The Wisdom of Teams is a true classic among Twentieth Century business books. Based on detailed interviews with 47 teams across the US, it uncovers the wisdom of what teams can achieve, and how they can perform at their best.
The authors of The Wisdom of Teams acknowledge that what they discovered is both obvious, in that we recognise the truths straight away, and subtle, in that making sense of them in the real world can be hard. They rank their findings as both common sense and uncommon sense. And all this is as it should be. Teams are people. And people working together can be messy and hard to characterise.
So, while the book has been criticised for its obviousness, and also for being too long and sharing too many long stories, this is its nature. Real team stories show not just the obvious truths, but the subtle complexities too. Perhaps the biggest idea of the Wisdom of Teams is that there is no one Big Idea, but many smaller big ideas.
What will work be like in the future, and how will we respond to it? These are big questions being asked by the influential and much respected Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School, Lynda Gratton. The answers she is uncovering are both obvious and important. We won’t know if her work is ‘right’ until the future arrives, but for now, we would be wise to understand the trends Gratton is uncovering, and respond to them.
Short Biography
Lynda Gratton was born in 1955 and, grew up, and was educated in the north west of England, in Liverpool. She gained her BSc in Psychology from Liverpool University in 1976 and started work there on her PhD. In 1979, she started work with British Airways as Chief Psychologist, while continuing her doctoral studies into Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. She was awarded her PhD in 1981 and, in the following year moved to management consulting firm PA Consulting.
She stayed at PA until 1989, becoming their youngest Director at age 32. But Gratton valued the autonomy to create time to read, think, and be with her family above the high salary. So she took a post as an Assistant Professor at the London Business School in 1989.
Gratton’s academic career has resulted in praise and awards. She has authored 9 books to date (the ninth is due out in June 2016) and many influential papers, the most widely read being two Harvard Business Review Articles: Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams (Nov 2007) and End of the Middle Manager (Jan 2011).
We need to start our summary of Gratton’s most important thinking with the forces she identifies as driving change in the world. I think each of us might add one or two of our own, but it is hard to dispute that each of these five will have a big impact. What gives her list credibility is the wide range of big name organisations that collaborated in her research.
Technological Developments
Some of the big developments she points out that will affect us (and some of the other forces, below) are:
Cognitive assistants (advanced knowledge systems moving towards artificial intelligence)
Cloud and distributed computing – especially linked to mobile devices
Advanced robotics
Digitisation of knowledge
At some point she projects (as do many computer scientists) connected computers will start to become capable of creating knowledge without human help. (Note that this is not the same as the potential ‘singularity event’ of computers gaining consciousness, which is at another tier of speculation)
Globalisation
Here we can see trends like labour force mobility, especially in the direction of mega cities that are, increasingly, in the East. This is feeling and fuelled by the emergence of the new economies; the so called BRIC and MINT nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey – along with other less acronymed nations like South Korea and Egypt). Many of the new dominant player will bring new cultural and societal norms to the world of work.
Demographic Changes (and increasing longevity)
The biggest changes will be shifts in life expectancy and the struggles of Western nations in particular to meet expectations around retirement. But as populations age and birth rates decline in the presently less developed nations, the same effect could have far greater implications.
Societal Trends
There are so many trends here – many linked intimately with technology, globalisation and demographics. Women’s social and economic power cannot (and should not) do anything but rise. Freelance work will increase to take advantage of technology and meet the caring needs of people with ageing relatives. Predictions of the demise of family life or the increase in attention given to families from home-based workers seem the most confused – but then the future may not yield neat categories.
Energy
The need to shift to a low Carbon economy to protect the world from rising atmospheric CO2 levels and the inevitable devastating consequences of the global climate changes it will drive will increasingly dominate our futures. This will have complex economic impacts – but nothing compared to what will happen if oceans rise substantially and crops fail around the world. I’d like to see Gratton give more attention to the consequences of water stress and the geopolitical impacts of large mismatches of water availability and need that we can readily predict.
The Three Shifts we can Expect to See in our Lives
These are big forces and Gratton envisages three big shifts in our lives.
Mastery
There are too many generalists, so the law of supply and demand will crush their economic value. This will drive a shift to in-depth mastery and narrow specialisation of workers. We can easily see how she comes to this conclusion, as the five forces combine to drive and facilitate this shift.
Connectivity
Linked to this is the need and increasing ability for workers to connect with one another globally. She thinks our work lives will become less competitive and more collaborative. Gratton coins two interesting concepts:
Your narrow group of close collaborators, whom she calls ‘the Posse’
Your wider group of loosely connected working relationships, which she refers to as ‘the Big Ideas Crowd’
Quality of Experience
From my point of view, her third shift is the most parochial: a move from focusing on standard of living to the quality of our experiences. In Gratton’s timeframe of now to 2025, I doubt this will be a major trend outside the wealthiest parts of the world (and, even here, it may only apply to the wealthy middle and affluent classes). The displacement of work by machines has been heralded for over 100 years and the rise of hedonistic society for many hundreds. I’d like to buy into this one, but it feels most like a consumer business driven rehash of an old trope (Sorry Lynda).
The Five Impacts this will have on Organisations
What I do one hundred per cent buy into is Gratton’s assessment of the big impacts these shifts and forces will have on global-scale organisations. Small, local organisations will lag behind, but even they will need eventually to bow to some of these changes.
Leadership
Connectivity will drive the need for more transparent leadership of our corporations (while many will fight it, fearing the impact of consumer reactions). This will need a more authentic style of leadership from individuals throughout those organisations.
Virtual Teams
Cross border, cross timezone working has grown up over the last 20 years, and will increase. From my perspective, real, empirical research in how to drive high performance from virtual teams is still lagging this trend. This is a hard question, because we evolved to co-operate in small, intimate, and geographically contained teams. We need to find ways to optimise our reactions to an alien environment.
Cross Business Networks
‘Social Capital’is not just something we acquire as individuals, Gratton suggests. Corporations need connectivity to drive innovation and profitability. I predict that these wider eco-systems may yet morph into the dystopian mega-corporations and global cartels of science fiction.
Partnering with consumers and entrepreneurs
As more workers become independent freelancers, and consumers become more savvy about what they want, corporations will increasingly need to extend their relationships to more fully engage with them.
Flexible Working
You didn’t see this one coming, did you? (Joke) If social, demographic, and lifestyle preferences are shifting, then so too will work patterns. And this will require flexibility from employers.
Lynda Gratton at TEDx
Hear Lynda Gratton talking about how to be ready for the future now, at a TEDx event at the London business School in 2012.
One of the commonest questions I get asked is this:
‘Mike, I’m not complaining, but why didn’t my team storm? We all got on with it and moved quickly from Forming to Norming and even Performing.’
My usual first answer is that ‘teams will storm’. When the pressure for a new team to achieve quick results is lifted, the internal pressures will emerge and, albeit out of sequence, the team will storm.
This is the Nature of Models
A model can predict or explain, but the nature of a model is to simplify. This means that, by definition, it must be wrong sometimes! The better a model, the less frequently it is wrong.
But neither this observation, nor my assertion that ‘teams will storm’ explains why they sometimes don’t storm at the ‘right’ time, nor more so, why some teams do not storm at all – yes, my assertion could be wrong too.
The concept was first articulated by Debra Meyerson, Karl Weick and Roderick Kramer and is the subject of a chapter in the cross disciplinary review book, Trust in Organizations, edited by Kramer and Tom Tyler (1996). Sometimes teams come together rapidly and need to work together effectively without the time it normally takes to build trust.
In some circumstances, trust can be built quickly and this, I suggest, is what delays and even stops the Storming phase. In my earlier Pocketblog, I offered these six conditions:
Presuming each team member has earned their place
Trusting other people’s expertise and knowledge
Creating shared goals and a shared recognition/reward scheme
Defining a clear role for each person to play
Focusing on tasks and actions
Taking responsibility and acting responsively
Swift Trust emerges when people are willing to suspend their doubts and concerns about colleagues and just get on with a shared task. They focus on their goals, their roles and the time constraint they are under.
Leadership Role in Creating Swift Trust
Leaders can help foster Swift Trust in seven ways:
Building a great first impression in the earliest days – this will have a big influence on the team
Building relationships from the outset and learning about team members
Swiftly and constructively dealing with concerns and issues as they arise
Creating a feeling that they are present even when they are elsewhere
Encouraging frequent team communication
Using private methods rather than public forums to deal with under-performance
Recognising and celebrating achievements frequently
So here’s the deal
Your team doesn’t have to storm, but if you want to avoid it, you have to build trust: swiftly.
Telephone conference calls are a great way for a geographically dispersed project team to stay in touch. The biggest problem is timing. If you are working in Britain, with colleagues in California, what time should you make the call?
A quick look at a map of time-zones reveals the problem. At noon British Time, it is 4am in California. Let’s say you are planning a 90 minute call. Typically, nobody likes getting up in the early hours, so you have to either move the call back to late evening or early morning in California. Let’s try them out:
Option A: Start at 9pm California; 5am Britain
Option B: Start at 9am California; 5pm Britain
My guess is that both parties will prefer Option B. The British won’t have to get up unrealistically early and the American’s won’t have to stay at work late. But this does mean that, while the Californian’s are bright as a button, the British are tired, at the end of the working day, staying on to 6:30.
The Challenges of Virtual Team
This is one tiny example of the challenges facing virtual teams – teams that do not work together physically. They are an increasing feature of the modern workplace. Even if your business is not a global or multi-national company, you are not immune.
Many small businesses work in complex global networks contributing products and services to international supply chains. Even many schools are now linking up across continents to enrich pupils’ learning opportunities.
In his Virtual Teams Pocketbook, Ian Fleming is spot on when he identifies technology as a key enabler, and also crushes the assumption that virtual teams are allabout technology. What Ian does do is give practical advice about using a range of technology tools to your advantage.
It is all about Communication
Technology is an enabler for the most important part of team working: communication. Whether your team is spread around offices across the world, or a series of local organisations, your top priority is to find the best ways to allow team members to stay in touch informally and to exchange formal information reliably.
Swift trust
In his Pocketbook, Ian Fleming describes a great process, called Swift Trust. The idea was developed by three authors called Meyerson, Weick and Kramer in 1996. Their thesis is that trust can be built quickly by :
Presuming each team member has earned their place
Trusting other people’s expertise and knowledge
Creating shared goals and a shared recognition/reward scheme
Defining a clear role for each person to play
Focusing on tasks and actions
Taking responsibility and acting responsively
Yes Please
How many groups have you worked in where one or more of these characteristics is missing. Deep trust comes from the one thing Swift Trust is designed to do without, personal relationships. However, surely each of the six characteristics above is essential for any team.
So here’s the deal
Whether your team is virtual or sitting around the same table, day after day, tailor your communications to build trust. Focus on the checklist above, and then look for ways to build personal relationships too.
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