Recently two things occurred which gave me a chance to think about this topic. First, I had a great conversation on this topic with a co-worker on the team. They are a brilliant person and possess great situational empathy. The points we discussed gave me good food for thought.

Second, I read the book Loonshots written by a physicist turned biotech entrepreneur Safi Bachall. In the book he visits the history of the major breakthroughs of humankind and tries to find a common link across all of them. The finding is that the major predictor of the success is the organisational culture and structure of the team that is working on it. I would highly recommend the book, its an amazing read.

I will distil my learnings from above and add my personal experience into points I believe go into making a great team.

  • High psychological safety in the team :

    In simpler terms you feel psychologically safe in your team if you can make mistakes and take risk without fear. If you are able to bring your true self to work everyday, you are in a psychological safe team. Studies show that a psychologically safe teams have less anxiety among its members, people can speak out freely which promotes diverse view points, and they can innovate faster. This is a great read by Harvard Business Review. An excerpt from above article outlines the biology in play

    Ancient evolutionary adaptations explain why psychological safety is both fragile and vital to success in uncertain, interdependent environments. The brain processes a provocation by a boss, competitive coworker, or dismissive subordinate as a life-or-death threat

    It is difficult to perform at your best of abilities if you have to constantly watch your back.

  • People involved in the mission :

    In 1962, President John F. Kennedy visited NASA for the first time. During his tour of the facility, he met a janitor who was carrying a broom down the hallway. The President then casually asked the janitor what he did for NASA, and the janitor replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

    A workforce on mission can do wonders. When the people can derive meaning out of their work, they are motivated to put more than a hundred percent. People feel they have a stake in the game. A corollary is, that teams having members aligned with the mission have great leaders steering the wheel. I am yet to come across such a team and not find a remarkable leadership team at the helm. Maybe its a self-fulfilling cycle of leaders and teams reinforcing each other.

  • Structure of the organization incentivizes innovation :

    DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense. It has been the cradle of many innovations, internet being one of them. An excerpt from Loonshot

    DARPA’s structure has eliminated the benefit of spending any time on politics, of trying to sound smart in meetings and put down your colleagues by highlighting the warts in their nutty loonshots so that you can curry favor and win promotions. DARPA is run like a loose collection of small startups, with no career ladder. A hundred or so program managers each lead one project or field of research. They are granted an extraordinary degree of autonomy and visibility,

    The more the hierarchy driven is your organization, lesser the fuel for innovation. Now some organizations like armed forces have an absolute need of hierarchy to allow the chain of command to be followed. But if you are trying to create a knowledge industry you have to strike out a optimum. If you have too many levels in the leadership chain, the noise in the communication increases and employees are less aligned with the vision.

  • Managers act as coach

    What is the role of a manager in the organization. From a traditional definition, a manager is someone who is in charge of a product, or group or a department and ensures that company’s long term and short term objective are being met.

    The above definition does not paint a true picture of the requirements of role in today’s knowledge industry. I like the analogy of the leader as a coach. It is one thing to micromanage your directs and drive them away all while ensuring your personal objectives are met, while it is difficult to strike out a win-win situation. This is a very good article on the topic. The Leader as Coach

  • People are hired to fit the organization’s culture :

    Hiring well is often taken as to include the technical competencies of the candidate. It goes well beyond that. You need people who can fit and shine within the culture of your orgaznization. If you can align your people with the vision of your organization you have an unstoppable work force.

To be continued