Rapid Team Performance Assessment

© 2012 Growth River LLC, All Rights Reserved.

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Rapid Team Alignment Assessment

To conduct a rapid team alignment assessment, please read the following and answer the questions.

Imagine that you are a team leader and that you want to assess the performance of your team. How do you know they are aligned? Your’s may be an enterprise team, a business team or a function team. It might be in a small, large, for profit or not-‐for-‐profit organization. In this document there are some revealing assessment questions. These questions will allow you to conduct a mini-‐assessment of your team – and enable you to go back and explain a way forward. They will help to reveal the highest leverage issues for your team and business. These questions are based on a leadership philosophy called context building. A context is a set of key conditions that determine the ways-‐of-‐thinking and acting, relationships, activities and results that are sustainable. Your context is the box in which you operate. Context building is about create those key conditions that make success inevitable.

Key Definitions:

A context is a set of key conditions that determine the results that are sustainable or not. These key conditions are the box in which you and your team play. Alignment is when the key conditions in a context work together to make success inevitable. It is an optimal state in which there are no constraints. A leader is someone who is accountable for creating those key conditions that will make success inevitable for a team. Effective leaders create alignment. They build effective contexts. A primary constraint (*) is the one key condition in a context that most limits sustainable performance. Resolving primary constraints yields the highest possible return on investment and is the fastest path to evolution. One of the goals of these questions is to help identify the primary constraints in your team and business. A business is a system-‐of-‐workflows designed to develop, sell and deliver products and services to customers with the help of partners in order to create competitive advantage.


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Part I: Identify the Constraints to Your Team’s Effectiveness

and Your Businesses’

We have found that if four key conditions are optimized (1-‐4), then a highly effective team is inevitable. At any given time, one of these four key conditions will be sub-‐optimal. This one sub-‐optimal condition is the current primary constraint to a team reaching a higher level of performance.

The Four Key Conditions for Team Effectiveness


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I. Vertical Ways-‐of-‐Thinking and Acting

The vertical impulse (↑) is the impulse to increase strategic possibilities. In contrast, the horizontal impulse (→) is to manage risk. A successful team culture requires both horizontal and vertical impulses. The right mix is critical as it profoundly affects innovation and the kinds of business models that are sustainable.

1. What is the dominant impulse of your top-‐leader and team: vertical or horizontal? One important implication? What should it be?

5 4 3 2 1 n/a ↑ Vertical Horizontal → To expand possibilities To control risk

II. Complete System-‐of-‐Roles

In a complete system-‐of-‐roles every key issue and relationship has a dedicated owner with sufficient authority to play their role.

A complete system-‐of-‐roles requires champions who have the authority to innovate and drive performance.

2. Do all critical issues and key relationships have dedicated owners?

5 4 3 2 1 n/a Almost Always Sometimes Rarely

III. Aligned Strategies Strategies are aligned to the extent that they create competitive advantage across an organization. Competitive advantage is measured by four factors: market potential, scalability, sustainability and return. Any strategy can be evaluated by its contribution to one or more of these factors. In this way, disparate strategies across an enterprise can be compared and integrated.

3. Are strategies aligned towards competitive advantage?

5 4 3 2 1 n/a Almost Always Sometimes Rarely


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1. IV. Optimized Workflows

Businesses growth is the speed at which products and services are developed, sold and delivered. A team that shares this understanding – and structures metrics around it – will align to create growth. The Business Triangle is a way to visualize the workflows in a business. In any business, there are Four Key Conditions for Go-‐to-‐Market Effectiveness.

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IV. Optimized Workflows (con’t.)

Different kinds of businesses or industries will have different types of activities around their business triangles. The primary constraint to growth in a business will lie within the activities on one side of a business’s triangle.

Sample business triangles with key functional capabilities. MANUFACTURING BUSINESS

RETAIL BUSINESS

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IV. Optimized Workflows (con’t.)

4. Using the table, list the different businesses in your enterprise.

A business is a system-‐of-‐workflows designed to develop, sell and deliver products and services to customers with the help of partners in order to create competitive advantage. To ensure clear accountabilities, businesses should segmented in an enterprise to reflect key differences in how products and services are developed, sold and delivered. Separate businesses require separate strategies. They often have separate P&Ls. A business is not a function like marketing or sales or a specific market but it is a complete business triangle that can encompass several functions working together.

5. Identify the primary constraint to growth (pcg) in the workflow of each business from

Develop, Sell or Deliver. There is only one pcg in each business. (Place a checkmark to indicate where the pcg is.)

ü Workflow w/ pcg identified

# Businesses

Develop Capabilities -‐ developing winning value-‐propositions.

Sell Capabilities

-‐ gaining access to target

customers and creating successful purchase moments.

Deliver Capabilities -‐ delivering as promised and generating positive referrals.

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If the location of the primary constraint is not clear, apply the following logic

ü The pcg is in developing if you have a weak value-‐proposition. ü The pcg is in selling if you have a strong value proposition and excess delivery capacity. ü The pcg is in delivering if you can sell more than you can deliver.

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Part II: Questions to Clarify the Path Forward

The critical objective is to create a team culture in which every member knows at all times where the constraints are – and what the root causes are. This will yield maximum alignment towards growth and return. Your answers to the questions above (including non-‐answers) point to where your team may be out of alignment in a way that is impacting performance. To clarify the path forward, ask:

6. Is there a pattern in the location of the pcg’s across businesses? Are they mostly in

developing, selling or delivering? One implication?

The causes for this pattern will lie in one of the top three key conditions for team effectiveness (Part I): Ways of Thinking and Acting, Complete System-‐of-‐Roles, or Aligned Strategies. If there is no pattern, yet business constraints are not being resolved efficiently, the root cause will also lie in one of these three top conditions. The reason for this is that these are critical conditions that determine the kind of business models your organization can and cannot sustain. For example, if your team is risk averse, your system-‐of-‐roles may be unclear. If your system-‐of-‐roles is unclear, your strategies are likely to be unclear. Therefore your workflows could be inefficient and the quality uneven.

7. How significant is the impact of these constraints on team and business performance?

5 4 3 2 1 n/a Very significant Not significant

8. How important is it to resolve these constraints?

5 4 3 2 1 n/a Very important Not important

9. Are you planning to make a case for how your team and businesses should align? To

whom? What will you need?

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Rapid Team Performance Assessment

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Transcript of Rapid Team Performance Assessment