The one requirement of winning teams: chemistry

It is hard to be an football fan these days, especially if your favorite team started its season on a bad note. It is especially hard for someone knowledgeable about teamwork and leadership to be a fan of teams when key elements of both are so obviously missing. As frustrating as it is to watch on a football field, it is equally frustrating to be along the sidelines of a leadership team, creative team, or project team suffering losses because of teamwork or leadership.

When a football team is full of four- and five-star recruits or highly paid professionals, the team should be able to compete well with other teams with similar skills. Why, then, do teams with equivalent talent get pummeled by opponents? Why do teams with better talent get badly beaten by opponents with less talent? Once a team is full of skilled players, what makes the difference in its success?

What makes the difference is team chemistry. Team chemistry includes:

• Respect for teammates' ability to perform their role
• Reliance on the teammate's performance for one's own performance 
• Trust that the teammates will perform their role
• Expectation that the teammates will perform their role
• Recognition when teammates perform in difficult situations

Have you been on unsuccessful teams at work? If you think about those teams, you could undoubtedly identify which of the five elements of chemistry were missing. 

The impact of teams without chemistry is time. And, usually, time equals money. 

Teams without chemistry...

• Take too long to make decisions
• Miss opportunities because they are not flexible or nimble
• Spend too much time in meetings
• Duplicate work 
• Create extra work for themselves and others

Bottom Line: Team chemistry is the key to a winning team.

There are many parallels between football and business management. From hiring to managing to performing to motivating:  both sides could learn by watching each other. As a fan of one and a player in the other, the parallels hit me between the eyes every weekend during the fall. The pain of failures stings all week but the joy of victory makes both exciting.

Is your strategy inducing confidence or shaking it?

 If one of your biggest clients said "It appears that they're lost right now" about your company, what would you do?

This morning's print edition of The Wall Street Journal includes an article about Hewlett-Packard (H-P), its strategy, and how it has communicated with customers and investors. The first line of the article is: Hewlett-Packard Co.'s recent strategic moves have shaken the confidence of investors. Now customers of the technology giant are also getting nervous. A few paragraphs later a big customer is quoted saying, "It appears that they're lost right now."

It's bad enough that a big customer considers his supplier lost, but the feeling is shared by others--and published in  The Wall Street Journal!

In the article, H-P executives defended their strategy and claimed to be in "constant contact with our customers to explain our strategy and ensure their needs are being met." Apparently their customers are unaware of the "constant contact" because many are confused and disappointed in H-P's strategy.

What has H-P done wrong?

It is unclear if H-P's strategic decisions are wrong--time will tell. What is clear is H-P's communication of their strategy has been wrong. When it comes to inducing confidence or shaking it, communication is key.

Communication with employees, customers, partners, vendors, and investors needs to be precise and targeted so the strategic direction has a chance of working. Poor communication can kill any strategic plan.

What have you done to ensure your strategic direction is confidence-inducing? Have you had enough communication with customers? Do employees understand it and know they're part of it? Whether you are charged with planning the direction of an entire multi-billion dollar corporation or a million dollar non-profit or a department of three, consider communication a critical part of your success.

H-P considers communication critical: Just three hours after the online edition of The Wall Street Journal was published, a second article which more thoroughly explains the strategy and how it is being communicated was published online. H-P has strong market position, so customer confidence has been stirred but not been shaken entirely.

When is the last time you talked with your customers about your strategy? Don't wait for them to voice their concerns to The Wall Street Journal to start the conversations. Confidence should be reinforced throughout each year.

For the full WSJ article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903895904576544822297017068.html#ixzz1Wo2juG6M