How’s your teaming going?

The traditional model of how teams progress goes by stages — forming, storming, norming and performing. While it’s easy to remember, teams today don’t necessarily follow that model. They’re dispersed, virtual, temporary and potentially remote. So how do you know if things are going well?

As my friend Jeff Pfeffer says, unless you are a sole contributor, your success depends on other people

An essential element in the success of any creative, innovative effort is to create teams of people who can cover diverse terrain, bring different skills to bear and basically work together. In my own research, I found that “deft” teams were essential to being able to create a new competitive advantage. Even though I was interested in new capability creation, I stumbled across teams. Amy Edmondson and I often joke about this — she studied teams and bumped into strategies, and I studied strategies and bumped into teams!

The result of all this research is a simple, but rich diagnostic that can quickly pinpoint where your team may be struggling. It measures five core characteristics that determine whether a team is likely to produce results — or just frustration.