This article dives into the 3 core ingredients that enable a team to deliver at a high level of performance.

We’ll get into the weeds on each one, but in summary, they are:

• A clear identity for what the team does, how, and why
• Tools and processes that speed up progress, not impede it
• A clear set of metrics for what performance looks like and the means to measure them

The ingredients

Let’s dive into each one of these to understand why they are important in the context of a team.

Identity

Like individual identity, team identity can be a powerful driver of distinction, purpose and pride.

One important distinction with a lot of utility is what a team does and does not do. A team that is clear on this will spend less time deliberating on all the things that it could do in favour of pointed discusions on what it will do.

A team with an important purpose has no interest in getting bogged down in discussions about doing if it comes at the expense of actually doing. The opportunity cost is too high, the outcome too important not to be taking meaningful steps towards it.

Pride comes from making that progress, seeing the outcomes of the work, seeing that rate of progress grow, the quality of the outcome improve. Pride in themselves, what they’ve been able to accomplish together. A team that slays together, stays together.

Curating a team’s identity ideally starts at its inception. But given it’s not always possible, the next best thing is to rebuild the team around an identity that is the best compromise of what is needed and who you have.

Tools

A tool, even a bad one, is a force-multiplier; an object of leverage. The best tools offer the highest leverage.

A tool that does not create mechanical-advantage is either broken, or it is not a tool at all. Continuing to use broken tool almost always costs more than replacing with one that works. Using a not-tool is even more expensive again.

A team with mastery of its tools inspects them often, maintains them as required, trains with them to keep their skills sharp, and replaces them when they fail or degrade. They also don’t cart around any more than is necessary to do what is needed.

Metrics

A high-performing team can explain exactly how it knows it is high-performing.

They can tell you which metrics they improved on from last month, and by how much. They can also tell you why of all the metrics available, why the three they’ve chosen to focus on are important.

They’ll be able to describe the changes they made to bring about those changes, as well as the things they tried that didn’t work.

You can ask anyone in the team and they’ll all give you the same story.

Some actionable stuff

Thanks for indulging me with the above. So what are some practical things we can do?

Here’s some things I’ve found consistent success with the teams I have built, run and been a part of.

Identity

• If at all possible, invest time in identifying the things that will drive distinction, purpose and pride when you are forming the team in the first place.
  • Establish these in the business first and gain support
  • Lean on these heavily in your hiring / recruitment
  • Continuously reflect on and hone these. These are the foundational elements of your team’s culture!
• If you already have a team, propose some new drivers of the above and follow the same process above
  • It’s important to try and “recruit” your existing team members again becuase what they are committing too has changed!
• If you are struggling to identify drivers of distinction, purpose and / or pride for your team, this could also be indicating something about the need / opportunity for this team!
• Reflect on team identity often:
  • Does the purpose still motivate?
  • Is the distinction still meaningful?
  • Are we still as proud of what we do?

Tools

• Ensure time budget in the team to work just on your ways of working. This should include:
  • Reviews of tools / processes to assess whether to persist / pivot / perish
  • Maintain a backlog of improvements to tools/ processes in the same way as regular work
  • Working on improvements to tools / processes from the backlog
• Gather feedback more often from the team on tools / processes
  • Do they still serve the need / intent?
  • Are there alternatives?

Metrics

• Invest time to shortlist, validate three measurable, top-line metrics that align with:
  • The team’s purpose
  • The business expectations of the team
  • The team’s chosen ways of working
  • The teams ability to influence
• Implement the measurement capabilty
• Make the metrics highly-visible and part of recurring rituals:
  • Celebrating improvement
  • Acknowledging back-slides
  • Discussing new things to try

In summary

We’ve barely scratched the surface on this stuff. Please let me know if you’d love to read in more detail on any of the topics I’ve touched on in more detail.

For now, the key takeaways are:

• A strong identity can drive motivation to deliver excellent results
• Investing time in maintaining tools / processes delivers speed benefits
• A small number of meaningful metrics, made visible encourages continuous improvement
• All three of these require constant pressure to ensure they continue to drive success

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