TeamBuilt: Making Teamwork Work Note on Copying and Distribution: This special edition e-book is provided free as a thank you for purchasing The Fred Factor. You are licensed to use this single copy with no rights of reproduction – see below. If you’d like additional copies, please purchase additional copies of The Fred Factor or contact us for direct purchasing options. Copyright © 2004 by Mark Sanborn All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the permission of the author, except in the case of quotations. Published by: Sanborn & Associates, Inc. 818 Summer Drive Highlands Ranch, CO 80126 303.683.0714 [email protected] Please visit our web sites at: www.MarkSanborn.com www.FredFactor.com Subscribe to Leadership Lessons - a monthly ezine dedicated to developing leaders in business and in life. TEAMBUILT MAKING TEAMWORK WORK M a r k S a n b o r n ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without my clients who, over the years, have generously shared their ideas, experiences, and insights. Their trials and triumphs taught me a lot about teamwork. I'm grateful for the many opportunities I've had to work with truly teambuilt organizations. I'd also like to express my appreciation to: Michael LeBoeuf, Jeff Slutsky, and Robert Tucker for their friendship, encouragement, counsel, and support. Francie and Marc Schwartz for sharing their expertise on teambuilding games. Andrea Meyer for her research assistance. Diana Lynn for her skillful editing and dedication to the project. Susan Stautberg for her savvy publishing advice. And finally, a special thanks to the business leaders and organizations featured in Chapter 13, "Developing the Teambuilt Difference," for their contributions to my work. PREFACE Teamwork is fast becoming one of the most compelling management philosophies in today's business world. Witness the recent explosion of books, articles, and seminars that tout the benefits of teamwork. Clearly corporate America has become more sophisticated in its thinking and writing about teambuilding philosophy. But what's missing is a corollary explosion in teambuilding practice. I know this firsthand from years of experience as a business trainer, seminar leader, and professional speaker. Moreover, for the past six years I have extensively researched teamwork. I found volumes of information on teamwork theory but little on actual techniques for teaching people how to work as teams. Yet one of the biggest challenges most organizations face-and one of the greatest sources of frustration for employees-is the inability of leadership to effectively put theory into practice. American companies, large and small, are recognizing the power of teamwork to increase productivity, inspire commitment and camaraderie, improve communication, and speed decision making. Teamwork can improve the performance and bottom-line results of almost any organization. Take the San Diego Zoo. While much of Southern California tourism was suffering from the recession and Gulf War, the zoowhich is run by employee teams-was enjoying a 20 percent increase in attendance. Zoo director Douglas Myers credits employees' sense of ownership: "I told them recession is coming; we're going to target our marketing on the local area alone, and we're going to ask all our visitors to come back five times-so each time they'd better have more fun than the time before. "The employees came through," says Myers. The growing use of teamwork is evidenced in the number of organizations competing for the new Quality Cup award. Developed by USA Today and the Rochester Institute of Technology, the award honors teams of 5 to 20 people in five categories: manufacturing firms, service companies, government agencies, nonprofit institutions, and small business. More than 2,000 organizations and 431 teams applied for the 1992 awards-the competition's first. Entries ranged from major multinationals, such as IBM and Xerox, to nonprofit institutions such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to the Air Force's 18-man 37th Air Rescue Squadron. "No matter what it is you're trying to do today, teams are the most effective way to get the job done," says Donald Petersen, former CEO at Ford Motor Co. and keynote speaker at the Quality Cup presentations. Such testimonials win new converts by the droves. The problem is, too often teamwork success stories are long on inspiration and short on instruction. Missing are answers to the question most businesspeople ask: "How do we do it?" That's what Teambuilt aims to teach. You'll learn the 10 critical differences between a synergistic team and a traditional work group. I'll show you the six steps it takes to build a team and how to recognize team players from team slayers. Teambuilt is packed with practical advice, exercises, solutions to common problems, and even games, to help you make teamwork work. Many of the concepts presented in this book will be familiar, because my aim was not to rewrite tried-and-true principles. What Teambuilt does is take these principles one step further to create a pragmatic business philosophy that combines theory and technique. Does teamwork work for every organization? That depends on your expectations. Team built can't promise to turn a failing business into an overnight success, but the lessons here will teach you how to have a more well-run operation. Not every organization can achieve the kind of success required to become one of the media darlings that management gurus and business magazines routinely write about. If you and your organization aspire to such lofty heights, Teambuilt will point you in the right direction and, I hope, inspire you to get there. If you simply want to improve the quality of life for yourself and your people, and increase your organization's performance in the process, you've come to the right place. - Mark Sanborn CHAPTER 1 TEAMWORK WORKS Teamwork works. That's the lesson being learned throughout corporate America, from the assembly line to the boardroom, and in organizations ranging from the military to nonprofit agencies to Fortune 500 companies. Teamwork works because it allows employees to take their jobs more seriously. It gives them a sense of control over their lives. It fosters commitment by getting them involved in the decision making process, and ultimately, teamwork improves the bottom-line results of organizations that practice it. The business media is full of examples of organizations that have proven the effectiveness of teamwork. Look at almost any successful group of people and you'll find high levels of teamwork-whether or not that's what they call it. In 1986, for the first time, the U.S. Army discarded its traditional system of assigning soldiers to units individually in favor of a system that assigned teams of soldiers to units for their entire tour of duty. The Army found that soldiers who were part of a stable group were more productive, more reliable, and took more responsibility for the overall success of the operation. Walmart is the largest retailer in America today, having sustained phenomenal growth for 25 consecutive years. One thing that distinguishes Walmart from its competitors is the depth of employee involvement. Walmart doesn't even refer to its employees as "employees"-they refer to them as "associates"; Walmart keeps associ- ates informed of company policies and practices, and actively involves them in corporate decision making. Walmart is an unusual organization in that it isn't afraid of the NIH syndrome. NIH, which stands for "not invented here," is the tendency to resist any idea that you or the people in your department didn't think of yourselves. If you've been to a Walmart store recently, you probably noticed the store greeter who stands at the front of the store to welcome you and direct you to the area where you want to shop. This idea didn't come from the corporate marketing group; it didn't come from Walmart's customer service department-it was suggested by a cashier at a local store. The ability to get an idea that originates at a local level implemented throughout an entire retail system is testimony to the depth of employee involvement at Walmart. Armor-All, the marketer of quality car care products, has only 65 employees. One of the best gauges of a company's productivity is sales per employee, a figure that is calculated by dividing total company sales by the number of employees. At Armor-All, the sales per employee is an impressive $2.4 million. How does Armor-All do it? Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Sherman says, "I think teamwork is the key ingredient in our company's success. When you've only got 65 people and you're enjoying revenues of $2.4 million per employee, that must mean that people work together pretty well." Another example of the power of teamwork is Japanese Air Lines. JAL used to maintain its aircraft much the same way American airlines do: a team of mechanics works on literally dozens of different airplanes in the course of a given year. In 1985, after experiencing one of the worse air disasters in history, JAL changed the way it maintains aircraft. At the airport just outside Tokyo, 15-person teams are assigned to only two aircraft: a DC10 and a 747. Inside every passenger cabin hangs a plaque signed by members of that plane's maintenance team. They also have implemented an unusual quality-control technique: after every major repair, the team leader has to fly on the airplane's first flight to make sure that the work was done right. Stories like these prove the need for and effectiveness of organizational teamwork.