3 Elements for Building High Performance Teams

Executive Brief
3 Elements for Building High Performance Teams
Alternatives to Outdated Work Management Practices
The world of work is constantly changing.
As organizations globalize, technology is leading us away from the traditional 9-to-5 workday, blurring
the boundaries between professional and personal lives in the process. For many people, work may
largely take place in their home office, in a client’s office, or on-the-go. Teams around the world maintain
contact with each other as easily and conveniently as if they worked in the same room. Projects can be
happening 24/7, with no communication delays. All these changes represent a constant force of
disruption to the traditional methods of doing business, and they show no signs of slowing down.
According to the 2013 Forrester report, Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends, 37% percent of people are
now working from multiple locations, and 82% percent of these workers are using mobile apps when
they do so. Giving your team the ability to collaborate, access tasks and issues, make reports on
progress, and update timesheets from the field will undoubtedly enable significant productivity gains.
There are three elements that all organizations and their people need to succeed in the environment we
are describing: participation, alignment and awareness. Amongst high-performing teams, these
elements have to exist for projects to attain operational excellence.
1: Participation – Sowing a Democratic Culture
Participation is a cornerstone of a democratic culture. In the workplace, it describes each person’s ability
to participate, innovate and have a voice. Remove boundaries and encourage active involvement in the
completion of projects. Pay more attention to individual engagement. This will allow you to take a deep
dive below the surface and identify the unique skills and value that each person brings to the team, while
creating more meaningful and engaging work for team members. It is easier for a team to commit to a
workplace environment that is inclusive, open and transparent, and lets people freely participate.
These kinds of environments are what create high performance teams. Organizations that can build a
culture where everyone’s participation matters will succeed at engaging their teams.
How can you encourage your team members to participate? Consider taking the following
actions to keep your team members engaged:
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Provide regular project updates. Managing and maintaining project details in one centralized, online
location is the best way to keep team members in the loop about what is going on in real-time. That
way, project news feeds, related documents, chat sessions and budget tracking are never more than
a few clicks away. Team members work more efficiently when they have all the information they need
at their fingertips.
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Ask for continuous feedback. When project managers and team members have
more data points to consider, they can make informed decisions. Create loops of feedback so team
members can see how their contributions and suggestions are implemented.
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Use tools that promote peer collaboration. A project management tool with social collaboration built in
allows team members to share their knowledge and information with others. When knowledge is
shared between team members as they work toward a common goal, a feeling of connectedness and
a sense of community emerges. Such environments have been shown to contribute to operational
excellence, including better business performance outcomes and talent retention.
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Acknowledge contributions. Invite team members to contribute suggestions or new and creative
ideas. There is no obligation to implement every suggestion and idea from every team member, but
keeping people apprised of the status of their suggestions is critical to engagement. When people
know that you’re considering their suggestions, they will realize that they have value to the project
and will continue to offer opinion and feedback.
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Provide recognition. Whether it’s for hitting key milestones, staying under budget, or launching a new
product on time, when team members give each other virtual high-fives, “likes” and kudos for a job
well done, the feeling is uplifting. Acknowledging and praising the work done by team members is
critical. Doing so publicly is priceless and a powerful motivator that will further drive strong
performance.
2: Alignment – Utilizing a “Coordinate and Cultivate” Style of Management
Organizational alignment refers to the presence of a clear understanding of your organization’s mission,
vision, culture and values -- as well as organizational, departmental, team and individual goals. This is
essential for bringing out the best in your organization’s most valuable asset: your people.
In a project management context, members of teams must share a concrete understanding of what they
are trying to achieve and how they are going to achieve it. The more they know, the more likely they are
to operate to the best of their abilities. It is common for team members not to fully understand the “why”
behind their roles or how their participation contributes to the project’s goals. Giving team members both
a bird’s-eye view as well as access to the inner workings of your project will equip them with the
knowledge to ensure that projects, budgets and resources are managed efficiently and effectively.
How can you create alignment across your teams? Consider taking the following actions:
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Provide real-time visibility. All aspects of the project must be current and should reflect the true
status of progress. Effective and constant communication is essential to keeping projects on
track. With the right tools, managers can easily adjust the workload and team members can
create actionable items from real-time discussions. This keeps all members of the team apprised
of each other’s progress and aware of changes that can affect the project. Changes will occur: if
team members are aware of them as they are happening, the changes do not have to be a
setback.
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Executive Brief
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Offer a project repository. Equip team members with all the necessary project documents.
Facilitate true team collaboration and project execution by creating a secure project repository
that is accessible by all users from anywhere at anytime. This will ensure they have all necessary
information when they need it to work smarter as a team.
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Maintain rich user profiles. Team member profiles are like any other content that can be found on
searches; therefore, when users create their profiles, it’s important to include interests and
activities, areas of expertise, membership in professional groups and associations and any other
information that will make it easier to sort into groups and connect people with each other. Team
members are more than resumes: you never know when a team member’s untapped skills can
be a significant asset to a project.
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Follow from the front. The notion of “following from the front” refers to managers whose roles shift
away from delegating to people to empowering them to solve problems. The role of the future
project manager is to remove barriers and provide the tools and solutions team members need to
make things happen-- in other words, to help them succeed and pave the way by being an active
member of the team.
3: Awareness - Optimize Your Ecosystem
Ours is a world where work is happening at all hours of the day and often across multiple time zones.
Project scopes change, tasks are adjusted, deadlines shift and budgets shrink while your team is
scattered around the globe. In this environment, awareness is the one quality of strong managers that
may trump all others. “Be aware of what is happening 24/7?” We can hear the collective groan of project
managers everywhere (especially those with families), but keeping track of projects to this degree
doesn’t have to be an exercise in overtime. To gain better control of projects, use the new features
presented by enterprise project tools. For instance, news feeds and activity streams will helps you keep
track of all aspects of your project, while online task managers will reduce redundancies and duplication
of work.
These tools bring together your entire project team--partners, vendors and customers—in an ecosystem
of self-awareness, so you don’t have to manage every single hour of the day but can simply make
information accessible and allow the team to strategize naturally and intelligently.
This kind of workflow, where accessible information creates intelligent group decisions, is an active
business ecosystem. While building this ecosystem, it is important to maintain an awareness of your
team’s natural strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what others are doing well and what they need to
improve on can help you ensure that everyone performs up to their full potential and the project
succeeds.
How can you optimize your ecosystem? Consider taking the following actions:
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Be an acute observer of your ecosystem. Leverage your project tool’s dashboard to get a
personalized view of your team and tasks. Organize the most critical aspects of your project so
you can quickly and easily get a lay of the land.
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Quickly correct data errors and omissions. We all make mistakes. When you
make fixes, share them instantly with your entire team, wherever they are. This way mistakes
become opportunities for improvement, data is kept accurate and current, and everyone is always
moving forward.
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Magnify individual and team strengths. Reinforce positive behaviors through the social graph,
while putting into place support structures to counter weaknesses. Developing deeper and more
productive relationships with your partners, customers, and team members will not only result in
increased engagement, but will develop high-performing teams, to the greater benefit of the
organization.
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Strengthen your corporate culture. Stay in regular communication with your team and draw out
the best of their abilities. Working within an open and transparent environment will shine a
spotlight on your organization’s culture. An aware organization is a successful organization, and
one that will be able to make wise decisions in he present and cut off problems before they
happen in the future.
Looking Ahead
Who doesn’t want to get work done in the best way possible? Working faster, smarter, within a budget,
with strong collaboration -- these are better ways to work. It used to be that companies had to struggle to
bring all these elements together. But now, there are tools everywhere to help you create seamless
communication between everyone on your project team. Use them wisely and you will boost your
collaboration, increase your productivity, and deliver successful results time and again.
With this being said, there is another critical enterprise objective that may not necessarily be top-of-mind
for employees and teams as they “get work done”, but is nevertheless vital to ensure enterprise safety,
stability and success: data security.
We’ll be exploring that next…
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