Reading-Notes

The key characteristics of ‘enhanced teams’

Teamwork is key to how most organisations get things done. Teams are where innovative ideas are conceived and tested, and where employees experience most of their work. But it’s also where the biggest problems can arise in limiting the effectiveness of organisations.

• Psychological safety: Everyone feels safe in taking risks around their team members, and that they won’t be embarrassed or punished for doing so.
• Dependability Everyone completes quality work on time.
• Structure and clarity: Everyone knows what their specific expectations are. These expectations must be challenging yet attainable.
• Meaning Everyone has a sense of purpose in their work (i.e., financial security, supporting family, helping the team succeed, etc.).
• Impact Everyone sees that the result of their work actually contributes to the organization’s overall goals.

What creates team effectiveness?

Once they understood what constituted a team at Google, the researchers had to determine how to quantitatively measure effectiveness. They looked at lines of code written, bugs fixed, customer satisfaction, and more. But Google’s leaders, who had initially pushed for objective effectiveness measures, realized that every suggested measure could be inherently flawed – more lines of code aren’t necessarily a good thing and more bugs fixed means more bugs were initially created.