X-Teams and Team Building to Improve Organizational Performance
X-Teams and Team Building to Improve Organizational Performance
Building Teamwork and Collaboration and Optimizing Results
The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine team building exercise is all about people working together on common goals to maximize overall results. The choices players make in the exercise align with choices made in the context of their business, a concept repeatedly demonstrated across cultures and companies. Thus, this exercise is an excellent way to “smoke out” behaviors that may be suboptimizing organizational results and offer a simple way to generate discussions about the choices being made and what might be done differently. The Goal of the game is to Mine as much Gold as We can, an excellent optimization and development metaphor.
Increasingly, companies are using teams as a means of improving productivity and performance. Results are clear: effective teamwork is a proven strategy to decrease employee turnover as well as improving innovation and workplace quality. Teams provide a collective intelligence and a motivation to look for and implement systems and processes as well as providing some peer support for individual change and improvement. But not every company has successful experiences with teams in the workplace.
Ancona and Bresman’s book (X-teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed, 2007) offers some excellent insights into why some teams perform at very high levels and why others fail. Essentially, the authors believe that teams that focus more externally get better information and operate more effectively than teams internally focused, a belief that is at odds with how most teams are trained and supported. The book offers many examples of this dichotomy, which clearly shows itself in the play of Lost Dutchman with its alignment to good inter-team communications, organizational improvement and leadership development.
The “X” in the X-team concept means being externally oriented, with people working both inside and outside the boundaries. As the authors state, “While managing internally is necessary, it is managing externally that enables teams to lead, innovate, and succeed in a rapidly changing environment.” This is the differentiating driving force for maximum success.
An X-team finds it necessary to go outside the team to create effective goals, plans, and designs and must have high levels of such external activity. A focus on the customer and their expectations is important, noting that expectations will often change continuously. X-teams combine productive external activity with extreme execution within the team, developing processes that enable a high degree of coordination and effective implementation. Examples used include meetings and presentations to and discussions with senior managers of their organization, combined with feedback to all members of the team about reactions and necessary changes.
A readiness to change was a primary success factor; situations would change and the team would need to change with it. X-teams are also flexible in their approach, engaging in exploration, exploitation of talents and information, and exportation where they transferred their learning and experiences to other teams. (Yeah, the authors did get crazy with their x’s!).
Together, these elements of external focus and activity, extreme execution and flexibility form the principles by which such teams guide themselves – and teams do take a significant amount of autonomy in how they approach and attain their desired outcomes. It is an ongoing focus on optimizing results plus the realization that others can provide valuable insight and information.
Three “X-factors” provide the structure and support they need to operate. These include extensive ties to useful outsiders, expandable resources of people and information, involved as needed by the core team, and exchangeable membership, the ability to add new people who come into and who leave the team as warranted by the situation. The authors liken the effective teams to externally focused operational groups, who work together cross boundaries and get access to the people and resources they need to be successful. These teams must be action oriented and willing to take risks as well as continually gather information.
Why this exercise works to generate workplace collaboration and results optimization:
- The specified role of the Expedition Leader is to help teams be successful
- The specific goal of the game is to “Mine as much Gold as we can” and thus maximize overall return on the investment (ROI)
- The Expedition Leader is providing teams with a map, sufficient resources, information and support for the entire journey - effective leaders manage resources effectively
- The Expedition Leader has additional information that teams find useful, but that will take time to access. People seldom ask for advice and help in the workplace.
- Collaboration between teams is suggested and one person is assigned this task
- Teams have fixed times in which to plan the work, execute the plan and complete the exercise - teams facing time limits are more motivated
- All results and outcomes are measurable and "players" are held accountable
The Expedition Leader charters each team with the goal of managing resources, information and time to optimize results. Teams are given a clear goal with a measurable outcome and a deadline for getting this project accomplished. Teams are given sufficient time and resources to accomplish the task.
Teams can access additional information but this requires them to not take immediate action but to first plan the journey – we find that the impetus to get going generally overweighs the desire of gathering information external to the team. Teams can talk to other teams that have additional information, but the reality is that teams with this information may choose not to share it freely, keeping it for their own competitive advantage.
Leadership in the exercise is highly supportive by explicit design – The game’s Expedition Leader has information that the teams do not have and which is highly beneficial in planning and operating. But leadership involvement is often rejected by the team. There is often a developing, “My Team, My Team, My Team” consensus among players that tends to create an Us / Them type of atmosphere -- there is that tendency for the teams not to include “outsiders” even though these people can provide additional perspective as well as other resources of information and value. This goes so far as to often reject the Expedition Leader from team communications, even though the expressed role of this person is to help teams be successful. Teams appear to want to avoid any semblance of “Command and Control” from the outside, and thus put the Expedition Leadership people at arms length rather than including them in the team activity. The act of involving external leadership requires some additional dialog and possible realignment caused by new information and thus might appear to be in conflict with what the team already knows and wants to do, thus causing that outsider to be rejected, even when they can add great value to the task.
Good teams will fail to optimize results when they are not aware of all the information available and when they reject the support offered by or available from outsiders to their team. Results of collaborative, externally-focused teams are often double those of successful, but low performing teams (all teams are successful but to different degrees). And “My Team, My Team, My Team” is a powerful motivator of teamwork, good performance and member camaraderie, but it is not the strategy that high-performing teams need to survive and prosper in today’s rapidly changing performance-based landscape.
The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine is a great tool to generate the process and discussion of these issues and the possibilities for improvement. It is a powerful learning exercise, one that enables a facilitator to discuss themes of choice, planning, motivation, communications and decision-making as they relate to teamwork and problem solving. It has been certified by the Project Management Institute for the teaching of project management and is used as a tool for teaching strategic planning skills as well as instruments such as DISC and MBTI.
But its alignment to themes as expressed in the X-Teams book give it a very unique place in the organizational development field. People will better understand how a successful and productive team works as well as how their own behavior contributes to this. They will have experienced memorable learning and have an opportunity to discuss what they can choose to do differently in the future. This works elegantly.
There are other tools and games in the marketplace that can also be adapted to generate some of these same desired outcomes.
For the FUN of It!
Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D.
XTeams and Team Building to Improve Organizational Performance - To learn more about this author, visit Scott Simmerman's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
X-Teams and Mining More Gold
Building Teamwork and Collaboration and Optimizing Results
The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine team building exercise is all about people working together on common goals to maximize overall results. The choices players make in the exercise align with choices made in the context of their business, a concept repeatedly demonstrated across cultures and companies. Thus, this exercise is an excellent way to “smoke out” behaviors that may be suboptimizing organizational results and offer a simple way to generate discussions about the choices being made and what might be done differently. The Goal of the game is to Mine as much Gold as We can, an excellent optimization and development metaphor.
Increasingly, companies are using teams as a means of improving productivity and performance. Results are clear: effective teamwork is a proven strategy to decrease employee turnover as well as improving innovation and workplace quality. Teams provide a collective intelligence and a motivation to look for and implement systems and processes as well as providing some peer support for individual change and improvement. But not every company has successful experiences with teams in the workplace.
Ancona and Bresman’s book (X-teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed, 2007) offers some excellent insights into why some teams perform at very high levels and why others fail. Essentially, the authors believe that teams that focus more externally get better information and operate more effectively than teams internally focused, a belief that is at odds with how most teams are trained and supported. The book offers many examples of this dichotomy, which clearly shows itself in the play of Lost Dutchman with its alignment to good inter-team communications, organizational improvement and leadership development.
The “X” in the X-team concept means being externally oriented, with people working both inside and outside the boundaries. As the authors state, “While managing internally is necessary, it is managing externally that enables teams to lead, innovate, and succeed in a rapidly changing environment.” This is the differentiating driving force for maximum success.
An X-team finds it necessary to go outside the team to create effective goals, plans, and designs and must have high levels of such external activity. A focus on the customer and their expectations is important, noting that expectations will often change continuously. X-teams combine productive external activity with extreme execution within the team, developing processes that enable a high degree of coordination and effective implementation. Examples used include meetings and presentations to and discussions with senior managers of their organization, combined with feedback to all members of the team about reactions and necessary changes.
A readiness to change was a primary success factor; situations would change and the team would need to change with it. X-teams are also flexible in their approach, engaging in exploration, exploitation of talents and information, and exportation where they transferred their learning and experiences to other teams. (Yeah, the authors did get crazy with their x’s!).
Together, these elements of external focus and activity, extreme execution and flexibility form the principles by which such teams guide themselves – and teams do take a significant amount of autonomy in how they approach and attain their desired outcomes. It is an ongoing focus on optimizing results plus the realization that others can provide valuable insight and information.
Three “X-factors” provide the structure and support they need to operate. These include extensive ties to useful outsiders, expandable resources of people and information, involved as needed by the core team, and exchangeable membership, the ability to add new people who come into and who leave the team as warranted by the situation. The authors liken the effective teams to externally focused operational groups, who work together cross boundaries and get access to the people and resources they need to be successful. These teams must be action oriented and willing to take risks as well as continually gather information.
Why this exercise works to generate workplace collaboration and results optimization:
- The specified role of the Expedition Leader is to help teams be successful
- The specific goal of the game is to “Mine as much Gold as we can” and thus maximize overall return on the investment (ROI)
- The Expedition Leader is providing teams with a map, sufficient resources, information and support for the entire journey - effective leaders manage resources effectively
- The Expedition Leader has additional information that teams find useful, but that will take time to access. People seldom ask for advice and help in the workplace.
- Collaboration between teams is suggested and one person is assigned this task
- Teams have fixed times in which to plan the work, execute the plan and complete the exercise - teams facing time limits are more motivated
- All results and outcomes are measurable and "players" are held accountable
The Expedition Leader charters each team with the goal of managing resources, information and time to optimize results. Teams are given a clear goal with a measurable outcome and a deadline for getting this project accomplished. Teams are given sufficient time and resources to accomplish the task.
Teams can access additional information but this requires them to not take immediate action but to first plan the journey – we find that the impetus to get going generally overweighs the desire of gathering information external to the team. Teams can talk to other teams that have additional information, but the reality is that teams with this information may choose not to share it freely, keeping it for their own competitive advantage.
Leadership in the exercise is highly supportive by explicit design – The game’s Expedition Leader has information that the teams do not have and which is highly beneficial in planning and operating. But leadership involvement is often rejected by the team. There is often a developing, “My Team, My Team, My Team” consensus among players that tends to create an Us / Them type of atmosphere -- there is that tendency for the teams not to include “outsiders” even though these people can provide additional perspective as well as other resources of information and value. This goes so far as to often reject the Expedition Leader from team communications, even though the expressed role of this person is to help teams be successful. Teams appear to want to avoid any semblance of “Command and Control” from the outside, and thus put the Expedition Leadership people at arms length rather than including them in the team activity. The act of involving external leadership requires some additional dialog and possible realignment caused by new information and thus might appear to be in conflict with what the team already knows and wants to do, thus causing that outsider to be rejected, even when they can add great value to the task.
Good teams will fail to optimize results when they are not aware of all the information available and when they reject the support offered by or available from outsiders to their team. Results of collaborative, externally-focused teams are often double those of successful, but low performing teams (all teams are successful but to different degrees). And “My Team, My Team, My Team” is a powerful motivator of teamwork, good performance and member camaraderie, but it is not the strategy that high-performing teams need to survive and prosper in today’s rapidly changing performance-based landscape.
The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine is a great tool to generate the process and discussion of these issues and the possibilities for improvement. It is a powerful learning exercise, one that enables a facilitator to discuss themes of choice, planning, motivation, communications and decision-making as they relate to teamwork and problem solving. It has been certified by the Project Management Institute for the teaching of project management and is used as a tool for teaching strategic planning skills as well as instruments such as DISC and MBTI.
But its alignment to themes as expressed in the X-Teams book give it a very unique place in the organizational development field. People will better understand how a successful and productive team works as well as how their own behavior contributes to this. They will have experienced memorable learning and have an opportunity to discuss what they can choose to do differently in the future. This works elegantly.
There are other tools and games in the marketplace that can also be adapted to generate some of these same desired outcomes.
For the FUN of It!
Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D.
XTeams and Team Building to Improve Organizational Performance - To learn more about this author, visit Scott Simmerman's Website.
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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