found structural flaws and steps already taken
• Inherited team with –ve group dynamics require remedial work. Reshape group dynamics via
 Agreed Behavioral principles (information sharing, respect all, one team)
 Transparent and upfront communication about decision maker – small group / team
consensus
• Intervention – (team meeting / privately) whenever unproductive behaviour emerge
• Standard practice to revisit behavioral expectation - any time change in membership or mission
• Regular review - quarterly/semi annually
2.4 – Integration

8. • Build on assessment and reshaping to energize the team with “Early wins”
• Increase people’s confidence in their capabilities and reinforce the value of new processes.
• Clear framework for –
 Accountability
 Work Specification
 Critical External Stake-holders
 Responsibilities for relationship building
 Methods and messages to share results with rest of organisation
Once there is success keep building the virtuous cycle of achievement and development 
3.0 – Accelerating
Team Development