One of my greatest passions is cultivating productive teams. I like the phrase “healthy team” and define a healthy team as:
Healthy people in healthy relationships doing amazing work
I’ve never met anyone that really disagreed with this idea. The big question is how do you cultivate such a team? I’m going to try and break down what I know and have learned on this in terms of the basic anatomy of a team: culture and structure.
The vine and the trellis
My favorite word picture to use is that of a vine on a trellis. Imagine a grape vine running along a wooden trellis. The vine itself is what is fruitful; it bears the grapes and grows longer. So why the trellis? Well, vines in and of themselves don’t always know where to grow, so the trellis provides a structure for the vine to follow to maximize its growth and promote fruitfulness. It’s a simple and brilliant structure that’s existed for thousands of years.
Think of the vine as the team culture. By culture I’m talking about the health and capability of the individual members, as well as how well they relate and collaborate to one another. The team is what produces the actual work.
Next, think of the trellis as the team structure. This is the organizational chart, the processes, the systems, and so forth. The structure doesn’t produce work in and of itself, but seeks to foster and maximize work potential for the team.
The mega trellis: structure-over-culture
A very common mistake is to underestimate culture and overestimate structure.
The most obvious example of this is micro-managing, wherein the manager feels that in order to get results they must give the team constant guidance and direction. What’s interesting is that, practically speaking, the manager may not be wrong — if they let up, the team’s output may plummet.
Another example of this can be building exhaustively robust project management systems, wherein there is a way for doing everything. And when a circumstance arrises wherein there’s no documented way of doing something, it’s either not done or momentum is lost until a way is defined.
One more example is isolating teams, say development and support, and then discouraging communication between the two outside of specific means and channels.
In all of these circumstances, the problem isn’t necessarily the structure in and of itself. The real problem occurs when teams begin to use structure to compensate for poor culture.
Does your team take ownership and initiative? Are they able to have debates and discussions effectively and respectfully? If the answer is no, then the solution is not structure. Be very careful of this, as we often are compensating for a lack of health and not even realizing it.
Think about it this way: You could truly have the most incredibly structured trellis in the world, but it can never make up for a sickly vine. If the vine is malnourished, the grapes will be small and flavorless — no structure can make up for this. Culture matters.
The chaotic vine: under-structuring
The opposite extreme is also a mistake: prioritizing culture without providing structure.
An example of this is having a team gets along really well, but no one on the team can easily find out what anyone else is doing. They know they can reach out and ask questions, which they do, but all insight requires a conversation. Teams in this circumstance often fail to get the best of the team as a whole because teammates don’t even know to offer insight to others.
Another example is a highly agile team that makes quick decisions with no clear destination. The team may have a vague goal in mind, but the goals and ideas didn’t follow any structure of gathering insight and being approved. A risk here is that the team does a bunch of work, and then a stakeholder discovers the work and invalidates it entirely.
One last example is when teams have no structure for how best to communicate, so they tend to distract one another. Does the support team know the best way to ask the developers questions? Do they just ping the entire team with every question? It’s great that they have a good working relationship, but the teams may be inadvertently causing unnecessary distractions.
While we don’t want structures to compensate for culture, even a healthy culture will benefit from structure. It helps guide folks along in common situations so they can stay productive.
The fruitful vine: culture and structure
At the end of the day, cultivating a healthy and productive team means the best of both culture and structure. Having a healthy culture is like having a healthy vine that is eager to grow and produces lush and quality fruit. Having a helpful structure is like having just the right amount of trellis to guide the vine for maximum growth.
So is your team healthy? Does each member feel a strong sense of ownership, take initiative, and eager help one another? Do the different teams collaborate well in meaningful and respectful debate wherein everyone is working together to arrive at the best solution? Can you trust your team to be honest and work hard when no one is looking? This is culture.
Does your team know what to do week over week? Do they know the most efficient way to share updates? Do they know how to get help without distracting everyone? Do they feel comfortable with the weekly team and workflows? This is structure.
Structure should be where it’s needed and not where it isn’t. You’d be surprised how little structure is needed in places when a team is strong and healthy. Don’t be afraid to remove structure if it isn’t clearly helping.
A wonderful bonus of a healthy culture, is that the team itself will often begin to build it’s own structure. I was speaking with a designer, recently, who was working on improving how designs were reviewed, approved, and handed off to developers. I didn’t ask him to do this, and frankly it’s not as though things were going poorly. He just has such a good relationship with the team and ownership that he, of his own volition, wants to be even more efficient. How amazing is that! Managers are often afraid that if they’re not optimizing the team, it isn’t being optimized, but I’ve found that quite often the opposite is true! Sometimes I even need to guide team members in how to build good structure in their eagerness!
Concluding thoughts
I hope this has proven helpful in understanding the basic anatomy of a healthy and productive team. It doesn’t matter if the team is new or old, all teams benefit from cultivating a healthy culture and providing helpful structure.
Think about your team. Would you describe it as healthy people in healthy relationship doing amazing work? If you were to remove all structure, would the team completely fall apart? Or perhaps you have a wonderfully healthy team; do you often stumble over each other? Do things just feel inefficient? Look for opportunities to improve your team’s culture and collaboratively build structure.
