Knowledge Center: The Fundamental Purpose Of Your Team

Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Fundamental Purpose Of Your Team

You've been put in charge of a task force recently created to resolve a severe quality problem with one of your company's most popular products. Your mandate: "Fix it." Customer anger is creating an uproar on the Web — Tweets galore, a Facebook group dedicated to your "victims," and scathing reviews on Amazon and other retail sites — and dozens of frustrated retailers are calling every day.

You've been given the job because after two weeks under the previous leader, the task force has made virtually no progress. At your first meeting, you realize why. Members are consumed with pointing fingers and deflecting any blame from the design, manufacturing, or other groups they represent.

What's the first thing you need to do?

We suggest your first step — in fact, the first step in transforming any group into a high-performing team — is to settle on the fundamental purpose of the team.

"Really?" you're thinking. "Isn't it obvious? Fix the problem."

"Fix the problem" is certainly the mandate, or the task, given to the group. Success will depend on it. But is it the real purpose, which is not necesarily the same as the task?

In an hour-long meeting with the group, you prod members past their obsession with placing blame. And that leads to more productive discussion, from which emerges the real purpose: Restore the company's reputation for quality.

This was a purpose the task force members could rally around because the company's quality-based brand was indeed at stake and that affected everyone. Finding the real purpose lifted the whole effort above the level of parochial interests.

Finding or confirming the real purpose of any group, permanent or temporary, is the first step you must take as its leader. If you don't, there's a good chance the group will never come together to work as a collective whole, a team. Its work in total will likely be less than the sum of individual efforts because members will duplicate work, pursue their own interests, or even labor at counter-purposes.

A clear and compelling purpose is the glue that binds together a group of individuals. It is the foundation on which the collective "we" of a real team is built.

Purpose plays this critical role because it is the source of the meaning and significance people seek in what they do. Research has revealed that the vast majority of us want to feel part of something larger and more important than ourselves. When workers were asked how important it was that their lives be meaningful, 83 percent said "very important" and another 15 percent said "fairly important." That's an astounding 98 percent to whom it was at least "important." No wonder collective purpose is the first requirement in creating any real team.

Not just any lofty-sounding purpose will work, however. "To be the best," "to have the highest quality," "to be the most trusted" — unless they're backed up with genuine research and evidence and ongoing effort — rarely generate much excitement. To provide meaning, a purpose must be real, tangible, and compelling.

A new hospital administrator found she had a custodial staff with low morale, high turnover, and sub-par performance. The quality of its work began to turn around when she officially recognized the custodians' real purpose — they were an important part of the hospital's Infection Control Team. Their purpose was more than keeping the floors clean. They played a key role in controlling the spread of infection endemic to most hospitals.

Purpose also needs to be made tangible and kept vital through concrete goals and plans. To create a team capable of extraordinary collective work, team members need to know not only that they do something important (purpose) but also that they are going someplace worthwhile and challenging (goals and plans).

On this foundation can then be built most everything else a team needs to work well — clarity about roles and responsibilities, agreed work processes, mutual values and expectations that shape interactions among members, and the means for ongoing performance assessment. In addition, they shape and guide the network of relationships you create with others thoughout the broader organization.

How about the people for whom you're responsible? Are they a cohesive team that's working collectively at the highest level they're capable of achieving? If not, look first at the purpose you're all pursuing. Are you solving a technical problem or restoring the company's reputation for quality? Are you saving patients from infection or just scrubbing floors?

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Linda Hill & Kent Lineback:- Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Kent Lineback spent many years as a manager and an executive in business and government. They are the coauthors of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader (HBR Press, 2011).

Thanks to Linda Hill & Kent Lineback
http://blogs.hbr.org/hill-lineback/2011/07/the-fundamental-purpose-of-you.html

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