Intentional Teams™ Deliver an Additional 40% of Efficiency

We started out by asking:

• If you had a piece of equipment that was only working at 60% capacity, wouldn’t you fix it?
• And, if you had a team that was full of excellent people but together they only worked at 60% effectiveness, wouldn’t you do something to improve it?

And many people could relate to that. They could see how having a team work at only 60% capacity would be frustrating and an erosion of high potential.

Then one of our clients said to us, “My board doesn’t understand what a team working at higher than 60% capacity actually looks like. They don’t feel the advantage in their gut. Help me persuade them.”

And so, began the journey to describe in clear, everyday language, the 40% difference that comes from implementing Intentional Teams™.

The 7 characteristics of  an intentional team:

1. More rewarding: Our research shows when a team is intentionally focused and consciously and deliberately managing its culture, its members have a work experience they wish to duplicate wherever they go.
2. Lower turnover: In a team that is intentional, its members don’t wish to leave. Individuals experience personal satisfaction and group cohesion.
3. Higher engagement: Intentional teams are full of people who are more highly engaged, involved, satisfied employees, working on important work and passionate about the team’s success.
4. A shared understanding: One of the features of an intentional team working at high capacity is that they have a shared understanding of the focus of its work together and the key priorities that the team must achieve.
5. Self-correcting: Even an intentional team can get slightly off the rails with distractions or conflicts. However its members know how to name the issue or distraction and have an agreed process for dealing with it.
6. Have each other’s back: In an intentional team, its members look out for each other and if one has an issue, they all tackle the issue if necessary to help solve problems and to support each other.
7. Pulling in the same direction: The team members have the same understanding of the key results they need to achieve and they are getting there with a minimum of fuss.

Intentional Teams are great places to work and can make the difference between success and failure in critical work. One of our client teams was full of individual high performers but together they were not impressive. They were each pulling in different directions, lacked trust and had a culture of blame when errors were made. When two team members each assumed the other was informing a key stakeholder, the ball was dropped and the key stakeholder was handed an unfortunate surprise with no warning. The stakeholder was fuming and the team realized they had to pull up their socks. We worked with the team and now this team is humming along in high gear. The stakeholder attended a progress review meeting facilitated by the team’s leader and at the end of it, agreed that the team had robust action plans in place to monitor their communications. “I feel I can trust that I’ll hear the honest news now, on a timely basis, and that they will come to me with a plan to deal with it.”

Do you have a team that is working at less than optimal capacity? To take our free assessment, click here.

If you’re not sure, let’s talk. Contact us here to find out more about how to create great teams, working at full capacity. We’re happy to help.