June 2022
To Build a High-Performing Team, Commit to a Shared Transformational Journey
In my work with hundreds of teams at a diverse range of organizations, I have found that members of high-performing teams are able to commit to a shared transformational journey. Team members are inspired, energized and aligned around a shared journey and sense of being in it together.
Creating the Transformational Journey Plan
The first step of the transformational journey is envisioning an ideal future state. That means creating a shared vision for the upper reaches of the team’s potential. The ideal future state is not a static point in time; rather, the future is open, flexible and fluid. This may sound paradoxical. But the open-ended, unformed nature of the ideal future state does not prevent team members from actively calling it into being through what they do in the present.
Mapping out a team’s shared transformational journey as it moves toward its ideal future state requires thinking about and responding to the following topics and questions:
- A Vision for a Better Future—What is the ideal future state the team is working toward?
- The Urgent Need for Change—What is the current state, including gaps and constraints?
- Priorities for Tomorrow—Given the current gaps and future ideal, what are team members’ priorities from today to tomorrow? How can the team’s immediate needs be met? What initiatives will drive horizontal optimization of the current state (i.e., making the best use of existing resources)?
- Breakthroughs to the Future—What breakthroughs are the team targeting? What do team members need to learn? What skills do they need to master? What initiatives or ahead-of-the-curve investments will drive vertical transformation (i.e., scaling best practices and innovative solutions)?
If team members are not aligned around these four elements, they are not on a transformational journey together. Once they align, the team truly comes into focus and the anxiety that change often creates goes away.
Bring Event Horizons Into Focus, But Don’t Dwell on Them
Members of high-performing teams do not focus only on far-flung potentials. They also align around individual and team priorities in the near term. Indeed, when everyone on the team is clear about the difference between today-to-tomorrow priorities and tomorrow-to-the-future breakthroughs, event horizons come into focus.
Event horizons in this context are points in time beyond which team members cannot know what is coming. The beauty of spotting an event horizon is there’s no point in getting hung up on them. Trying to control what cannot be predicted does nothing but create worry and unproductive stress.
Moving toward the ideal future requires focusing on working though priorities that are clear and present, as well as creating the conditions for achieving breakthroughs. The steps that lie beyond event horizons are, by definition, beyond any team member’s or team leader’s control.
A good example of an event horizon in many people’s lives is becoming a parent for the first time. This disrupts the parent’s life, and the transformation cannot be understood until it is experienced. Nor can the transformation ever truly be reversed.
In the context of an organization or team, vertical improvement, transformation and breakthrough experiences can often create feelings of uncertainty. That is because the team or organization is facing an event horizon, and no one can see what lies beyond.
In the life of an organization, an event horizon might be a disruption such as a major organizational restructuring or the introduction of a new service or product. It could also be a seemingly small event such as a personnel change in the leadership team or the introduction of new software for managing files.
So, to recap:
- Event horizon refers to any significant point in time past which people cannot envision how the system will react and adapt. Managing uncertainty before and after event horizons is the core challenge of leading transformational change.
- Transformational change refers to an irreversible change in a living system—including people, teams and organizations—that occurs due to the need to adapt to different challenges in the environment.
- Disruption refers to a radical change in an environment that makes new ways of working necessary.
Know What to Do Before and After Crossing an Event Horizon
So, how does a team plan for and manage event horizons? The key is to understand the nature of the uncertainty being experienced.
The cause of uncertainty is different when team members are preparing for an event horizon than it is in the period right after the change (see the definition of event horizon above). Before the event horizon, uncertainty stems from team members’ inability to predict how the way they work will change.
At this time, it is easy for people to get distracted by speculating what the new context is going to be like and how they will respond. These speculations are helpful only to a point, and they can become time-consuming, worrying and a source of needless preoccupation.
When team members are heading toward an event horizon, getting into a transformational journey mindset is critically important. Team members will have to be ready to walk the path and stay engaged even when the full implications of taking the next steps are unknown.
Once the event horizon has been crossed, the nature of team members’ uncertainty changes. After the transformational, and possibly disruptive, change has occurred, uncertainty revolves around learning new ways of working and adapting within the new context. Sometimes, the necessary changes will be minor. More often, making necessary changes will require significant adjustments and learning.
It is easy for people to cling to their old ways of working and to resent having to change. Giving in to that instinct is unproductive, as embracing change, learning and adjusting are the only way forward.
Nothing bonds a team quite like being on an authentic transformational journey. It is invigorating to share a continuous improvement journey with others on the same team and to feel the joy of camaraderie and shared aspiration.
01 June 2022
Category
HR News Article