Building High-Performance Innovative Teams That Over Deliver On Results

‘There is no “I” in team.’

For a long time now you could hear that team building mantra in the boardrooms, at the water coolers and quoted as part of the corporate team building motto. And it’s for this very reason that many teams fail to reach their potential.

Are you looking for a team building “silver bullet” in each new team building activity or team building exercise?

The whole team building game works best for teams who’s “Intent” and “Insight” (we will get to these in a moment) have already been made clear.

Playing team building games, activities and exercises with teams who have no clarity of “intent” and “insight” is like putting gas in a car with no engine.

You have the fuel, but you have nothing to drive (“intent” and “insight”) the machine forward.

A team consists of moving, breathing and living parts called “Individuals” (you see there is an “I” in team). And understanding the “I” (individual) level will help you to better understand the “T” (team) level.

Following is a summary of the Seven I’s of the “iTeam Building™” Process.

Intent – Why does this team exist? What is this team suppose to do? What is the value it’s supposed to contribute? Who is that value supposed to be targeted to? How is that value supposed to be delivered?

Before you can build an effective team with the right cast members and team players, you must first understand what the team’s objective are.

By first understanding what the team is designed to do, you can understand who needs to be on that team.

It’s like putting together a puzzle.

If I were to give you a bag of 1,000 puzzle pieces and say “put it together,” it would be rather difficult. You may “eventually” get it done, but not without many hours of frustrations, missed placed pieces and confusion.

However, if I were to give you a picture of that puzzle before hand and then hand you the 1,000 puzzle pieces, it would be much easier to reach the objective of putting the puzzle together.

This same basic concept, (as simple as it is) works with building your teams.
DO NOT build the team and then set the objective.

Set the objective FIRST and then build the needed team players around the goal of the team’s purpose.

If you were looking to build a winning Basketball team, you will not likely sign a 500lb nose guard from the NFL to your team.

Sure, he may be an athlete and a darn good one at football. However, you are looking to win the NBA Finals, not the NFL Super Bowl.

Understanding the team’s purpose and objective first will allow you to better configure and build a powerful team that produces explosive results.

Now, if your in the position where you have a team that’s already assembled but needs to move from underperforming to being a high performance team, then team building process that follows can assist you in reconfigure your team for maximum performance.

Insights – A proper foundation must be laid before team building can produce consistent positive results.
Each team member must…

• Understand their individual strengths.
• Understand their individual weaknesses.
• Understand their individual roles and opportunities based on their strengths and weaknesses.
• Understand the team objectives and vision.
• Understand how their individual goals connect with the team goals.

Investigate needs – Only a proper team diagnoses can yield the best direction for the ideal solutions for team building. Anything short of fully understanding the team’s needs is team building malpractice.

So, after you gather the individual Insights, you next need to Investigate needs.

Is there a problem that needs to be fixed?

Is there a goal that needs to be reached?

In either case, there is a “gap” that needs to be uncovered so you can have greater clarity of the distance to cover to get where you ultimately want to be from where you are today.

1. What are the team’s goals, challenges and problems?
2. What is needed, wanted and wished for in the team?
3. What are the most important “questions” the team should address in order to solve the problem or reach the goal?
4. What must the team master in order to solve the problem or reach the goal?
5. What are the team’s collective strengths?
6. What are the team’s collective weaknesses?
7. How does the team’s collective strengths and weaknesses relate to what the team must master in order to solve the problem or reach the goal?

Idea creation – Once you have clarity of the teams top goals, challenges, problems, needs, wants and wishes, you can begin the team building ideation process of coming up with a huge volume and variety of potential solutions for building a better team.

Using any number of proven ideation tools and processes you can engage each individual on the team in a fun results driven team building brainstorming or rolestorming session to create breakthrough ideas.

Idea evaluation – Not every idea is worth implementing. So you must set up a list of criteria that will be used to evaluate which ideas and solutions are worth pursuing.

• What criteria should be used to evaluate proposed team ideas?
• Does the proposed solution fit the team’s strategic purpose?
• Is the level of difficulty of implementation satisfactory?
• What are the results of the cost/benefit analysis?
• If the select idea(s) are implemented would it close the gap from where you are to where the team wants and needs to be?

Idea implementation – The only thing worst than a bad idea, is a good idea never implemented.

Therefore you must move beyond the planning and get into action. Activating your ideas is the process of using sweat equity (your brains and your back) and the available financial equity to make your ideas a reality.

• Who is going to be playing what roles?
• Who is to do what and by when?
• What are the critical action items that must be done?
• What are the easiest things to do first to get momentum?
• What are the success measures so we can monitor how we’re doing?

Integrate and Innovative – Creativity, innovation and high performance teams are the result of designed processes. Not chance.

Team building is more than an offsite office vacation. Team building is a process, a corporate lifestyle, it’s a framework that is woven in the fabric of the company culture.

It’s a process flow that is fun, inviting and results oriented that is yet simple and comprehensive enough to allow new team members to quickly get into the flow and start making impactful contributions.

That means the process for continuous team building must be integrated and celebrated daily.

Using the simple framework of this “iTeam Building™” process, you can begin integrating proven processes that can allow you to lead your teams into high performance without high turn over.

iTeam Building™ is a trademark of Stephen Pierce and Innovation Marketers, LLC.