ISL2630

Team Building and Development

The team composition
and
team context strategies
Getting the right people on the team for Bain & Company
1. Bain also invests heavily in two rounds of interviews with recruits as it looks for
three skill sets: analytical and problem-solving skills, client and communication
management skills, and team collaboration skills.
2. In the first round of interviews, recruits are largely tested on their analytical and
problem-solving skills as they are asked to solve business cases during the
interviews.
3. The second round focuses more on whether recruits have the client and
communication skills necessary and whether they will be effective team players.
4. Finally, recruits must pass the airplane test: “Is this someone I would want to
hang out with for six hours on an airplane?” “Is this someone I want to work on
my team?”
Getting the right people on the team for Bain & Company
1. Another keyway that Bain gets the right people on the bus is to watch them
perform on a Bain team before they are hired as a full-time consultant. To do this,
Bain invests heavily in a summer intern program.
2. Thus, Bain puts potential team members on a simulated “bus ride” before putting
them on the bus for good.
3. According to Mark Howorth, senior director of global recruiting for Bain,
roughly two-thirds of new consultants hired have either worked at Bain as
summer interns or as analysts (associate consultants) after graduating from
college. This dramatically reduces the risk of getting the wrong people on the
bus.
Provide Clear Top Management Support for Team
Development
1. A company with a clear team-related mission statement will assign a top
corporate officer or group to monitor how well teams are functioning. This sends
a clear signal that teams are fundamentally important and that to succeed,
everyone must learn to contribute to the team effort.
2. Too many organizations give some emphasis to team building in a middle
management seminar or training program, but there is little evidence that upper
management takes any of this seriously.
Create Organizational Rewards to Support Teamwork
1. Managers must be able to see that if they develop a successful team, their efforts
will be rewarded. This means having some criteria of team effectiveness and
having those criteria emphasized in the performance review system.
2. Managers at all levels should monitor and be monitored on what is being done to
build effective teams, and organizational resources need to be made available to
support such action.
3. Effective teams should be singled out for praise in company meetings and in
official publications, and organizations should recognize effective teams with
some clear, special rewards.
Create Organizational Rewards to Support Teamwork
1. Regardless of the nature of the reward, it is important for managers to see that
they are being rewarded for engaging in team development activities that result in
effective work.
2. We often find organizations today using multiple criteria— individual, team, and
organizational—to determine pay raises and bonuses.
3. For example, an organization might base its bonuses using the following
percentages: 40 percent on individual achievement, 40 percent on team
achievement, and 20 percent on the achievement of organizational goals.
4. In this way, organizations can focus an employee’s attention not only on
individual achievement but on achieving the goals of the team and organization.
Make Time Available for Team Development
1. When researchers asked employees why they didn't make time for team meetings
to solve their problems, they responded: "We don't have time; we can't close the
branch to solve these problems. We have to wait for customers."
2. When asked why they didn't come to work earlier or stay late after hours to
discuss and solve their problems, they responded: "The President would never
pay us to spend time as a team working on these issues."
3. The president’s answer was: "If it improves performance, let's do it." The
president decided to give all employees one paid hour per week to meet as a
branch team to discuss problems in the branch and make plans to take corrective
action.
4. Most branch teams decided to meet one hour before their branches opened on
Friday. The results were almost immediate: problems were resolved, customer
service improved, and employee morale was strengthened.
Regularly Assess Whether the Organization’s Culture,
Structure, and Systems Support Teamwork
1. One reason for poor team performance is the lack of congruence between an
organization’s culture, structure, and systems and team development.
2. The assessment in figure 3.2 could be used for this purpose. The organization
needs to be designed to support teams, conduct compensation and performance
reviews that encourage teamwork, and demonstrate that it values the work of
those who participate in teams.
3. After such an assessment, management can take corrective action to ensure that
these three factors support teamwork.
Develop a Systematic Process for Making Team
Assignments
1. Without the right players (those who are motivated and have the right skills), a
team is unlikely to succeed. Thus, organizations need to develop clear methods
and criteria for making team assignments.
2. In this process, the organization should identify (1) the goals for the team; (2) the
knowledge, skills, and experience that the team leader and team members need
for the team to achieve its goals; and (3) the optimal number of members needed
for the team to achieve its goal.
In Summary
1. Context and composition are the initial building blocks of effective team
performance.
2. When culture, structure, systems, and processes support teamwork along with
strong support from top management, an environment is created for teams to
flourish.
3. Moreover, when organizational leaders take the composition of teams seriously,
they identify the skills, abilities, experience, and motivation that are needed for a
team to succeed and create clear processes for “signing up” team members and
evaluating their performance.
4. As illustrated by Bain & Company, organizations that carefully craft the context
and composition of their teams and regularly evaluate how the organization is
performing along these dimensions are well on their way to developing high
performing teams.
Video notes from Norms How to Create Productive Norms in
the Team
1. And what they found, is that when the staff, when the team members, all ready have
extremely high expectations. In terms of the behaviors that are expected and accepted
within the team. When the team members hold themselves accountable, and have high
expectations for themselves. The leader, maybe naturally, has less influence on what
those norms are. When the team members in the staff have high expectations, they're
defining and setting those expectations. They're setting and defining what the norms are.
2. However, when you as a leader walk into a team. Where those norms, those expectations
among the staff, among the team members are ill-defined or they're low. You have a huge
influence on what those norms are. And that's the gold or the maize line that you see
here.
3. As a leader, you setting high expectations, holding people accountable to a higher
standard. A higher set of norms for effective team functioning. How decisions are gonna
be made, how we're gonna operate in meetings, or coming to meetings on time, how
we're going to resolve conflict.
Video notes from Norms How to Create Productive Norms in
the Team
1. You can actually change the norms within your team. So again, if you walk into a
situation, if you're lucky enough to walk into that situation where your staff, your team
members all ready have high expectations for what those norms are gonna be. You can
reinforce those norms, but you're not really going to set a new set of norms.
2. When you walk into a setting where they're ill-defined, or your team members have low
expectations of the team. Your expectations are really going to be the ones that define the
norms within that team. So you have a big influence on those team norms. Just
remember, once those norms get established, they carry over, over time. They're not that
easy to change once they get defined. So if you walk into a setting where they're ill-
defined, you set high expectations, and you'll define them.
Video notes from Norms How to Create Productive Norms in
the Team
1. But if you walk into a setting where they're all ready defined, and the staff has defined
them. If those norms are reenforcing of effective team process and effective team
functioning? That's a wonderful setting to be in, you reenforce those, your team performs
really well. If your staff or your team members, and this is the irony of this study.
2. If your staff, your team members have established, defined clear norms, expectations, but
they're not at the standard that you wanna set? Those are gonna be hard to move. You
always gonna take time. You're gonna have an up-hill battle, but you're gonna have to
fight it. You're going to have to set those high expectations and over time, move the
standard up. But it will take time, because the staff has really defined a clear set of
expectations for itself. You'll have to change those over time. But that at least gives you
some hopes and optimism for what you can do. And the impact you can have as a leader
on your team's norms.
TBD week 10 bonus activity
Dear All Students,
• This activity is an in-class discussion activity. Students participating in the activity
will earn bonus points, increasing the final score. Those who only participate in
this activity during class will receive bonus points.
• In part of week 10, there will be a bonus activity related to the attached file. It is
important that you keep the attached file with you while you are in class. See you
later