Fast Teams
by Gene Haugen, Ed D, Senior Management Consultant

How to Make Your Team Get Results Sooner Rather Than Later

Fast teams have been a dream of mine ever since I sponsored, led, and participated in reengineering teams in the early 1990s. The teams were needed, but they moved too slowly. I wanted to know how to get teams to complete their work faster and still deliver quality results. I left a successful 25-year career to look for the answer.

At age 50, I enrolled in a doctoral program in Educational Leadership at Seattle University, specializing in Business Management. My thesis topic was fast teams. The results of my research convinced me that fast teams exist, and that it is possible to create a fast team environment. I studied 12 technology application teams with a total of 70 team members in three companies.

Managers in the companies helped me find two kinds of teams. Six of them were effective teams, teams that met their goals but weren't particularly fast. The other six were fast teams, effective teams that met their goals faster than others within the same organization.

I evaluated the teams using a survey and a questionnaire that allowed the teams to rate their own effectiveness, efficiency, and clarity of purpose. I also conducted follow-up interviews with selected team members, based on their responses.

Fast teams are different

In analyzing the results, I found some definite differences between effective teams and fast teams. The merely effective teams rated highest in interpersonal communications. Fast teams scored high on interpersonal communications, too. But they further distinguished themselves by scoring equally high on having shared goals and objectives and being flexible and creative.

This means members of fast teams communicate with each other openly and honestly, listen to one another, and attempt to build on one another's contributions through the process. So do effective teams. But fast teams also ensure that they have shared goals and objectives. This isn't just a casual understanding of the task at hand; it's a holistic understanding of the roles, responsibilities, accountability, and authority of the group as part of the overall organization. It is a clear understanding of just what the group is to accomplish and deliver. And the members are committed to the goals. That commitment comes from member involvement in defining the goals and relating them to the problems the team and the organization must overcome and resolve.

Also, fast teams are effective in their use of structured procedures, but more importantly, they can and do move beyond the boundaries set by structure to experiment with new ways of getting things done. Techniques such as brainstorming are routinely used to enhance creativity. An experimental attitude, enhanced through empowerment, is ingrained. Fast teams give themselves great flexibility in overcoming problems and reaching decisions.

What else distinguishes fast teams? They are smaller, 25 percent smaller according to my research. They also had more gender diversity.

And what about leadership? Leadership in fast teams is shared and situational. A sense of action-orientation overtakes members. They don't wait for or look to a single leader for guidance. They move quickly from idea to action.

Fast teams develop in stages

The most universal model of team life cycles was developed by Bruce Tuckman back in the 1960s. He identified stages in the life of a team and named them forming, storming, norming, and performing.

Teams in the forming stage are characterized by enthusiasm with skepticism, a sense of being overwhelmed, minimal sharing, little commitment or trust, a focus on getting to know each other, a lack of identity with the group, concern over roles and responsibilities, coping with confusion and change, guarded courtesy, learning to work together, apprehension over the organizationís commitment, concern over fitting in, competence, and the ability to learn needed new skills, and hope for development of team mission and goals.

The second phase, storming, is marked by becoming authentic, increased conflict, trust for some but not all, testing the systems, struggling to take ownership and power from the leader, learning to ask for help, becoming dependent on the team and not the leader, taking responsibilities and clarifying roles, and learning to examine and evaluate group processes and make corrections.

The norming phase is when the team progresses to harmony, fact-based decisions, commitment to ground rules and the team, feeling empowered, knowledgeable, open, trusting, and honest, making decisions, giving and receiving feedback, settling conflicts without leader involvement, sharing leadership, being proactive, planning, listening, overcoming obstacles, and feeling ownership.

The performing phase is where commitment and collaboration, partnering, measurements and improvements, knowledge of business and customers is achieved. Members are multi-skilled and flexible, and exhibit self-direction, shared leadership, anticipation of customer needs, synergy, doing whatís expected and needed, and willingness to go above and beyond.

Fast teams show characteristics of the norming and performing phases. Merely effective teams seem to bog down after the first two phases.

Creating a fast team

How do you create a team that will be both effective and fast? Here are a few tips.

Suggest training for your team members that will help them develop skills in the areas that make them better team members.

Keep the team small by including only those members that are essential. Fewer than a dozen is considered small. Some studies suggest optimum team size is four.

Make the team diverse. My study data clearly showed that mixed gender teams were faster than those made up of mostly or entirely men. (There were no all woman teams in the study.)

Define the team's tasks and goals clearly, and allow team members to decide for themselves how to accomplish the objective.

As the manager responsible for the team, be fast yourself. Listen to the team. Act on their results. Execute quickly.

Give the team a completion date of 18 months or sooner. Your team wonít stay energized beyond that. Six months timing to completion (or shorter) is even better.

Give the team a clear structure of systems, procedures, processes, policies, and controls.

Encourage creativity and experimentation. One way to do that is to avoid over-planning. Provide just enough structure to ensure that things will get done. Then, reward the creativity and experimentation that your people will display when they are given the freedom to do so.

That fast-team spirit

During my research, I observed that fast teams have an aura. It was energizing just to be with them. Their pride was evident. They were compelled to share, and they were fiercely empowered, self-confident, and welcoming. They wanted me to know what they were like. Their enthusiasm was contagious. They were urgent but not stressed. I came away convinced that not only were fast teams possible and key to productivity, they were also great teams of which to be a part.

About the author:

Dr. Haugen is a Senior Management Consultant with thirty-five years of experience in leadership, management, and change agent roles in corporate and technical functions. His background encompasses Project Management, Process Management, Software Development, Maintenance, Systems Management, Systems Support, Operations, and New Technology Introduction. Dr. Haugenís strengths include the proven ability to assess people, business, and technology needs and to establish and lead organizations to meet those needs. He has held technical, senior management, and director positions with The Boeing Company, U S WEST, and Swedish Medical Center. He is currently an independent consultant, specializing in leadership, management, and technology. Recent projects have focused on outsourcing assessments, organizational assessment and modeling (focused on functional roles and responsibilities and process and information flows), implementation of new cellular technology enterprise wide, process documentation, development, management, reengineering in support of enterprise wide ISO compliance and organizational improvement, and deployment planning for wireless voice and data communication enterprise wide.

Dr. Haugen has a Bachelorís in Mathematics from Bemidji State University, a Masterís in Information Systems Management from Seattle Pacific University, and an Ed D in Educational Leadership, with a focus on Business Management, from Seattle University.