rational sparks

what was funny to me about my friend’s story is that sometimes it’s very difficult to get the group aligned from the beginning, or fast enough by the standard of implementation of the work the organization is being asked to do. 

sometimes you can’t hire the right profile according to the guidelines that the overall project already requires, knowing in advance all the hard and soft skills that each of them will bring, as happens in the grand examples of those mega companies of international success. in fact, a high-performance team can be dysfunctional if we have selected powerful but individualistic profiles.

sometimes, as in the case of film, the team you need to motivate is as heterogeneous as it is resistant to a challenge they don’t identify as common (beyond “i’ll do it because they pay me, but as soon as it’s 5:30 p.m…”).  

sometimes we don’t even know the people we want on the team very well, yet we want them to work together because they’re the experts, because they’re the ones who sign up for everything without asking, or simply because they’ve been working in the same area for years.

of course, we get discouraged when our team doesn’t develop into the high-performing team “we were promised”. 

well, no, we don’t have a high performance team…and things aren’t working.

ok, so…

what are the keys to achieving a high performance team? because rarely is it written how to achieve such a team without having a lot of economic resources, without being able to hire from scratch…

(note: well, it is written a lot, but almost always with the solutions to be implemented directly. “create a high performance team! communicate, let them express themselves, leave room for error…”. a-ha. but h-o-w can i do that if i’m not a big company and i don’t have the resources).

my answer:  

the key is that they have to work together towards a common goal. a goal that motivates them both personally and professionally. a win-win. employee-company, employee-employee, employee-self-employee.

that is why it is so important to test and facilitate their complementarity. say: communicate! be creative! use the opportunities we give you!… it will never be enough. the most important thing is for the team to get to know each other so that they can start working together as soon as possible. synergies. 

what is needed?

• if they analyze data together, a heterogeneous vision of past, present and future is created. but this is only possible if we know how to encourage each one to talk about the data without undoing their intrinsic link with how they have felt that data (perception, emotion, associated feeling).
• create hubs and fast successful results: the more they can participate and share results, among themselves but also with other teams, departments and even companies, the easier it is to find solutions. don’t be afraid to ask others, there is always someone who has gone through the same or a similar situation. let them collaborate and don’t see them as competition.
• let the team be free: mistakes happen. you learn from them. don’t wait for the end of the design, this has been explained to us a lot by agile project management, which started in technology projects, and design thinking. 

(be aware that a methodology can reduce the flexibility of the team… and for that you need to know the team and what you want from them).

sometimes, a few hours well invested before the start of teamwork are enough to align the common challenge. a contribution from the self. like the guys in the movie: after spending a whole day together, they discover their potential. their affinities. how they can help each other to achieve a common goal that also benefits them individually.

then, surprisingly… you happen to get a high-performance team. 😉

what we say in rational sparks*: data, but always emotions. because there is no one without the other. connection and complicity to read the data, to achieve the goals and to exponentiate the successful implementation.

images have rights and belong to the producers & distributors. addicionally, this last image was designed by twitter.com/lilabrock

* our level zero proposal of collaborative work implies, precisely, achieving the complicity of the team in a very short time: a participatory session in which we explore the real need to be addressed (and not the one we think it is), and in which we obtain as a result a final product of the whole imaginative analysis process in a unique and high-impact format that reflects all the team’s work. a clear identification of the problem or need to be addressed (according to their consensus and aligned opinion), and an outline of the strategy to achieve it. click here and know our methodology!