Introduction
The journey within organizations, from a bureaucratic to the implementation of adaptive structures, has increased their focus on working with teams as well as groups. An organizational team could be understood as a group of individuals working together in an organization to produce output. The team shares a common objective (Richards, Carter, & Feenstra, 2012). On the other hand, the primary characteristic of a high performing team is based on the idea that it can serve the organization's customers appropriately and is increasingly capable of doing so over time (Richards, Carter, & Feenstra, 2012). A high performing team has a deep understanding of their purpose within an organization, the members of the team have ambitious goals, the members share mutual accountability, and they have complementary skills needed for the growth and sustenance of their organization. High-performance teams can produce high production, high-quality output, and high employee satisfaction while making it possible for the management to control the organizational culture.
Primary Drivers of High Performing Teams
According to Zachary Wong (2007), the key to a high performing team involves the ability of the members to develop and agree on the fundamental goals, the purpose of the team, and the plans of a particular project. The members of the team should be in a position of utilizing the right tools, procedures, and techniques necessary for the implementation of the team’s work plan. On the other hand, the team members are capable of communicating, working in synergy, and collaborating successfully. The identified factors could be considered as the fundamental interdependent variables that should be in place to ensure that organizational teams perform highly in executing projects. In this case, accomplishing the purpose of the organization is dependent on the effective organizational processes and the appropriate behaviors of the team members.
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The other common factor that is considered as a critical driver of high performing teams in the development of a positive climate within the organization. According to Richards, Carter, and Feenstra (2012), a positive climate refers to the degree with which the team members emphasize on elements such as appreciation, the concerns for the well-being of the employees, leadership, employee recognition, and development. A high-performance team develops and embraces a supportive environment in which the members support each other. The support that the members receive and give their fellow employees bolsters the morale of the entire team, which is a provision that encourages the realization of a more functional team (Schein et al., 2013). This support can be communicated through listening, facilitation, and praising achievements. It could be suggested that the recognition of the value of the team members and the awareness of the value of the contributions made to the team can also affect their performance, which means that it is a fundamental constituent that could improve the performance of a team.
Of considerable importance to a high-performance team is effective and consistent communication. According to a study by Hultin, Zhang, and Hu, (2017), the effectiveness of the communication between team members can have a significant impact of the effectiveness of the entire team. In this light, the commitment to open communication is considered as one of the elements that facilitate effective communication. Open communication involves being open, honest, listening to other team members, and providing constructive feedback (Schein et al ., 2013). Seeking feedback from team members is primarily beneficial for leaders within an organization since they can reflect on the applied processes and performance. The reflection can enhance the development of more effective ways for facilitating the improvement of the team’s performance since they can derive a better understanding of the different work situations in the organization. For this reason, a high performing team should provide the members with the opportunity to critique, clarify, and to add or remove some of the ideas presented. The discussions are likely to lead to effective decision-making, which could be considered as one of the core components of a high performing team.
The other component of a high performing team is one that contributes significantly to the team dynamics. For this reason, an organization should be in a position of empowering its team members. According to Yuqiao X. Hultin, Chenyang Zhang and Yuhua Hu (2017), the need for power is the characteristic health of each person. This need is closely associated with a person’s ability to set goals that will encourage the implementation of different activities that could see the realization of the predetermined goals. In most cases, individuals with power usually work towards gaining the skills needed for a particular leadership position, with their objective being the achievement of the goal of managing or directing a project or institution (Hultin, Zhang, & Hu, 2017). In this light, Jackson and Madsen (2004) suggest that empowering a team increases ownership of a project, provides the members with the opportunity to develop new skills and increases their interest in pursuing the goals of a project. These provisions could be identified as the primary determinants for decision-making.
High-performance teams also drive the company culture. To provide practical implication for organizations or leaders, it would be vital to accelerate the development of organizational culture. The organizational culture should support the need to understand organizational behavior, depict the nature of the dynamics of the team, and the development of the individual members and the team. The team has to have the characteristics that differentiate it from the properties of each of the members within the particular group (Hultin, Zhang, & Hu, 2017). In this case, the ideologies of the team, its structure, and the cultural values of the team are essential elements as the personality of the individual group members. Organizations can create a desired organizational culture by engaging in team building activities. Such activities can assist in the development of individual team members, consequently affecting the dynamics of the group.
A balanced Scorecard Drives Culture
The culture of a particular organization determines the effectiveness of the performance measurement systems regarding propelling the organization to move forward. In this light, the organizational teams that have a rigid culture are characterized by poor communication, which is one of the factors that might hinder them from implementing performance systems. When such teams try to implement performance systems, the implementation process can fail. On the contrary, a team that considers its performance measures as fair has a high chance of succeeding in implementing a performance system. These explanations could be used to argue that the balanced scorecard approach can enable companies to change different metrics that affect the organizational culture substantially. An exploratory study by Garikai Tachiwona (2011) reveals that managers championing the need to use the balanced scorecard should be committed to creating a culture that supports and empowers employees to perform and make suitable decisions.
An organizational culture that is people-centered is one that ensures that the people consider their jobs as meaningful ones. In this case, the people-centered culture supports the idea that the managers in the organization care about the thoughts and welfare of the members in their team, which is vital for ensuring employee engagement (Tachiwona, 2011). The team members are likely to perform highly within such a team rather than one that does not embrace a people-centered culture. For the successful implementation of cultural changes, the organizational team has to be dynamic, highly engaged, and receptive to change. Organizational leaders that are not committed to the creation and maintenance of a positive culture might not be successful in implementing the balanced scorecard framework.
The balanced scorecard should align with the key performance indicators (KPIs) applicable to the organization. KPIs are indispensable in the determination of the success or failure of the activities of a particular project. A primary component of the implementation of the balanced scorecard approach is the provision of feedback as well as learning steps that can assist an organization to quantify its position in its strategic capacity building (Chavan, 2009). The context of this quantification should be the organization’s current performance, which also constitutes the possible changes that might occur in the business environment. The information should enable organizational leaders to determine the position of the organization concerning meeting its goals and to determine whether changes have to be made to positively change the course of the organization in its journey involving the development of strategic capabilities. For this reason, the information should relate to the organization KPIs to drive goal attainment.
An organizational team should also be able to control the scorecard metrics effectively. In this case, high-performance teams use the balanced scorecard as well as strategy implementation at the functional level. The need to consider the implementation at the functional level is a derivative of the idea that the organization's mission should be looked at as corporate objectives as well as a tool that enables team members to connect the long and short-term organizational objectives (Kopecka, 2015). Within the selected balanced scorecard approach, the team members should translate the project or organization’s long-term objectives to operational objectives or short-term objectives.
In line with the selected approach, the team, as well as the individual scorecards, connect the day-to-day work with the overall objectives of a particular department and the vision of the organization. The linkage is vital for facilitating better communication and the development of the most appropriate strategy in practice. For this reason, the organization should be in a position of designing an accurate and appropriate set of objectives, including indicators and measures that can lead to the realization of improved organizational efficiency.
As identified earlier, it is vital to ensure that the scorecard metrics are within the scope and the control of the organizational teams to ensure that the strategy implementation at the functional level is realized. The initial consideration would involve the development of a strategy map, which is established by the team leaders or organizational managers. At this point, the objectives might be looking generic since there are set into different perspectives. However, by creating precise strategy maps for the different business units, it will be possible to ensure that each unit creates different processes needed for the realization of the overall objective. The third consideration would involve the implementation of the strategy map for the line-level employees (Kopecka, 2015). For high-performance teams, the strategy map considers the different activities to be carried out by each employee, consequently creating an enabling environment for the achievement of the objectives of each unit.
A balanced scorecard is also an effective tool for driving team behavior as well as the company culture. High-performance teams also recognize the need to refine its balanced scorecard to formulate strategies that can be considered as important as the implementation of the actions leading to the realization of organizational goals. In this regard, managers have to use suitable management processes needed for ensuring the successful execution of its strategy, which is a consideration that creates a strategy-focused organization (Kaplan & Norton, 2001). This reasoning follows the idea that the formulation of organizational strategies affects the behavior of team members within the organization, consequently leading to the implementation of a suitable organizational culture that can support the developed strategy.
A strategy-focused organization is one that focuses on the linkages between the implementation of the developed strategy and the communicational provisions connecting the entire organization (Kopecka, 2015). Additionally, the strategy motivates employees to work towards achieving the organization’s objective or strategy as a continuous process. For this reason, the team members in organizational teams are encouraged to implement different plans while carrying out the strategy. The plans are inclusive of the plan operation, learning, monitoring, testing, and adapting to the developed strategy (Kopecka, 2015). The high-performance teams can refer to different sources to obtain crucial information, assess the orientation of the organizational stakeholders, and study their competitive environment to come up with the most appropriate behavior that can fit the desired journey towards the realization of organizational objectives.
Simple Problem Solving
High-performance work teams typically use problem-solving skills to tackle different issues encountered within the work environment. Examples of the problem-solving tools they use to solve different problems include the 5-Why analysis and the Ishikawa diagram. The 5-Why problem-solving tool does not consider the application of scientific techniques such as testing hypotheses, segmenting collected data, or using advanced statistical tools to solve the problems encounters. Instead, a team can solve an issue encountered by determining the root-cause of a problem through asking the question “why” at least five times (Mobley, 2018). The successful answering of the five questions will enable the team to discard some of the symptoms that might have led to the development of the issue, consequently determining the symptom that could have been the cause of the problem being encountered (Mobley, 2018). For instance, a project team responsible for producing a particular product but is experiencing an increase in product returns could use this technique to determine the cause of the issue with the product.
The other tool that could be used to solve problems is the Ishikawa or Fishbone Diagram. A problem can have more than a single cause because of the existence of different forcing functions. An organizational team can consider using this technique after failing to address some of the complicated processes that cannot be resolved using the 5-Why process. A team can use the pictorial representation to determine the cause of an issue in the organization, consequently assessing the contributing factors in a graphic format. The technique provides an explicit representation of the relationship existing between the cause of a problem and the different associated factors (Mobley, 2018). One of the most effective ways through which a work team can use this tool to solve problems is through brainstorming on some of the potential causes of issues in the team environment. For instance, work teams can use the method to determine the causes of a persisting defect in the process of producing a given good. The work teams can use the simple 5-Whys and the Ishikawa Diagram to solve some of the issues that they might be facing within an organization.
Figure I: Ishikawa (Fishbone) Diagram
The issue being tackled is usually written on the right side of the Fishbone Diagram, which the primary cause categories written on the left side of the diagram, which represent the causes and effects. Under each category, the work team identifies the potential issues related to the categories outlined in the boxes.
To solve other problems, high-performance work teams can use the SMART action items. In this regard, high-performance teams can determine how to measure its progress in terms of setting and the following objective. The team objectives are not only time bound, but they are also focused and detailed. During the development process of the team's objectives, high-performance teams follow the SMART objectives challenge. In this regard, the members of the particular team follow Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timed objectives (Schein et al ., 2013). The SMART action items cover work allocations, agreeable objectives and the development of plans and methods that will direct each team member to implement appropriate methods of working. The development of these objectives will ensure that the high-performance work teams can monitor and evaluate the work of each member, consequently providing them with suitable feedback regarding their performance.
Another fundamental aspect of high-performance teams revolves around increasing production output, improving the quality of production, and implementing methods that focus on scrap reduction. A high-performance team understands the need for the implementation of suitable Quality Management Systems (QMS) in production, given the idea that technological advancements have an impact on the evolution of the systems (Schein et al ., 2013). The production team in an organization should is required to update their production systems to accommodate the new technologies needed for meeting customer demands in an efficient way. It is fundamental for effective and high-performance teams to eliminate the cost of poor quality production by putting in place effective production plans. Through quality planning, the high-performance team will ensure that an organization achieves high-quality production and save its resources through reducing scrap materials as well as lost labor hours. The planning process should also constitute the implementation of quality inspections, which will assist in figuring out some of the problem areas in the production process. The effectiveness of the team is enhanced by the idea that it does not try patching up different issues at various stages. Instead, the high performing team goes to the roots of the encountered issue and fixes it to avoid and reduce the wastage of the organization’s resources and money.
References
Chavan, M. (2009). The balanced scorecard: A new challenge. Journal of Management Development, 28 (5), 393-406.
Hultin, Y. X., Zhang, C. & Hu, Y. (2017). Does team building support the creation of high performing teams? A perceptual study of the effectiveness of team building. Lund University, School of Economics and Management.
Jackson, B. & Madsen, S. R (2004). Common Factors of High-Performance Teams. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED492231.pdf
Kaplan, R. Norton, D. (2001). The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment. Boston, HBS Press.
Kopecka, N. (2015). The Balanced Scorecard Implementation, Integrated Approach and the Quality of Its Measurement. Procedia Economics and Finance, 25, 59-69.
Mobley, K. (2018). Problem-solving techniques for a high-performance team. https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/14690/high-performance-team
Richards, B., Carter, N. & Feenstra, F. (2012). High Performing Work Teams: Key Factors Which Drive Performance. Retrieved from https://tricities.wsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/High-Performing-Work-Teams.pdf
Schein, E. H., Dyer, W. G., Dyer, W. G., & Dyer, J. H. (2013). Team building: Proven strategies for improving team performance . San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass.
Tachiwona, G. (2011). Understanding the Potential of the Balanced Scorecard to Drive a High-Performance Culture in a New Zealand Information Technology Organization: An Exploratory Study (Masters). Unitec, New Zealand.
Wong, Z. (2007). Human Factors in Project Management: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques for Inspiring Teamwork and Motivation . Hoboken: Wiley.
