Team Results

Achieving Team Results is the ultimate measure of the greatness of a team. In sport it is easy to list the successful teams; Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and no doubt, in time, Chelsea Football Club. They will only be measured as a truly world-class football team when they achieve results over a period of time. For an organisation such as Chelsea, they have measures beyond the results on the pitch, for example: They are aiming to break-even financially by 2009-10.

This article looks at developing a focus on team results and why they are so important to developing a high performance team. I am often asked during team building sessions how to gain a focus on results. Typical issues that leaders present include:

• Team members more interested in their own personal results than that of the team
• Stopping the team being distracted from their goals

How are you measuring success?

There is an old statement: What gets measured, gets done - and it's true. Any team needs to know what success means to them. A lack of clarity about what is success and then measuring how you are doing in being successful is essential. For Chelsea, they have the measure of the team results and a league table. It is tangible and clear. It becomes harder when you look at the world of organisations. Or does it?

What are your measures of Success?

There is the financial results, stock market price. These "bottom-line" results are essential. There has been a revolution in the last tem years with the recognition that measuring the key things that deliver financial results are just as important. Business writers like Kaplan and Norton (Balanced Scorecard) talked about developing a scorecard that measured key indicators that helped translate and measure progress towards a pre-determined strategy.

At MVR, we work extensively with the UK Public Sector and see a major problem being the death by targets. The Government rightly recognised the need to measure performance - what gets measured.

The difficulty is these targets do not, necessary reflect how you might measure success for a team or the organisation as a whole. So the first part of gaining a focus on results is to consider what are the key measures of success covering the four aspects of Financial, Customer, Organisational Development and Business Processes. These measures of success link back to the strategy and vision for the organisation and team. The scorecard then provides a good "dashboard" of how you are doing and should be reviewed at team meetings and actions taken to improve.

The Power of Team Goals

How do I know what tasks the team should be working on? Having set the measures, a team needs to determine the key goals that will meet the measures. How do I improve financial results, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction through learning and growth and improve processes and practices - what will make the biggest impact? What are the must do/imperatives to meet the organisation's/team's vision and strategy?

By developing your goals with the following:

Having developed your goals, it is essential these are monitored on a regular basis. Our recommendation is to hold a quarterly off-site goal review. We use the following format:

By making this a regular part of your team's approach you ensure a focus on achieving goals. You will rarely achieve everything, perhaps you don't want to, as a stretch is allows required with goals. The most motivating goals have a 50/50 chance of success. So always build this into the plans for next 3 months.

Team versus Individual Results

In today's performance management dominated appraisal systems with individual bonuses at stake it is easy for team members to focus on individual results and not on the collective. We are after all all human and it is natural to put colleagues in second place.

Rewards must firstly ensure that achieving the team's results are what matter. Yes, individual contribution is important and people need to be accountable for delivering on their goals. Always reward team efforts. Another method of ensuring focus on the team is to ensure you make the scorecard highly visible.

Teams Work

When members of a team are willing and prepared to make sacrifices, e.g. giving up budget, releasing a key member of their team, or provide expertise to another team member you know that results are tipped towards the team. The team members should feel saddened when the team as a whole does not succeed and bask in the warm glow when the team succeeds. Encourage team members to be quick to point out the contributions of colleagues. It is better that they are slow to seek the credit for themselves.

If we can assist in helping your team, check out our team development activities page or contact us on 01825 712373 or e-mail us to the address below.