Editorial
There are very few blanket assertions you can make when it comes to teamwork in the new workplace, and even fewer proven recipes on how you can best collaborate as a member of a distributed workforce. Teamwork is hard work!
The good news is, we as a cross-generational community of professionals are figuring this out together as we begin a new phase in our working lives. We now have an opportunity to reinvent how work gets done. How can we compose working teams based on skills access across a myriad of talent pools? How can leadership shift its approach to empower, coach, and deliver best outcomes? Work is a blank canvas that must be seen with fresh eyes, dropping attachment to the old and comfortable, in order to engender a culture of innovation.
The invitation is here, and it is up to you, me and everyone interested in the future of work to decide how to lead the way forward by applying an inclusive strategy to activating high performing teams for the new world of work. The effectiveness of our approaches will largely depend on our ability to let go and learn new working capabilities, adopting new tools, techniques and habits that could shape a collaborative culture for collective success.
The New Workplace
The New Workplace, as I call it, is not yet fully formed, but it refers to leading talent with an integrated and dynamic approach to work/life harmonization. Asynchronous collaboration is one of the New Work practices for distributed teams in virtual enterprises and remote-first employment models. Our discipline can lead the way by reengineering and simplifying bureaucratic cycles in HR, enabling direct access to intelligent networks with the latest advancements in technology. In addition, leadership can adapt to the new environment by giving distributed teams the autonomy to work with agility and build competitive advantage for their organizations in the new economy.
Related Article: How to Build Your Teams as Communities of Practice
Before we dive into tools and techniques, it is best to clarify a few concepts.
“Teaming” is one of those ever-changing terms that requires a fresh exploration every decade so we can be on the same page when thinking about high performance and team effectiveness. We know that intact teams are usually organized hierarchically based on past organizational designs. But if we challenge ourselves to think about the best ways to deliver quality work and value to the organization and its stakeholders, we must rationalize value co-creation, composing teams of skilled professionals with diverse perspectives and complementary capabilities who will share purpose and focus on common goals to achieve best business outcomes irrespective of reporting lines and hierarchical positions.
A team, in the New Workplace, is the core unit of value creation in organizations that want to advance their strategies through talent. In the digital architecture of workforce intelligence, systems of record, insights and engagement are integrated into an ecosystem of collaborative resources where team members have direct and open access to data, tools and platforms for teaming with agility.
Some systems would need to include partnerships, independent workers, contractors, capability teams brought in to accelerate product design and development, and other fractional work arrangements. But this is just a glimpse of the future and for now, it might be best to start preparing your company to access talent pools working on mission-based teams.
Where to Start?
HR leaders have a large role to play in bringing leadership teams together to align their desired outcomes. When an organization has hashed out its collective leadership ideals — a shared purpose and common goals — HR leaders can facilitate the dialogue about leadership practices to compose teams that are formed around organizational capabilities. Establish self-directed teams as the norm, so teams can act with clarity of purpose and autonomy. Create agreements with managers to make talent available for the most critical priorities of the organization to form highly qualified teams, which you can bolster as needed with non-FTE contributors to deliver results with agility.
Once leaders have committed to building mission-based teams, you need to direct team composition. Teams must be diverse, comprising employees with complementary skill sets and willingness to stretch themselves to develop their capabilities and grow their careers in non-linear ways of working. You can approach this several different ways. You might publish “gigs” on a talent marketplace, create a site on stretch assignments or give managers the opportunity to appoint members of their teams for critical projects and missions as part of a development plan.
Detaching teams and their missions from vertical business lines and functions will allow for high performing teams to model new ways of working that in turn can impact the cultural evolution of your organization from both the top up and the bottom down. Employees can be accountable for growing their skills, owning their career and seeking opportunities to learn on the job as team members. Leadership will be democratized across the whole workforce, and HR policies, programs and processes will be re-engineered for a frictionless employee and manager experience.
The Toolbox
Organizations need to build employee-centric platforms individuals can use as their base for finding the right resources to update their information, to complete personal transactions, and to gain access to employee systems of record and insights with the least number of clicks as possible. In order for a mission-centric team structure to succeed, employees also need a way to build skill profiles, to see opportunities for development and growth, to have a view of their teams and where they are working from, and easy access to their team’s workflow.
Related Article: The Communicator’s Guide to Building a Corporate Intranet
To that end, the digital employee experience must be able to integrate data, information and interactions as a control panel for all employees to enter the flow of work fluidly. In the virtual enterprise, work is being done asynchronously and in teams that are not intact teams. Organizations that focus on employees’ digital experience and assign digital strategy leaders to lead the way will attract better talent and build a positive reputation in the marketplace.
Employees need not only a control panel for navigating their virtual/hybrid/distributed life at work, but also a system that grants non-employees access to team spaces to collaborate and share materials. Organizations must design a simple talent supply chain operational system allowing them to bring in external talent seamlessly and quickly.
Companies that have already set up Talent Supply Chain operations are ahead of the curve in creating a fluid and composable workforce. This capability accelerates access to skills and talent with a frictionless on-boarding experience with the tools necessary for collaboration. It is critical to train team members, managers and leaders on how to work with non-FTEs to avoid any risks or problems with regulatory agencies, legal teams and work councils. Thinking of the workplace as a community that embraces partnerships and other talent models is how organizations can deliver innovation and new products, solutions and offerings without the rigid constraints of talent acquisition and the inevitable rebalancing of the workforce. Having a system to access, onboard and manage non-FTE talent is becoming a priority for innovative companies and their teams.
Dynamics
Once you’ve created the conditions in which teams and individuals can do their best work, it’s time to consider the dynamics of a high performing team and the techniques you can use to activate positive relationships, promote innovation and create psychological safety. Composing a team is not about grouping people who already work together, but about carefully identifying what capability the team is tasked to design, develop and deploy so the selection can follow skills requirements, technology available, and the human capabilities that will make the mission successful. Those include and agile team practices such as stand ups, retrospectives, sprints and playbacks within a design thinking approach to building experiences beyond products. These are essential to ensure user sponsors are co-creating with teams and customers in a systematic manner.
Related Article: Why Organizations Should Focus on Agile Rather Than Matrixed Teams
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Teamwork is about exploration, experience and empowerment of an open ecosystem so the best ideas are allowed to flow freely. Leadership ideally becomes a shared capability among all team members who will be able to listen actively, express their thinking clearly and apply radical collaboration with personal accountability for best outcomes.Members of a high-performing team share experiences, discuss issues openly and create strong connections with each other, emotionally, cognitively and professionally.
For this kind of cohesion to emerge, it is imperative that team leaders are selected carefully, and that team conversations are not limited only to tasks and deadlines. As a team develops and matures members will need to discuss group norms and behaviors, prioritization of goals and focus areas, how decisions are being made and who is making them, opportunities for anyone to raise an issue that might be interfering with group cohesion or performance, and establish a process for raising problems and/or changes in direction of the project. These are critical conversations that must be part of effective teaming.
These conversations will help activate team effectiveness. But you can’t neglect human behavior, habits and resistance to change. These are also key elements you cannot overlook when building a team culture that’s disruptive to the prior way employees have learned to work. Leaders must communicate these transitions carefully, with empathy and candor. Educating your employees on the value of adopting new ways of working, including new technologies and high-value skills, can provide them with information and resources to grow their careers in the organization.This is the emergence of The New Workplace, where work happens in the flow of life and skilled individuals are able to apply their capabilities to their potential.
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