The Essential Ingredients

For any company to be successful, you need high performing teams. In your opinion, what are the essential ingredients of a high performance team?

So several things, one clarity of vision and objective. Everybody needs to know what it is that they are actually driving to ultimately. So, they need to understand the strategy but then also how they fit into the strategy. That's number one. Two is accountability. So, understanding what it is that you're responsible for and the fact that you'll need to make and keep commitments. It's also a team that brings a breadth and diverse set of experiences and backgrounds so that you don't have any blind spots as a company. If everybody's the same, then you're going to end up with blind spots. You want to make sure that you're building that across in terms of your overall organization. The other is, it needs to be a place where there's real teamwork. And what I mean by teamwork is not just, yes, you're nice to each other and friendly and – no. When I say real teamwork that means that everybody strives to be a good teammate. To be someone that others can count on. If I say, I'm going to do this for you, then you count on it and you go forward with the assumption that it’s going to show up. It's like a relay race, right? I run full out. I run full out and put my hand back expecting that that batons going to happen. If I am running and looking back at the same time to try to make sure that is the baton really coming? You know, when are they really going to give it? What's going to happen? There's no way I can run as fast. Well in business, it's exactly the same. If you don't have good teamwork and people can't count on each other, then they're constantly having to check or to put gates in place or structures or to make sure that they're not left hanging. So, it slows everything down. So, it's really an important element.