Building on the work done by Robert Simons in Designing High-Performance Jobs, TEAM is a coaching tool that can be used when working with a client who wishes to assess and potentially redesign his or her project team.
Strategies for Project Team Planning
Four aligned environmental elements are needed for a Project Team to be successful. Two of these elements (Authority and Triangulation) relate to the supplies (resources) needed for members of the Project Team to be able to effectively initiate the project. The other two elements (Expectations and Motivation) relate to the demands being made on the Project Team from outside the team. Members of the Project Team have substantial control (internal locus of control) with regard to two of the four environmental elements (Authority and Motivation), but have very little direct control (external locus of control) with regard to the other two environmental elements (Expectations and Triangulation).
Authority [Internal Locus of Control] [Supply Element]
A project is more likely to be successful if it gains access to substantial resources in the organization (though increased expectations often come with more substantial resources).
Control (Formal Authority): The resources which Project Team “owns” or has
been officially assigned to and provided for this project.
Patronage (Informal Authority): The resources to which Project Team has
access that are officially “owned” by or assigned to others in the organization that has been loaned to this project team (yet can be withdrawn).
Defines the range of resources—not only people but also assets and infrastructure—for which a team is given decision rights. The team is held accountable for performance resulting from deployment of these resources.
To Decrease the Authority: Reduce resources allocated to specific positions or units
To Increase the Authority: Allocate more people, assets, and infrastructure
Expectations [External Locus of Control] [Demand Element]
A project team is more challenged if the expectations of others in the organization are higher (though higher expectations often come with greater authority over and access to organizational resources).
Accountability (Formal Expectations): The designated and assigned outcomes
for the Project Team
Hope (Informal Expectations): The often unacknowledged, but shared,
expectations regarding Project Team outcomes—if highly successful
The range of trade-offs affecting the measures used to evaluate a team’s achievements. The strength of this environmental element is determined by the kind of actions and outcomes that are formally and informally expected of this project team.
The expectation element and authority element are not independent. They must be considered together. The first element (Expectations) defines the end points for a project team and the second element (Authority) defines the resources that are available to a team as it moves toward these end points. By explicitly setting the expectations for a project team higher than the authority formally and informally granted to the team, an organization can force a project team to become more entrepreneurial.
To Raise the Expectations: Standardize work by using measures (either financial, such as time-item budget expenses, or non-financial, such as head count) that allow few tradeoffs.
To Lower the Expectations: Use non-financial measures (such as customer satisfaction) or broad financial measures (such as profits) that allow many tradeoffs.
Motivation [Internal Locus of Control] [Demand Element]
A project is likely to gain much more support in an organization (yet also increase expectations) if it holds the potential of influencing other projects and encouraging other people in the organization.
Enablement (Tangible Motivation): The direct ways in which Project Team
can benefit others in the organization and, more specifically, contribute to
the success of other projects.
Encouragement (Intangible Motivation): The indirect ways in which Project
Team can be champion or ever-present “colleague” to others in the
organization and, more specifically, to other projects.
The importance of the motivational element in a project team’s environment is determined in part by the width of the net that a team needs to cast in collecting data, probing for new information, and attempting to influence the work of others. Leaders of an organization can increase the importance of the motivational element by redesigning the task assigned to this project team—placing the team on a cross-functional relationship with other project teams or giving the team an assignment that requires it to report to two bosses. These leaders can decrease the motivational properties of a project team by encouraging members of the project teams to think outside the box (and outside the organization) in developing new ways of serving customers, increasing internal efficiencies, or adapting to changes in external markets. Project team members, in other words, are encouraged to serve as pioneers who are working well beyond (and therefore isolated from) anyone else in the organization.
Leaders can also adjust motivational levels for a project team by adjusting the goals they set for this team. Although the nature of a team’s goals drives the expectations element (by determining the trade-offs team members can make), the level or difficulty of meeting these expectations, drives the team’s motivational level. A project team that is given a stretch goal will often be forced to seek out and interact with more people and other teams than a team or person whose goal is set at a much lower level (increasing the need for high levels of both motivation and triangulation). Finally, organizational leaders can use accounting and control systems to adjust the motivational level (e.g. assigning indirect cost allocations to team).
To Lower Motivational Levels: Require people to pay attention only to their own jobs; do not allocate costs across units; use single reporting lines; and reward individual performance.
To Increase Motivational Levels: Inject creative tension through structures, systems, and goals—for example, cross-unit teams, dotted lines, matrix structures, stretch goals, cross-unit cost allocation, and transfer prices.
Triangulation [External Locus of Control] [Supply Element]
True and enduring support in an organization comes not just from connecting with and receiving tangible or intangible support from other people, another project, another initiative or another agency in the organization. It comes from a triangulation wherein both your team and the other entity link positively with a third entity (a shared mission, a shared vision, a shared commitment to and capacity to enable a more general and critical project in the organization). A triangulated structure is always stronger (able to withstand powerful external forces) than a structure with only two anchor points (or two sets of anchor points: a four-sided structure).
Investment (Tangible Triangulation): The unwavering, specific and voluntary contributions of resources from elsewhere in the organization to the Project Team as a result of shared commitment to specific organizational values, vision and purposes.
Good Will (Intangible Triangulation): The sustained and honest best wishes of others in the organization for the success of this project and for successful engagement of Project Team members in this project based on shared commitment to specific organizational values, vision and purposes.
The level of triangulation determines the amount of help a project team can expect from teams and individual people in other organizational units. The required level of triangulation is, in turn, determined by the amount of commitment from various stakeholders the team requires in order to implement its strategies and meet the expectations assigned to this project team by the organizational environment. High levels of triangulation become critically important when customer loyalty is vital to strategy implementation or when organizational design is highly complex because of sophisticated technologies and a complex value chain. Teams cannot adjust levels of triangulation in isolation. That’s because the strength of this environmental element is largely determined by people’s sense of shared responsibilities, which in turn stems from an organization’s culture and values.
To Increase Level of Triangulation: Build shared responsibilities through purpose and mission, organization-wide identification, trust, and equity-based incentive plans.
To Reduce Level of Triangulation: Use leveraged, highly individualized rewards, and clearly single out winners and losers.
Analysis of Team Environment: Designing High Performance Project Teams
There are four elements within the environment of an organization that play an important role in determining the effectiveness of project teams. These four elements are: (1) expectations, (2) authority, (3) motivational and (4) triangulation. Each of these elements can be increased or decreased. An effectively-designed project team (when mapped out on a Project Team Environmental Analysis graph) is one where the line linking authority and triangulation cross the line that links expectations and motivation.
Project Team Design
When adjusting team design, the first step to be taken by the project team in association with leaders of the organization is to set the level of Authority to reflect the resources allocated to the team—especially if the team and its project plays an important role in delivering customer value. Next, the project team in association with leaders of the organization should set a specific level of entrepreneurial behavior and creative tension for the team by increasing or decreasing Expectations and Motivation. Finally, members of the project team in association with leaders of the organization should adjust the level of Triangulation to ensure that the team will get the informal help it needs.
Two of the environmental elements measure the supply of resources the organization provides to project teams. The Authority element relates to the level of direct control a team has over people, assets, and information. The Triangulation element is its “softer” counterpart, reflecting the supply of resources in the contributions and good will offered by various stakeholders in the organization.
The other two elements—Expectations (hard) and Motivation (soft)—determine demands on the project team from various stakeholders in the organization. The level of expectations for a project team, as defined by the organization, directly affects the level of pressure on team members to make trade-offs; that pressure in turn drives the team’s need for organizational resources. The motivational level for a team, as determined by the structure of the team and the broader system in which the team is embedded, also reflects the extent to which team members have a legitimate right to request resources.
For any organization to operate at maximum efficiency and effectiveness, the supply of resources for each project team must equal the demand. In other words, Authority plus Triangulation must equal Expectations plus Motivation.
Using the Project Team Environmental Analysis Questionnaire and the Project Team Environmental Analysis Graph to determine levels of expectations, authority, motivation and triangulation, members of a project team can engage in a review of existing environmental levels and determine most appropriate environmental levels for efficiency and effectiveness.
Step One: Complete the Project Team Environmental Questionnaire, determining the levels for each of the four elements by assigning a rating (score from “1” to “5”) to each of the two sub-elements and adding together these two ratings (a total score from “2” to “10”).
Step Two: Place a mark on each of the four lines of the Project Team Environmental Analysis Graph, based on the team members’ assignment of ratings for each of the four environmental elements.
Step Three: Draw a line between the mark on the Authority line and the mark on the Triangulation line [forming the supply of resources line]. Draw a second line between the mark on the Expectation line and the mark on the Motivation line [forming the demand for resources line].
Step Four: If the two lines intersect, forming an “X,” then demand equals support (at least roughly) and the team is properly designed for sustained performance. If the lines do not cross, then the spans are misaligned. If resources (Authority plus Triangulation) are insufficient for the task at hand, strategy implementation will fail [ineffectiveness]. If recourses are excessive, underutilization of assets and poor economic performance can be predicted [inefficiency].
A crisis of resources is most likely to occur when leaders who oversee project teams spend too much time thinking about authority, motivation and expectations, and not enough time thinking about triangulation.
A crisis of control is likely to occur in highly decentralized organizations where separate business units are created to be close to customers. Supply of resources (authority, plus triangulation) exceeds an organizational leader’s ability to effectively monitor project team trade-offs (expectations) and to ensure coordination of knowledge sharing among teams (motivation).
A crisis of red tape can occur in any organization where powerful staff groups overseeing key internal processes, such as strategic planning and resource allocation, design performance management systems that are too complex for the organization. Levels of environmental expectations and motivation are very high, but resources are insufficient and misdirected. The demand for resources exceeds supply.
Tools for Coaching
The attached pdf documents includes several useful for the coach who is working with the leader of a team or with the entire team: (1) illustrations of several Project Team Environmental Analyses, (2) a summary of the four elements, (3) a more detailed listing of the steps to be taken in conducting such an analysis, (4) the assessment tool, and (5) the graphic tool to be used in plotting the assessment tool results.