Looking Back on Lessons From Mars

Forget everything you thought you knew about team building.

In this series of blogs, vlogs and podcasts, I’ve presented the complete high performance collaboration and teamwork Framework I was part of developing at Mars, Inc. All of that went into my book, Lessons from Mars: How One Global Company Cracked the Code on High Performance Collaboration and Teamwork.

This is the final entry in the Lessons From Mars series and I want to take a few moments to reflect on what we’ve talked about and let you know what else is possible. I worked at Mars for 17 wonderful years. Mars allowed me, enabled me, and supported me in doing research into team effectiveness which led to very important insights, including insights into what doesn’t work in the field of team effectiveness and team building.

For example, team spirit. Team spirit is lovely but it makes no difference to collaboration effectiveness.I have data to support this assertion. I also learned that the four stages of team development (some now use five stages) don’t help teams get better. They describe what state a team is in but they say nothing about what teams need to do to improve. I learned that team dysfunction is more often a matter of individual performance that it is a team problem. These are some of the common ideas we need to let go of. Why let go of them? So we can embrace new ideas.

The “I” in Team makes all the difference: Individuals

The central insight I had about what works was our discovery of the link between individual motivation and group effectiveness. We learned that if you want people, high achieving, driven people to collaborate, you must appeal to their internal drive for success and achievement. If you don’t speak to this driving instinct, you are not likely to draw them into collaboration. If you want better collaboration you must make collaboration feel irresistible to results-minded people.

The 3 Imperatives of Team Collaboration

Based on this insight, we identified 3 big musts you need to do for teams if they are going to improve collaborative outcomes. We call these, Clarity, Intentionality and Discipline the 3 Imperatives.

Establish clarity, clarity of why collaboration matters to the team, to the organization and the individual. You also must clarify what work will drive the results that are expected through collaboration. This clarity then stimulates more of the next big must-have:
Intentional collaboration, or intentionality, occurs when people step into collaboration as a choice, as a way to get the work done because it feels irresistible to them. These requirements, clarity and intentionality are supported by the last of the 3 must-haves.
Discipline by a few good habits of team process that are completely aligned to why the team is working together and the collaborative value they are creating.

The 6 Practices that Address the 3 Imperatives

The 3 Imperatives led us to six Practices of High Performance Collaboration. I won’t go into detail about each one here – revisit earlier podcasts for that but. In summary:

The six Practices are explained in my books, podcasts and vlog posts along with tools that will help you to do each one, to put these insights to work for your organization and your teams.

Get the book. I highly recommend it. I did a heck of a job if I do say so myself. Also, check out my latest book: Virtual Teams: Holding the Center When You Can’t Meet Face-to-Face. It is now available through your preferred on-line bookseller.

Click here to contact me with any questions and further discussion. We can arrange to bring me into your organization to speak about what we learned, how we learned it and how you can apply it.

Resources

There are lots of resources for you out there. My books, my podcasts, my blog posts, my vlogs. I would love to hear from you. A couple of other books on the subjects are Chris Avery’s Teamwork Is An Individual Skill, and Radical Collaboration by James Tamm and Ronald J Luyet If you'd like help with your organization, feel free to contact me. Helping organizations is what I enjoy most.Not just because organizations need it – and they do – but because it’s better for people. When we can connect with others around meaningful work and produce better results that we can all be proud of, that’s just good for everybody. That’s why I do this work, that’s why we need to start this quiet revolution. The invitation is open. Join me, won’t you?

If you’d like to have Carlos speak to your organization, contact his agent Robin Wolfson at https://robinwolfsonagency.com/