comes as a result of working through issues constantly and cycling through conflict. But if it comes only as a result of people holding back their opinions and honest concerns, then it’s a bad thing. I’d trade that false kind of harmony any day for a team’s willingness to argue effectively about an issue and then walk away with no collateral damage.”
Lack of Commitment
Kathryn went back to the whiteboard. “The next dysfunction of a team is a lack of commitment and a failure to buy into decisions.” She wrote this dysfunction above the previous one. “And the evidence of this one is ambiguity,” which she wrote next to it.
“I’m talking about committing to a plan or a decision, and getting everyone to clearly buy into it. That’s why conflict is so important,” Kathryn explained. “When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board. The point here is that most reasonable people don’t have to get their way in a discussion. They just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to.”
Avoidance of Accountability
Kathryn went to the board for the last time and wrote avoidance of accountability.
She explained, “Once we achieve clarity and buyin, we have to hold each other accountable for what we sign up to do, for high standards of performance and behavior. And as simple as that sounds, most executives hate to do it, especially when it comes to a peer’s behavior, because they want to avoid interpersonal discomfort.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?” Jeff asked.
“I’m talking about that moment when you know you have to call one of your peers on something that matters, and you decide to let it go because you just don’t want to experience that feeling of … interpersonal discomfort,” Kathryn explained.
She wrote low standards next to avoidance of accountability on the whiteboard.
Part Three: Heavy Lifting
Over the next two weeks, Kathryn began to push her team harder than ever before regarding their behavior. She chided Martin, DecisionTech’s chief technologist, for eroding trust by appearing smug during meetings. She forced Carlos to confront the team about its lack of responsiveness to customer issues. And she spent more than one night with DecisionTech’s CFO, Jan, and its head of sales, Nick, working through budget battles that had to be fought.
More important than what Kathryn did, however, was the reaction she received. As resistant as they might have seemed in the moment, no one questioned whether they should be doing the things that Kathryn was making them do. There seemed to be a genuine sense of collective purpose.
The only question that remained in Kathryn’s mind was whether she could keep it going long enough for everyone to see the benefits.
Part Four: Traction
Over the course of the next year, DecisionTech grew its sales dramatically and met its revenue goals during three of the four quarters. The company moved into a virtual tie for the number one position in the industry, but had yet to separate itself from its chief rival.
With the substantial improvement in performance, the company saw turnover among employees subside and morale rise steadily, with the exception of a slight and temporary dip when the company missed its numbers.
Interestingly, when that happened, even the chairman called to encourage Kathryn not to get too disappointed in light of the undeniable progress she had made.
The March
With more than 250 employees, Kathryn decided it was time to trim down the number of executives who reported directly to her. She believed that the larger the company, the smaller the team should be at the top. And with the addition of a new head of sales and a human resources director, her staff had grown to a barely manageable eight. It wasn’t that Kathryn couldn’t handle the weekly oneon-ones, but it was