What separates great teams from average ones?

👋 Leaders,

Let’s talk about fire extinguishers…

No, really. 

Well actually, let’s come back to that #baitandswitch. 

First, let’s start with a question:

What is the competitive advantage of a startup? 

Yup, you guessed it. It all boils down to speed and agility. 

but why is that such an advantage?

It’s because of the amount of time it takes from information received to decision made.

One of Leadr’s Board Members, Dan Steinman, has a great story about this. He said that he knows his time at a company has come to an end when they’re making a decision for how many fire extinguishers they should have in the office (see, I told you we’d get back to fire extinguishers).

That’s not a hypothetical situation. He was literally sitting in a committee once where one of the agenda items was deciding how many fire extinguishers to order for the office.

Doesn’t OSHA decide that anyway…? 

But isn’t that just the perfect example of what a slow moving, ineffective team looks like? 

If it takes a committee to make a decision about fire extinguishers, then imagine what other, actually important, decisions are being drawn out.

Here are some of my favorite quotes about this…

“The most effective organizations are ones where the decision making power is held as close to the front lines as possible.”

-Craig Groeschel 

“If you wait to get consensus on every decision then you’ll make bad decisions. (a) they’ll take too long and (b) the best decisions are usually when not everyone agrees with you.”

-Patrick Lencioni 

“I led with intuition and I gave people around me permission to lead with their intuition…There's a lot of emphasis on data… I'm really interested in the dots between the data."

-Sarah Blakley 

(woof, that one slaps) 

“We have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win.”

-Steve Jobs 

So, what separates great teams from average ones?

#1 Great teams are led by good ideas.

And

#2 Within great teams, good ideas travel fast and decisions get made quickly.

Let’s start with good ideas. 

No one, CEO’s included, has a monopoly on good ideas. 

On average teams, good ideas are not the loudest voice in the room. Instead, they’re:

• people with fancy titles

• or from someone who knows someone (nepotism)

• or it’s when someone is super charismatic and just great at selling 

• or it’s when someone literally has the loudest voice.
  

The difference between a great company and an average company is that within great companies, the best ideas surface to the top regardless of the other factors listed above.

Now let’s talk about moving fast.

Why don’t decisions get made faster than they should in average organizations? 

• People are afraid to speak up because they don’t want to be look stupid or be wrong. 

• “I’m new here” mentality. Folks don’t feel like they can speak up until they’ve been on the team for __ months.

• When previous ideas that have been surfaced were shut down, so creativity is stifled.

• Ego. Sometimes it’s simply because people like their idea better because it makes them look good.

• Too many meetings. Endless internal meetings are like playing defense instead of playing offense.
  

Maybe you’ve experienced that within your organization. Maybe it happened today.

If that’s true, let’s fix it. 

In agile organizations, you can always swing the pendulum. 

Let’s start here:

1. What good ideas do you have?

2. Share them today.

3. Push for a decision quickly.

4. If it doesn’t go anywhere, push again (I like how Jessica Chastain does it).

Lead on, 

MT 

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