The Performance Factor
By Pat MacMillan

How can a group of people go from a gathering to a high performance team that accomplishes something beyond expectation? Pat MacMillan gives his answer in The Performance Factor. Based on a great deal of consulting experience MacMillan outlines what any team needs and does to become a “high performance team.” The principles he outlines in the book seem to be uniquely helpful to an organization like Campus Crusade as Crusade relies heavily on teams to accomplish so much.

MacMillan points out, that teams are needed when the environment is one of quickly changing factors, large scope of influence, complex problems and broad solutions. The ministry landscape of today’s college campus certainly resembles those criteria. Teams can produce a synergistic result in which the outcomes are beyond the ability of any of the individuals on the team. Teams generate better ideas, and can implement strategies far more broadly and deeply than individual effort allows. However, many teams get bogged down and the increased results they were looking for never materialize.

Teams need two things to begin the process of growing in their performance. The first is a willingness to do so. The second is skill. Many teams grind to a halt because the participants are somehow not willing to engage to the point where the team can be successful. Once willingness has been established a team can gain the skill needed to achieve exceptional results.

As a team comes together each member must work through the following significant questions to align with their participation and the team direction:
Why am I here? Each member must settle the question as to whether this group is headed in a direction they want to go; and whether they can get there better with the team than alone. I find that we often take the answers to these questions for granted, but talking through all of this will drive a stake in the ground for each team member and alleviate alignment problems in the future.
Who are you and why are you here? This question is one of trust and relationship. Are the other members competent? Are they willing to do what it will take to reach the goal? Every member of any team answers these questions wither consciously or unconsciously. Calling this thought process to the surface and using tools to help people get to know the others (MBTA, Birkman, Lifelines, etc.) will help to create that all important team factor of trust.
What are we doing? Defining the task of the team is perhaps the most important conversation any team has. An NFL teams sets out to win the Super Bowl, a management team might set out to double sales results. Take the adequate time to answer this question specifically. (More on this later)

How will we do it? This is the strategy portion of the discussion. The strategic discussion has to do with roles, partnerships deadlines and resources. When the answers to these questions have been established the group will be off to a running start.

MacMillan points out six characteristics of a truly high performance team. On any team each of these is worthy of thorough discussion in order to clarify all factors and move ahead with the greatest effectiveness.

Common Purpose - many ministry teams overlook this aspect of their team embracing a fuzzy purpose or merely adopting an organizational mission statement. That is a mistake. As MacMillan says, “success is a product of uncompromising attention to purpose.” The bottom line for MacMillan on this point is that every team must have a task – no task, no team. That task must crystal clear, relevant and desirable, significant, urgent and achievable.

Crystal Clear Roles – this does not hearken back to the days of linear reporting relationships and silos of responsibility. Having clear roles means that everyone knows what is expected and that the job isn’t done until everyone is done. Better clarity on a good team produces greater collaboration and shared responsibility, not less. “To achieve exceptional results, high performance teams need to creatively divide the task and then cooperate like mad.” (p.88) As teams leverage themselves toward the task they must: 1. Encourage input about everything from every person. 2. Tap into the entire pool of experience and skill rather than throw up role boundaries. 3. Proactively seek input from every member. 4. Ensure there is enough diversity on the team that it sees things from different perspectives.

Accepted Leadership – leadership is primarily based on trust and service. Since trust is not an on/off kind of commodity, but rather is given along a continuum, it needs to be continually built. In looking for qualities that make for good leaders the themes of honesty, competence, visionary, and inspirational rose to the top. Among other things a good leader will be able to 1. Appreciate the collective brilliance of the team. 2. Believe in the power of diversity. 3. See team leadership as a role from which to serve, not a position to be served. 4. See leadership and power as something to be released and given away, not amassed or held. 5. Balance the delicate harmony of the task, the team and the individuals that make it up. (p. 112)

Effective Team Process – there are two types of process at work in any team. One is the work process; the other is the thinking process. Typically it is the implementation that gets all the attention. Thinking processes however are the ways in which information is gathered, how meetings are conducted, communication, record keeping, and the work of healthy evaluation on an ongoing basis. Crusade provides some excellent work processes in the Strategic Planning Process and the PREFACE Problem solving process. The thinking processes need to be culled out for each individual team. In my opinion the single best exercise for improving the thinking process on a team is simply to ask evaluative questions (What has been good about our meetings? What would you change? Are we getting the most out of them? etc.)

Solid Relationships – high performance teams do not need to be best friends. In fact sometimes the homogeny of friendships relationships can prevent the diversity needed to see things from a different perspective. However team relationships do need to be of the stuff that enables people to move forward in the face of inevitable misunderstanding, conflict, and set-backs. Cooperation can be maintained with healthy doses of trust, acceptance, respect, understanding, and courtesy. Leighton Ford says the relational side of leadership is the ability to treat those familiar with the same dignity as we would an important stranger.

Excellent Communication – the bigger our teams get the greater the burden of communication becomes. And, to make matters worse, communication appears to be deceptively easy. The reality is that effective communication is very difficult. Various studies (don’t ask me how) have revealed that only 7% of what one communicates is actually in the words one says. The rest has to do with intonation, body language, the timing of ones remarks, etc. So, communication is not finished until the other person or people have clearly understood and you have understood them. Excellent communication with mine to collective IQ of the entire team and it always bring conflict. Tools to do both are essential. Again, evaluative questions can be very helpful. Ask: What is working in our communication process? What is not working? Are communication styles getting in the way of understanding?

I found The Performance Factor to be an excellent book for the kind of work we do on various teams in the Campus Ministry. Because of our complicated roles, large scopes and need for creative solutions, teams are a vital part of our lives on staff and will always be. If ever there was a reason to assemble high performance teams to accomplish a great task it is ours, as we co-labor with God himself to bring his message to the world.