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For the past year, Leslie Calder, Anja
Haman, and Ashley Howard of Vancouver have been giving
a motivational talk about what led to their successes
on the ultimate field, and the similar phases they have
seen successful businesses go through in their own high
tech careers. These co-captains have given this presentation
to high tech companies including Sierra Systems Consulting
and PCSupport.com, as well as the SFU Executive Management
of Tech-nology class, and the BCIT IT Professionals
class. The talk was also featured on CBC's Canada Now
news program. This is a summary of key points from their
talk.
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How does a team go from start up to a top level touring
team? Clearly, there are many paths to follow. We were
able to trace Prime’s path from a fairly new team
with not much international experience in 1993 to a
team that won the Gold at the World Championships in
2000. Studying this path gave us the chance to reflect
upon team development.
Prime’s journey to gold involved three distinct
phases of development. We believe that for sustainable
success, these three phases are crucial to a team’s
development (interestingly, these phases are mimicked
by many businesses as well). Below we outlined the three
phases and some lessons we learned along the way.
The Start Up Years.
Most competitive teams form when someone has a dream:
they pose a goal with “delicious uncertainty”-
it is not easily achieved, but it is also not impossible
either. As Terry Orlick points out, delicious uncertainty
is the heart of human motivation. A vision that balances
challenge and reward will motivate your team through
hard practices, losses, and the schedule they will need
to commit to.
The start up phase is characterized by players with
intuition, enthusiasm, grit, and a pioneering spirit.
It’s really fun.
Lessons learned:
- start up captains need to be prepared to wear multiple
hats and have unrivalled energy and enthusiasm. Not
everyone will buy your vision at first. This means you
will need to recruit and excite the gang while acting
as travel agent, recruiter, practice captain, and financial
coordinator - whatever it takes to get it going!
- have one vision: face any conflicts about goals early
or pay a heavy price later, when you can least afford
it (usually under pressure during a deciding game).
- and finally, the qualities of great start up captains
can also be the very qualities that hold their team
back later on. To mature, a team needs to diversify
and they may need to pass the torch to allow that to
happen. Patterns of behaviour have been set and it’s
difficult to change them (your team is ready to take
on more responsibility but everyone relies on you, and
you keep doing everything although you are burning out...
familiar?) It isn’t failure on the founder’s
part, it’s the natural path for a team that hopes
to build depth through successive, diversified leadership.
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Building the Core
A team needs to mature, and the second phase focuses on building
core strategies and systems. Since the start up phase doesn’t
usually yield the anticipated results, the team needs a change
to believe in future success. The fun is fading! Here new
captains can involve more players by delegating work, and
they should introduce a field strategy that involves the entire
team (rather than relying on field sense and a few key players).
With Prime, five captains took over for two, which created
a more collaborative environment. This collaboration created
a team that felt more closely tied to its purpose. The new
team strategy focussed on team structure vs individual intuition,
ensuring that all players had a well understood role. As a
result, the team developed a core strength: a strategy it
could execute well, consistently, even under pressure. It
relied less on key players, and gave the team confidence in
its abilities.
The foundational phase is characterized by creating systems,
raising the expectations for commitment and discipline, and
giving the team priority over the individual. Getting results
is part of the fun!
Lessons learned:
- know when to ease up - focusing on structure and discipline
can lead you to overlook individual needs and take away the
fun.
- it takes time and effort to develop trust: in the system
as well as in new leadership. Allow for that time, and be
patient with your team. Keep them focussed with interim goals
and celebrate good results.
Phase Three: Having it all
Once our whole team could execute a core strategy, we needed
more flexibility to be successful consistently. In the final
phase we revisited the intuitive, adaptable start up phase:
we used our core structures as a base while creatively adapting
as needed. The goal was to make us relentless and nimble -
a combination that’s hard to compete against.
This phase requires unbiased leadership that develops trust
and makes decisions easily. They must balance the different
strategies under pressure, and the team must trust them in
that role. Different players will lean toward different strategies
- a risky, change oriented style or a structured, disciplined
style - depending on their own personalities. This is why
leaders in this phase must appear unbiased, but be willing
to make confident decisions. The team must learn to accept
their decisions for the good of the whole.
This phase is characterized by confidence, and depth through
solid execution and diversity.
Lessons learned: - New strategies now take far less time
for the team to incorporate. The work of phase two really
pays off! This is because the core strategy gave the team
a conceptual foundation on which to build, as well as a communication
tool for discussing new ideas.
- After winning a big tournament, you lose players to retirement,
you face burn out, and you need to motivate your team for
another big goal. How do you win after a big win?
A final note on Collaboration
Finally, these stages of development require people who collaborate
- they share knowledge and roles. Prime gained immeasurably
through the efforts from all its players and captains. Retiring
leaders supported new leaders, respecting the need for change.
New leaders valued lessons from the past, and built on them.
This final aspect was a key to our success as our learning
was additive over the years, and shared by our team-mates
each season.
References:
Terry Orlick, Embracing Your Potential, Human Kinetics, Ottawa,
1998.
The Canadian National Womens
team celebrates their gold medal victory at the 2000 World
Championships in Heilbron, Germany. |
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