A note from me

I hope that this newsletter will bring good vibes to all subscribers whenever and wherever you are reading this. At this current time, the Olympic Games are taking place in the great city of Paris but I won’t be there in person even though I’m relaxing with family in France at the moment. Nevertheless, I trust all the visitors thronging there will have a wonderful time.  

I remember taking my young son, James, and one of his friends, to various events at the London Olympic Games in 2012 and we had a very good time back then. We experienced a friendly, upbeat, almost joyful atmosphere across all the hordes of spectators we encountered and we saw some fine sporting endeavours. In particular, I remember watching Team GB take an unexpected but deserved Bronze medal in the men’s team gymnastics competition in the O2 Arena, just behind the excellent Chinese and Japanese teams. It was fascinating watching these superb athletes rotate through the different disciplines, bringing their individual contributions but also supporting each other through the ups and downs of the evening.

The Olympics tends to bring the focus onto individual athletes but there are, indeed, team events as well, in addition to the different national teams and associations that form the foundations of the event. So perhaps it isn’t too incongruous that this current series of Newsletters is looking at the characteristics of high-performance teams. In particular, this edition will build on the introduction and overview in the last newsletter by considering the first characteristic mentioned – the Strategic Narrative.

I hope you enjoy it!

My Bi-Weekly Guide

Strategic Narratives in High-Performance Teams

The three factors widely found to motivate people in their activities are:

Autonomy, Mastery and Meaning

It is in the development of collective meaning or purpose that a shared Strategic Narrative plays a key role in a high-performance team. The ability of people to articulate, in their own words, the nature and purpose of their team – and their role in this – is a defining feature.  

The importance of “Purpose” as an element of Strategic Character for an individual has already been considered in Newsletter 13 (Edition 13), so current readers may also like to refer back to that and reflect on the relevance of the identified factors for a team. 

This is all about people being able to tell a coherent story that captures the essence of a team’s activities and their place within it. Good story-telling is, of course, an art in itself, as expressed in novels, poetry, theatre and film-making. I am particularly drawn to drama as an art form but, as noted in previous newsletters, I am also making efforts to appreciate the visual arts more deeply. Many masterly paintings capture and express powerful stories. The first painting I actually fell in love with was Géricault’s “Raft of the Medusa” which is reproduced below. This is a monumental work of art in the Louvre Gallery and, at age 16, I spent a good hour taking this all in as I sat before it, too tired and too lazy to join the tourist crowds and my friends flocking to the Mona Lisa.

It depicts the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of Africa in 1816.  With too few lifeboats available, almost 150 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft. All but 15 died before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practiced cannibalism. The event became an international scandal, and Géricault deliberately sought to be both politically and artistically confrontational. The painting was seen as largely sympathetic to the anti-imperial, anti-government cause. The decision to place a black man at the pinnacle of the composition was a controversial expression of Géricault's abolitionist sympathies. There are a number of powerful stories captured in this painting!

Effective strategic narratives for a team (there can be more than one) need to encapsulate excellent content, but also be developed through a good process that involves current team members and can embrace new team members as they join.  

The following 5 points are valuable to bear in mind:

1. Narrative development or socialisation process:

   Important insights are initially fragmented and incomplete, and to be strategically effective they need to be matured until they are fully coherent. Similarly, they are initially held by just an individual or small group of people, and to be translated into effective action they must become widely shared in a team. An effective pathway is to work on ideas until they are just coherent enough to be shared initially without being dismissed out of hand and then, through the process of sharing and engagement, refine them collectively until they are fully coherent. This is a social process which is explored more deeply in Newsletter 4 (Edition 4).
   

2. Narrative content:
   There needs to be an understanding of the purpose or approach of the team that is shared across all members even though they may articulate it differently in their own words. In the Ferrari example highlighted in the last newsletter, the narrative was driven by the observation “To finish first, first you have to finish”.  So they shifted their engineering focus to high reliability as a foundation, and then made adjustments over time that added more speed until they could win race after race. In more general terms, it’s generally helpful to have an expression along the lines of:
   
   “The purpose of this team is to serve customers/stakeholders X, Y, Z; through activities P, Q, R; that are distinguished by characteristics T, U, V; in order to achieve objectives A, B, C.”
   

3. Narrative backdrop:

   In exploring and developing an effective narrative, it can be helpful to consider the 6 elements identified in systems science as descriptive of any human activity system. Reflecting on these can help guide or inspire effective and coherent narratives. These elements are captured in the mnemonic “CATWOE”.

   1. Customers

   2. Actors/activities

   3. Transformation accomplished by the system

   4. Worldview

   5. Owner

   6. Environment
      

4. Competitive Positioning:

   Almost by definition, a high-performance team is distinguished from other teams.  It is important to articulate and focus resources/attention on those factors that distinguish it from others and underpin the high performance. It is too common to focus excessively on the ongoing activities of the team and the immediate outcomes, and neglect investment in sustaining long-duration advantages. That is why I include “distinguishing characteristics” in the template narrative under point “2” above so that this aspect is not forgotten. 
   

5. Housekeeping:

   Some team members or activities will, of course, be contributing to the maintenance of the team but not directly to the high-profile activities that immediately deliver the visible high performance. Nevertheless, poor performance of those “housekeeping” activities will undermine the team’s high performance over the course of time. Hence it is essential that the people performing those activities are aware of their significance and can find their “home”, or their own strategic narrative, within the overall strategic narrative of the team. 

Question of The Fortnight

Every fortnight I’ll be asking a thought-provoking question in hopes of sparking interesting and enlightening discussion.

I’d love to hear your response! You can do so by simply responding to this email.

Today’s question is:

Have you come across strategic narratives that succinctly express the essence of a team that performs well, or could you suggest such narratives for teams you are familiar with?

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