What Makes Teams Work?

Aaron Cohen

CEO
Concrete Inc.
New York, New York

This moment in history is about individual collaborative thinking. That's almost an oxymoron. But it means that people need to be fiercely independent and intensely collaborative at the same time.

Teamwork is at the heart of the creative energy of the Internet industry. It's important to take advantage of each player's best insights, but we'll all get farther, faster, if we work together to solve problems.

Today's companies need lots of aspiring leaders. That doesn't mean that a company needs to have 15 chief executives, but it does mean that the top manager has to know how to check his or her ego and encourage everyone else to do what he or she does best.

Great teams operate without their members knowing what's going to happen to them in the future. The key is that each individual has a belief in the others that enables him or her to carry through. Members need to believe that everyone is working toward a common goal.

Aaron Cohen (acohen@concreteinc.com) leads a team of nearly 200 people who are focusing on a very particular part of the Internet economy: helping large corporations build new Internet businesses. Concrete Inc. (formerly Concrete Media) offers an integrated suite of services that includes strategic consulting, software engineering, brand positioning, and strategic-technology and design services.

Franklin Jonath

President
Jonath & DiMeo Inc.
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Given a group of talented people and a project that is worthy, it's the leader who makes a team succeed.

In theater and in sports, teams get a chance to practice a lot before the main event takes place. It should be the same in the corporate world. A good team leader will create an environment in which people can practice and make mistakes before they're pressured to produce.

A skilled leader will also focus on managing the interactions between people, as opposed to managing individual behavior. That allows individuals to manage their own behavior.

A good leader recognizes that everyone is competitive to some degree. He or she is careful to accentuate people's different strengths, rather than stigmatize them for their weaknesses. There's no need to stop people from competing, but that rivalry has to be channeled into cooperative competitiveness.

The idea is for the team leader to be at the service of the group. It should be clear that the team members own the outcome. The leader is there to bring intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resources to the team. Through his or her actions, the leader should be able to show the others how to think about the work that they're doing in the context of their lives. It's a tall order, but the best teams have such leaders.

Franklin Jonath (fjonath@aol.com) is the president of Jonath & DiMeo Inc., a management-consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work focuses on addressing individual- and group-communications issues. He specializes in diagnosing individual and group problems as well as designing and implementing practical solutions.

Jeanie Duck

Senior vice president
Boston Consulting Group
Atlanta, Georgia; Miami, Florida

Most teams are so eager to start thinking about work plans and output that they don't spend nearly as much time as they should setting up.

Are the team members all on the same page about the project's goals? Do they all understand how their work is going to be measured? What are they going to do if one team member doesn't do his or her homework?

Too often, what happens is that teams get right down to work, and then some sort of conflict arises. It gets ugly and personal very fast, because everyone has been blindsided and no one knows what to do. Here's an example: You start working as a team. One person is behaving like a star -- he wants special treatment. Well, did you all talk about that possibility before you launched into things?

My advice for any new team: Don't shortchange your startup. Take the time to understand what you're going to do and how you're going to deal with the possible bumps along the way. Trying to undo a conflict between two team members when no one is prepared to handle such a situation is at least three times harder than taking the time to set up some ground rules at the beginning of the process.

I saw it happen in a merger, and it was painful. There were two companies, both with the same type of business. Why would there be any conflict? I've also seen it happen in internal teams. The ones that are particularly vulnerable are those that try to come up with a new approach to something. Such teams are made up of departments that have different interests. One of them has to give. Who is the team sponsor? Has the whole team agreed that one person has the authority to make the call?

Don't say, "It won't happen to us." Spend the time up front. Please.

Jeanie Duck, who is based in Atlanta, is a senior vice president at the Boston Consulting Group. Duck's work mainly focuses on large-scale change. She has a book coming out called The Change Monster: The Human Forces That Fuel or Foil Corporate Transformation and Change (Random House, Spring 2001).