Why are high performing teams important for businesses?
That was a question I heard asked of a colleague who referred to me on a recent podcast as someone who knows a bit about this subject.
In a nutshell, high performing teams are important because they achieve strategic speed.
If you want to check if your team is high performing then check out our survey. It takes 2 minutes and you get a personalised report. Take the survey here.
Given the pace of everything around us in business, strategic speed is essential. Think about it this way.
In rocket science, when physicists and engineers want to put a satellite in earth orbit they know that the vehicle has to reach what is known as escape velocity to achieve this goal.
Escape velocity is the minimum speed the rocket must attain (in case you are interested approximately 25,000 mph or 40,000 kph), to counter the gravitational pull of the earth which prevents the vehicle for getting into orbit.
Using this analogy, strategic speed is what is needed to fully execute the organisations strategy at pace. There will be many external and internal factors that will have the effect of behaving like the earths gravitational pull, slowing down an organisations ability to deliver at pace and thereby compete successfully in its chosen markets.
Success in business is achieved by organisations who can create value faster and in smarter ways than their competitors. So strategic speed is defined as reducing time to value, and increasing value over time.
High performing teams do exactly that.
Not only are they highly effective in execution, they also deliver incremental impact.
They utilise the combined strengths of all team members through clarity, unity and agility.
They have an unequivocal understanding of the direction of travel of the business and the performance requirement.
They have an unwavering joint commitment to a central team purpose and orchestrate all their resources and contributions to deliver against clearly defined goals.
Their supreme collaboration shows up not just internally in the team, but in their cross-functional engagements across their internal supply-chain and stakeholder community.
These and a number of other characteristics define high performing teams, and as a consequence they accelerate performance execution in achieving the goals and ambitions of their organisation.
Another interesting characteristic of high performing teams; they really enjoy working with their colleagues, doing what they do.
So for leaders who are interested in nurturing high performing teams in their organisation, they need to make people the key ingredient of their success formula. High performing teams deliver strategic speed.
If you want to check if your team is high performing then check out our survey. It takes 2 minutes and you get a personalised report. Take our survey here.