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Introduction

The topic of this essay “What makes a team a GREAT

TEAM?” brought to my mind the film ‘Italian Job’, where a

team of crooks steal gold bullions from a highly secure safe

in Venice; basically, pulling off the impossible. Also, recent

Hindi films like ‘Lagaan’, ‘Chak-de India’ and ‘Goal’ also went

on to illustrate that a team of individuals can achieve

greatness by synergizing their efforts in absolute tandem.

That is the power of a team together. As is said, “Unity is

strength”. Self-sufficiency may be a prized trait in our culture,

but being a lone ranger can be a big mistake for a midsized

company, especially in an increasingly global economy.

We're finding that we have to be better at more things than

we used to be. But it's impossible to be good at everything,

so the key is to look for partners with core competencies that

fill in the gaps.

Maybe, this is the reason why the business world is

stressing so much upon team building. They want to build

teams, like, the best sports teams of the world. A question to

be raised now would be, “Why sports teams are not called

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sports groups”? The two words are used, by many,

interchangeably. Let’s find out why?

a) Groups and Teams.

The words “group” and “team” are thought to be

interchangeable because in layman’s terms they both

function as the collective terminology of individuals. But they

have different meanings.

According to the Oxford reference dictionary, - ‘a group is a

number of people or things gathered or classed together,

whereas, a team is two or more people working together’.

In management terminology, -

‘a work group, is a group that interacts primarily to share

information and to make decisions to help each member

perform within his or her area of responsibility, whereas, a

work team generates positive synergy through coordinated

effort. Their individual efforts results in a level of

performance that is greater than the sum of all those

individual inputs’.

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These definitions show us why most of the organisations all

over the world are focussing on team building. The statistics

quoted below illustrate this fact; approximately 80% of the

Fortune 500 companies have more than half or more of their

employees on teams. Some industries like, the information

technology sector, have their whole organisational structure

based on teams.

b) Types of Teams.

Teams can be formed for a variety of reasons. They also can

do a lot of things. According to textbooks, teams can be

categorised into four types, viz., problem solving teams, self-

managed teams, cross-functional teams and virtual teams.

Problem solving teams may be called the first kind of teams

to emerge in an organisational set-up. At first, the various

heads of departments meet each week for a few hours to

discuss areas of improvement. These were the first teams to

be set-up. Also, damage control teams and other such

committees are also of this type. They are prevalent in all

types of organisations including the government.

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Self-managed teams are groups of employees who perform

highly related or interdependent jobs and take on many

responsibilities of their supervisors. They have full control

over the jobs that they perform well and do not need any sort

of supervision. They are assessed by their co-workers and

are motivated by their respective team- members. These

teams are extremely rarely formed but are the most efficient

of all types and are the ideal models for all teams. The

reason being that along with freedom, added responsibility

helps in bettering quality standards and provides motivation

along the lines of job-involvement and belongingness.

A good example would be the operating staff on the shop-

floor of the Hero Honda Motors. The machine operators on

the assembly-line not only engage themselves in the

production activity but also carry out various quality checks

and maintenance activities. This helps them do their job

better and also avoid break-downs. Exactly like, the

Australian cricket team, which always has a say in the

selection of its players and also in its training procedures.

Cross-functional teams are made up of employees from the

same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who

come together to accomplish a task. Mahindra & Mahindra

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has adopted Integrated Design and Manufacturing (IDAM), a

product development process. These IDAM teams effectively

exchange information, develop new ideas, solve problem,

and coordinate complex projects.

Virtual teams are those that use computer technology to tie

together, physically dispersed members in order to achieve a

common goal. Wipro Technologies has adopted a new Meet

Your People Programme, which provide a novel framework

for interacting with various teams, based all over the country.

At ICICI InfoTech, the knowledge management platform is

an effective way of bridging people. Discussion boards and

e-groups are popular ways to stay in touch.

But in reality, most teams are functional teams, i.e., they are

formed by members of the same department and hence,

perform the same function. But, every team tries to rise to

the level of a self-managed team, thereby, trying to achieve

greatness.

After seeing as to what are great teams, let’s see how the

best in the business form them.

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2. Team Formation

a) Casting the right actors in the right roles: Recruiting the

team members

During every single time the Indian cricket team faces a

dilemma, “The pitch being such, we should have had such

and such player in the team too. But we don’t have a player

of this ability and calibre.” I can’t help but notice that the

Australian cricket team never does face such a scenario.

This may be because they have a pool of good players of

varying abilities, and, hence are hardly ever handicapped.

This is another feature of the best teams. They always have

the best of resources and hence can face any situation that

they encounter.

The most successful of leaders have understood three

simple truths. First, if you begin with “who”, rather than

“what”, you can more easily adapt to a changing world. If

people join the organisation primarily because of where it is

headed to, what happens if you go down the road and

discover that you need to change direction? Then you’ve a

problem. But if people are onboard because of who else is

on the bus, then it’s much easier to change the direction.

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Also, good people work better with other good people. It also

forges good working relations and ensures retainability. For

example, Sherlock Holmes works best with Watson, and Jay

found an excellent team mate in Veeru. Secondly, if you

have the right people on board, the problem of how to

motivate and manage people largely disappears. The right

people are largely self motivated and when they find out how

well they work with other right people, you’ve got a team

which will be powered with an inner drive to produce the best

results and be a part of something great. Thirdly, if you have

the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you are on the

right path; you still won’t have a winner of a company. Great

vision without great people is irrelevant.

The Bank of America climate that developed under Dick

Clooney would be a case in point here. While Dick Clooney

systematically recruited the best people who had hands on

knowledge. Bank of America followed something called as

the “weak generals, strong lieutenants” model. If you pick a

strong general for a key position, then his would-be

successors, i.e., the lieutenants would leave. But if you pick

weak generals- placeholders, rather than highly capable

executives- then the strong lieutenants are more likely to

stick around. While the aim was to produce a team where

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the best answers were discovered, the Bank of America’s

weak generals would wait for directions from above. Sam

Armgacost, who inherited the weak general’s model,

described the management climate as “I came away quite

distressed from my first couple of management meetings.

Not only couldn’t I get conflict, I couldn’t even get a

comment. They were all waiting to see which way the wind

blew”. Thus, by not getting the right dynamic people in key

positions, the Bank of America management got

strangulated by indecisiveness and meekness. What is

required by a company are committed people occupying the

right positions in the team, who are willing to stick their

heads out of the window to point out if a thing is good for the

company or not, regardless of the repercussions. But to

inspire such confidence, a supportive team is of utmost

importance. This would be discussed later. Below is a case

to show how such committed individuals make a difference.

The legendry JRD Tata did not try to handle everything

himself. He got the right people in places where they could

perform the best. For example, Tata Chemicals was spear

headed by J. J. Irani and Tisco was under the able

leadership of Russi Modi. Suman Mulgaonkar headed Tata

Motors while Ramadorai took the responsibility of TCS.

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Richard Branson also did the same. Having limited

knowledge of popular music he was assisted by Simon

Draper who helped him to sign on the best artists before

their meteoric rise.

Hence the old adage “People are your most important

asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not the most

important asset. The right people are. These right people

also require the right settings to work in and that is our next

topic.

a) Providing the Ambience: Creation of a Social System

Wal-Mart is the world’s most successful retailer. It’s known

(and remains to be known) for providing people with limited

means to buy branded stuffs without pinching their pockets.

This is because their staff continues to try and beat the

competition by providing the best of goods in the least of

prices. Thus, they have retained the dream on which they

were founded. This ability of re-dreaming the dream is rare

to find. Maybe that’s why great organisations that remain

great are all the more rare.

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Although times and circumstances change, the dreams and

commitments that drive an organisation should never

change, provided of course that they are right. As it’s

popularly said, “Keep what works and throw the rest away.”

This of course applies also to teams. A winning team’s

formula should never be changed. A good example of this

would be the Australian cricket team. The Australian Cricket

Board has found the means of producing the best of players

and keeping them always at the top of their form. Their state-

of- the art training facilities provides them with a pool of the

best players in the world; the best, both in skill and in their

champion’s like attitudes towards the game. These very best

players are always kept on their toes because of their

stringent selection procedures. So, even if star players like

Ricky Ponting or Brett Lee don’t play according to the

required standards, a Michael Johnson or S Clarke is ready

to take their place in the team. Meanwhile these star players

are given rest and their dip in performance is rectified

through their ensemble of support staff. This is what makes

the Australian team the champions of the Cricket World Cup

three times in a row, a feat accomplished never before in the

cricketing fraternity. This kind of consistency is said to be the

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mark of great teams, and it is achieved by a supportive

social system.

But what is a social system? It is a system of shared

characteristics and behavioural patterns that is loaned to an

organisation by its constituting members. It is that internal

system that distinguishes one organisation from another. It

can also be called the dominant culture or defining culture

which enlists the core values that are shared by a majority of

the organisation’s members.

The social system can be a detrimental one or one that

helps the organisation to flourish. Organisations can have

bureaucratic social system that drives the organisation to

dust or can have one that simply encourages its employees

to communicate with each other to find the best of answers.

Every organisation has a social system, but what most of the

existing organisations need is a good and effective one.

Exceptionally good and efficient social systems create

institutions of the organisations themselves. These

institutionalised organisations take a life of their own and

outlive their founder members. For example, Disney

Animation Studios outlives its founder Walt Disney and

continues to provide brilliant entertainment experience by

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pushing the technological realms of animation even today.

The fact is very well illustrated by Disney Animation Studios’

ability to attract the best animators in the world.

The social system of an organisation always finds its

birthplace in the character of its founder and creator. If Virgin

is known to be a brand that constantly defies conventionality,

it’s because it acquires this character from its founder

Richard Branson. If the Tatas are known to be the

gentlemen among the corporate world it’s because of the

distinguished personality of JRD Tata. But, these set of

values are to be preserved if the organisation wishes to

continue its growth. They are the essence of why the

business does well and shouldn’t be sacrificed under any

costs. By preserving the social system, every organisation

can become champions in their field just like the Australian

cricket team. After all every one is subjected to the

Darwinian theory of evolution, “The survival of the Fittest.”

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3. Functioning of the Team

a) Removal of Friction : Monitoring the Social System

The performance of a leader depends mainly on the ability to

get other people to commit to and deliver their common

goals. But as every leader knows, getting people to align

their efforts is a lot like herding cats. You can put a lot of

energy into it, and they still do as they please. Some astute

business leaders though, have solved this problem by

understanding the social system of their respective

organizations.

Every company - from a big business to the smallest two

-person shop - has a social system. How people work

together is called the social system of an organization. This

can create energy gains or energy drains and determines

whether the people deliver on the commitments they make

to each other. Thus, whenever one sees a company that is

doing something consistently well - creating one good

product after another, delivering on time day after day, or

steadily driving down costs - one can be sure that there is an

effective social system behind it.

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But many organizations fall short of achieving this effective

social set-up. They do talk about the importance of good

working environment and good working relations, which help

employees work. But when it comes to the analysis of why

they failed to achieve the desired business results they

conveniently forget about the social set-up of their

organization. Maybe this is because somewhere they feel

that changing the existing social set-up is way too difficult

and cumbersome. But what they fail to notice that while

bringing about the change is difficult, it is also imperative.

Know-how in diagnosing, designing, and leading the social

system is how some leaders transform an organization from,

say, a bureaucracy to a well-oiled machine, as Jack Welch

did as CEO of GE. Judging the social system can be done

by observing the way people interact, the openness and free

flow of the information throughout the organization, and the

anatomy of decision making. For example, here is a story of

how a newly appointed leader diagnosed the social system

of his new company and within months had begun to change

it.

Harry, the new CEO, was very furious with Carl, the division

president’s attitude of hoarding information and not willingly

sharing it with the other departments. But he also knew that

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Carl was doing an excellent job of running his division, the

company’s biggest and most profitable. But Harry knew

something was not right and was determined to get to the

bottom of it. Upon questioning the headquarters’ staff, Harry

discovered that the response was uniform: “That’s the way it

is. The divisions hold back as much information as possible.

We have to beg to get anything from them.” Harry was

slowly and surely beginning to see that it wasn’t just Carl

who wasn’t forthcoming with information. He quickly

surmised that his predecessor was a person of an erratic

personality. He often assigned targets with no rationale

behind them. He had also no background in finance and

operations but apparently that never stopped him from

meddling in both. The way to survive and do what was best

for the business, the divisions found, was to keep operating

and financial information close to their vests. So, Harry

proceeded to call Carl for a dinner and made small talk with

him. He slowly approached the topic and attempted to break

the ice with him. Soon, Carl was set thinking, “Maybe this

company will change for the better and I can be a part of it.”

Harry reflected later on the situation and wondered how

deep this fear and insecurity had spread. He knew that at

this point spontaneously firing someone like Carl or changing

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the organizational structure was not the right remedy. What

he had to do was change the interactions, the kind of

information that flowed and draw people in to opine,

overcome conflicts and work like a team. Although he was

still new in the job, he was starting to develop a pretty good

idea of what was needed to be changed and how to change

it.

b) Creating the Will to Work : Motivation

First of all, by getting the right people in the organisation the

major problem of motivation is conquered. This is because

the right people are largely self-motivated. The fact that they

are working with other good and right people is also a

motivating factor because of the good work-time relations

formed. Another great way to motivate the team is by

constantly improving their knowledge-base and skills through

periodic training. This builds self-confidence in the team

members. Other forms of motivation such as appreciation

and recognition, skill-based payment plans, amenities and

flexible benefits also have considerable effect over such

teams.

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But there is a requirement of supplying a supportive

environment, i.e., to allow everyone to say their two-bits

without restrictions. A freedom to express without the fear of

dire consequences always motivates the team to contribute

their best. In an unsupportive environment, this fear or

insecurity can rob the organisation from the chance of

benefiting from these very ideas. This also increases job-

involvement and creates a sense of belongingness.

Too many of leaders lack self-confidence. They go to a team

session with a megaphone, spout a bunch of inspirational

stuff, and leave. At GE, Jack Welch went there to listen. He

selected people who had the confidence to confront him.

They would engage in a totally non- hierarchical exchange of

criticism and ideas. It's true that Welch suffered no fools. But

the fools he did not suffer were people who tried to talk

about the bush to him.

This freedom of expression is a power tool for the team. But

as is made famous from the Spiderman comic strips, “Great

power comes with great responsibility”. Let’s take a look at

the freedom-responsibility dynamics, now.

c) Freedom- Responsibility: Ensuring Commitment

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The world is full of give and take relationships. It is what

provides the whole culture with a sense of balance. If you

receive something, you’re expected to give something back.

As Viktor E. Frankl said in Man’s search for Meaning,

“Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth…. That

is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East

Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the

West Coast”. Ones rights are accompanied by ones duties

and this holds true for great teams as well.

All great teams understand that with all the freedom they are

given they have a job to perform. That is the reason for their

existence in the first place. This understanding is achieved

by creating a culture of discipline. A culture of discipline is

not just about action. It is about getting disciplined people

who engage in disciplined thought and who then take

disciplined action. The right people though will always be

committed and self-disciplined but an occasional reminder

always works wonders. This is because; basically humans

are a lazy lot.

But this culture of discipline should not be confused with

tyranny. That doesn’t produce sustained results.

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Let’s see what would ensure the sustenance of a team

beyond the tenure of a leader.

d) Handing over the Torch: ensuring Continuity

Recently there was such a hullabaloo of, “Who should be the

next captain of the Indian cricket team?” when Rahul Dravid

expressed his desire to give up the captaincy. Suddenly the

team was “captain-less”, a quite frightening prospect to be

faced with. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was the one to be chosen

but the question to be raised is, “Is Dhoni equipped with the

necessary qualities or would he, like the numerous others,

learn on the job?” On the other hand, the Australian cricket

team has already started spotted the leadership qualities in

young Michael Clark. Ponting and the support staff play an

essential role in moulding the future captain and getting him

ready for the responsibility. Creating successors is a very

important part of team building. Humans lead a limited life-

span and if we want our organisation to enjoy a market

standing over a long period of time, we need successors for

each team member. This enables continuity of the team’s

essential factors and ensures that the organisation reaps the

benefits over a long period.

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A model that though seems profitable at the present but

eventually declines is the “Genius with a thousand helpers”

model. Normally the genius who is the corner stone of the

business doesn’t bother getting the right team set-up.

He/she just needs a group of helpers who would implement

the great ideas. However, when the genius leaves, the

helpers are often lost. Or worse, they try to mimic their

predecessor with bold, visionary moves (trying to act like a

genius without being a genius) that eventually prove

unsuccessful. Mr. Narayan Murthy did not commit this

mistake. Though he virtually is the genius behind the Infosys

success, he did spend a lot of time on building his team.

Eventually, he found a successor to whom he could hand-

over the torch, that person being Nandan Nilekani. Disney

found the support and anchoring of Walt Disney in his

grandson Donald and it continues to produce some of the

best motion pictures.

Hence, these institutions continue long after the geniuses

who instituted them and achieve the strength to carry on.

The torch that fires their drive to give their best continues in

the form of a new leader.

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Now, to ensure that the team doesn’t loose these pools of

talent.

4. Making an offer they can’t refuse: Combating Attrition

According to Warren Buffett, if you have to find the reason

for half the people leaving an organisation look no further

than their immediate boss. This situation is nullified by

providing a supportive environment and by ensuring that

superior-subordinate relations are smooth. A good pay-

packet and incentives for high performance also helps

lowering turn-over. Recognition and appreciation of

achievements not only boosts the morale of the team

members but also encourages the others to deliver a good

performance.

Generally, people like to be associated with a growing

organisation or a market-leader where company-growth

equals personal growth. They like to work in an environment

which helps them to upgrade their skills and favours the

learning-curve. They like to perform jobs which challenge

their faculties and test their skills.

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All these factors, combined together make an offer that

cannot be refused.

5. Conclusion

If the right ingredients fall into the right places one can

achieve culinary mastery. Similarly, if the right people fill the

right places in the right social system with the freedom to do

their job to the best of their abilities, a great team can be

created. This recipe for a great team has been proven to be

effective time and again as has been shown in the various

case- studies. Building a great team however, is no piece of

cake.

However, when an effective team comes together, one hears

the inspiring music from a great orchestra.

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