How big is your team?

How big is your team?  I am not suggesting that authority or effectiveness derives from the number of reports you have.  In fact, I believe the opposite, that authority and effectiveness come from the influence you have over decision-making and that is usually rooted in your knowledge, instinct, creativity and experience.  It’s for this reason that many people in an organization have an impact on a team’s ability to deliver against goals and targets.  They have influence, even if they are not aware of it.  My argument today is that we should be more expansive in the way we think about teams.  This goes beyond what is written on an org chart and embraces a more inclusive and interesting definition of what a team is.

I worked for years in Content Distribution.  I observed that frontline sales teams (with challenging sales targets) often didn’t understand the back-end operations required to successfully deliver the product and meet their targets.  I tend to gravitate towards what I don’t understand because I hate not understanding something.  I like to be aware of risks before they materialize, I often test and correct my assumptions with people who have a deeper working knowledge of what is going on and then try to summarize them in a way that more people can understand.  I think this has helped me in my career progression.  The problem when frontline teams don’t appreciate back-end operations, and don’t treat the people responsible for those processes as part of the team, is that they often have expectations that are impossible to deliver.  A good friend and excellent Operations lead once described a problem in the run-up to year-end as “it’s basic physics James, you can’t get that much information through the available pipes in that timeframe”.  He was right.  Even though intellectual property is intangible and exchanged digitally, the laws of physics still apply when you need to distribute it to complete the sale in time to recognize revenue.  If you are not aware of this fact, or ignore it, you may struggle to hit target.

In the example above I am sure that the Sales team thought they were including the Operations function as part of their team.  But not all teams are created equal and not all teams work effectively.  A core part of being in a team is that your experience and knowledge are acknowledged, your advice is sought in plenty of time and most importantly your advice is listened to and actioned when necessary.  I have witnessed the opposite of this where the expertise of Operations was ignored with an attempt to blame them because they couldn’t bend physics to their will.  In one delightful story the head of an operations team was taken for lunch at year-end by the senior sales lead.   The Operations Lead thought this was a friendly sign of appreciation from sales for their hard work during a demanding time.  Unfortunately, the Sales Lead instead informed the Operations Lead that they were going to miss their target and that they intended to place the full blame for this on Operations.  It was a happier moment for “the team” when the Sales Lead left the business.

Other unhealthy team building traits include disingenuous attempts to use loyalty to stop team members doing their jobs and communicating risks and issues.  This is easier to observe from the other side where shared functions with separate leadership structures (such as Finance, Legal and Operations) are not communicated with and not made part of the team because the frontline team know that mistakes are being made, but don’t have the time and resource to fix them.  Inevitably these issues blow up and what could have been managed effectively and corrected discretely by a team that was willing to trust its support network, ends up detonating at the wrong time with far greater negative consequences.  Where teams have full management responsibility for a support function, that support team can be leant on and encouraged not to speak to members outside the team.  This can be described as a “team”, but it isn’t a healthy one.  It has forgotten the primary reason for its existence, which is to align with and deliver on the objectives of the organization, not cover up problems that need to be addressed.

I take the meaning of team to the extreme where possible.  I want everyone who contributes to the success of the team and the success of the organization to feel like their role is vital and appreciated.  When I first conceived of this topic it was going to be focused on IT and Facilities.  I gravitated away from this as most of the poor behavior I have witnessed between staff members and IT & Facilities are from individual bad manners rather than team dynamics.  That said, for a group of individuals that are essential for getting work done, I do not understand anyone who doesn’t take the time to build personal relationships, thank them regularly for their help and share with them what a positive contribution they are making.  I am on my third laptop this year in a bid to find one that meets my requirements and helps me to be as efficient as possible.  I am biased as I believe my office has the best IT & Facilities team I have ever worked with, but this team goes above and beyond to figure out issues and get me up and running.  You may argue that is their job, but they frequently provide a service that is greater than any service level agreement I have experienced.  Even it if is their job, the simple fact that they are doing it well and reliably is a huge win for the company.  During Covid and the switch to working from home, this team were treated as essential workers and without their efforts business would have been much harder than it already was.  Returning to my original point, the IT & Facilities team will have an influence on how teams are able to do their jobs and hit their targets.  You may or may not notice this on a daily basis (although their influence is always there), but you will definitely notice it when things go wrong, and you need their help.  For this reason, they are a core part of any team.

Let me know your thoughts on this.  Next week is some advice from a former manager about career direction.