In 1990 I was looking forward to the Men’s 4 x 100m final at the European Athletics Championships – Great Britain had one of their strongest ever squads. The British commentator tracked the team of my home nation all the way and his almost dismissive acknowledgment of the French win is jarring when I look back on it. The French didn’t just win, they also took the world record – it was the first time in over two decades the record had NOT been held by the USA. (The USA had held the world record since 1968, when they took it from Jamaica at the Mexico Olympics.) Like the commentator I had been so focused on the speed of the sprinters I had failed to consider the speed of the baton.
The England football manager, Alf Ramsay, understood this (at least if the story I heard about him is true, and not apocryphal). Alf Ramsay was in charge when England won their only Football World Cup in 1966. One of his strikers was upset he wasn’t playing. Jimmy Greaves was an incredibly talented forward, one of the best, and went to Alf Ramsay to say he thought he should be off the bench and on the field. Alf Ramsay apparently replied, “you may be the best striker, but I’m the manager, and I don’t pick the best players, I pick the best team.”
Overlooking the spaces between the objects is something I have seen and experienced in business. I have been part of several organizational changes in which leadership unveiled the new organization chart, which often arrived late and with evidence of a scramble, and then that’s it. Having an organization chart doesn’t even address half the problem when people need to begin working with people they don’t know so well. The new team needs to understand how they are supposed to interact, to have a clear idea of one another’s roles and responsibilities, and to know the hand-off points. The flow between the members of the team has to be considered; you can have the strongest team in the world and could mean little.
This interaction between team members was something Google uncovered when they conducted a study into highly performing teams. In Google’s study NONE of the elements in a highly performing team related to the individual strength of its members, nor did they find it important to consider the blend of skills within the unit. Instead they concluded highly performing teams exhibit the following:
- Psychological safety
- Dependability
- Structure & clarity
- Meaning of work
- Impact of work
The first two items on the list relate to the relationship team members have with one another.
“But let there be spaces in your togetherness” ~ Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet, 1923)
It’s interesting that we define ourselves according to our job.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a doctor / architect / plumber / developer ….”
Sometimes, when our ego kicks in (or when we believes others are driven by ego) we define ourselves by our title:
“I’m a manager / senior manager / vice-president…”
I was wondering what the world would be like if we defined ourselves in terms our relationship to others, but there is a place we do that, and without even thinking:
“I’m a mother / husband / grandmother …” I’ve even heard a proud sibling say, “Now I’m a big sister.”
What if we could carry that kind of thinking into work? What if we instinctively considered ourselves in relationship to one another? I believe our teams would be stronger. I don’t know that we would address the inclination to build teams full of people who are too similar in their way of thinking, but we could address that by thinking not about ourselves, and not even abut the interaction between us, but by considering the speed of the baton.
