A fair number of the phone calls I get have to do with cross-team cooperation. In short, this means that accounting is focused on accounting's goals, and engineering is focused on engineering's goals, and production cares only about production. This kind of shortsightedness is unfortunately common, but it is very fixable.
Personal development guru Tony Robbins likes to say "your focus determines your reality" and this is some of what is going on here. When our departments focus on "their piece" and don't spend time looking at "the big picture" of the organization, it is easy for people to think that if their department is doing well then everything else is fine.
Here are a few concepts that I share with my clients when teams are not all pulling together:
The Importance of Shared Vision
For many people (I used to be one of them) this concept of "Shared Vision" sounds like fluffy bunny nonsense. Most of us have been exposed to enough meaningless "vision statements" that this whole notion of Vision makes us leery. We don't need to be so apprehensive. Shared Vision simply means that the leadership team (or perhaps an even wider circle of participants) has come together and crafted a shared sense of what the organization is, and where it is going. Shared vision means that everyone has a similar sense of what the organization does, what the goals are, and how they can contribute to the big picture.
There are a lot of ways to build shared vision, and in general the more of the organization you involve, the more durable the vision is. I like the Appreciative Inquiry approach because it involves not only leaders, but also employees, vendors, customers, etc. Out of AI, a wide variety of stakeholders can become champions of the vision. For organizations who either cannot or don't want to involve such a broad circle, there are a number of strategic planning approaches that can bring shared vision to life.
The Importance of Effective Teams
Many times, leadership teams come together regularly but they are not doing the right kinds of work to create organizational momentum. Departments are siloed, or separate, and cooperation is limited to tactical problems. ("I need accounting to pull some files for *my* project.")
CEOs or Leaders who are caught up in their own importance can exacerbate this problem. I've been in staff meetings where CEOs lecture the team and where sharing information results in "getting in trouble." I've also been in staff meetings where the CEO acts like the font of all knowledge, and the executives swarm around him or her like curious children asking "what do you think about this." and "what is your opinion on this." and "how should we handle that." Neither role (speech maker or expert witness) is terribly helpful in building an effective leadership team.
What does build effective teams? Having a leader who focuses on creating organization-wide goals and helping each leader see their role in that goal is a start. (For those who are interested in learning more about how to do this I recommend the work of Patrick Lenconi, in particular his books Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.) Setting the norm in a team that problems belong not to one department, but to the whole team is another. Ensuring that the team has sufficient skills to function together is also a good first step. When I work with teams that are not pulling together I often start with skill building in communication, conflict management, group process, and goal setting. These skills when used in tandem can give a team a big push forward.
And lastly, for a team to operate as part of the whole, it is also a good idea for team members to have an understanding of and an appreciation for the work done by their peers. This is part of the reason why organizations like Microsoft and GE take high potential individuals (future leaders) and rotate them through various functions in the company. If such rotation is impractical in your organization, look for other ways to build shared appreciation for the roles of everyone on the team.
It's All About Perspective
I have a former employee who raised a group of kids by telling them "when one of you is in trouble - you're all in trouble." There are probably some downsides to this notion of parenting, but one of the upsides was that her kids were adept in keeping each other in check. "No, you are not going to sneak out because you'll get us all in hot water." This notion of shared destiny is one that I think that leadership teams would benefit from keeping in mind. Too many of us in organizations are willing to let another department flounder. "It's not my problem" we might say. Heck, with the prevalence of "forced ranking" performance review systems out there we even set up a system where a certain number of people are required to fail! How much sense does that make?
If we can get to the point were we view ourselves not as "Engineering" or "HR" or "Customer Service" but as one whole organization, we can create a reality where where a problem belongs not to a department, but to the whole. When there is a hole in the bottom of the boat, let's not stand around and watch. Let's all pick up our tools with energy and take our place on the line to fix the ship. We may yet get to the point where we see any hole in our ship as a threat to our collective survival. I hope we get there because this notion of shared destiny is not only helpful, it is also absolutely true.
Credit: The drawing above was created by Simon Baker. (creative commons license)
