Are your teams REALLY healthy? – PART I
If you want to build high performing teams you’d better start off with your team’s health as a preliminary step & here are 13 metrics you should be tracking...
The phrase “high performing teams” seems to have taken over the markets & more so over the last decade. It is amazing how the phrase has managed to get stitched into the culture of start-up orgs. especially the ones in their early stages of growth. As much as one thinks of a high performing team one also tends to associate that closely with the “culture” & delves into processes / methodologies and the like. But, what’s it that makes such a team in the first place? What are some of the features that one could generically associate with such teams?
This visual here depicts all the imperative ones needed to even take as much as a first step towards building teams that can perform at a basic level, whether they grow & take over the tag of becoming “high performing” could be down to how well they understand each other, their strengths & weaknesses thus stitching a winning camaraderie & charging towards the goals / the purpose.
“When one refers to teams irrespective of its size major / minor, it ought to start off with a shared understanding & allotting time, putting in a conscious effort towards building just that in case it is absent & that goes for any org. across the world, AGILE or NOT”
How does one look at a team & say they are good / bad? A few things that are commonly talked about & also used over regular conversations are:
What’s the mood in the camp like?
What seems to be the degree of stickiness between the team members?
How quickly do they get to the task on hand sans blame games whatsoever?
How well do they celebrate each other’s success?
Does the phrase “WE” take over “I” almost always across conversations?
Over this article I shall take up each of those sections (from the visual above) & focus on the metrics that could be tracked towards establishing whether or not a team is living up to the potential so desired, thus intern leading to the classification of a high performing team.
COMMUNICATION
At a very elementary level a team’s performance largely hinges on communication & the ease with which team members are able to share, interact, brainstorm & put forth their views even if that means one is disagreeing to something pretty strongly. When gauging a team on communication isn’t & shouldn’t be done over a mere fleeting conversation, there is no doubt that it is something that is bound to take quite a bit of time, observing how they behave across situations especially ones that depict chaos, confusion & more so when that has a time factor / a deadline associated with it.
But here are some parameters that can be tracked towards arriving at a rating for a team based on their communication:
01) Cadence of Meetings
A high performing team known the importance of communication & so understands the importance of having meetings at as regular cadence as opposed to some regular team perceiving a meeting as unnecessary & a waste of time. Its better one takes that extra bit of time upfront & sorts out what’s to be done, gain that extra bit of clarity than work something out based on fleeting thoughts / assumptions that tend to cost & cost dearly owing to lots of rework & technical debt.
So, at what cadence do internal teams meet & discuss?
Do they meet only during some sort of a crisis / criticality or do they really have an enterprising / collaborative culture?
02) Psychological Safety
A lot could be attributed to how safe one feels psychologically when it comes to those internal meetings. So, the one question one could essentially ask is:
Do team members feel safe enough to speak / contribute over each of those meetings without any hesitation whatsoever?
03) Active Participation Rate
This is tricky as not everyone is required to talk / contribute over every meeting. Sometimes (in fact most times) meetings are just like a broadcast message with one speaker / conductor announcing something / giving instructions when the others blindly take notes & they call it a day.
But, given the scenario where an active contribution could work well (like say a team of Devs / Designers getting to discuss the requirement in depth) it makes more sense to track this metric because unless one feels safe enough & knows almost for sure that they are going to be treated well, their train of thought not getting plundered even if it doesn’t get applauded, one may not feel the urge to actively participate in the meeting, which is why one ought to gauge the:
no. of people who actively participate in the meeting & not just listen
Supposing there are 7 people in a team meeting & only 2 have spoken, the active participation rate is (2/7 * 100 = 28.57%)
04) Total No. of People on Call
Some teams are as large as 100 in some orgs. which is why they adhere to something like a SaFE methodology, not that they can help it. But it stands proven beyond reasonable doubt that smaller teams have a higher potential to achieve as opposed to those really large teams.
The no. of people on call could be a large contributor for staying put & non-participation which is why it becomes important to check if the teams again circle back to reemphasize the deliverables / outputs that matter with of course a necessary check towards strategic / goal alignment. There’s no problem with large teams as long as they are circling back to each other, communicating with each other over those smaller chunks of work. And that more than makes for an effective metric like:
total no. of people on a call or a meeting at any given instance
ONWERSHIP / RESPONSIBILITY
High performing teams live by a motto of taking up not just that minimalistic quantum of responsibility but being a little more enterprising & taking up, finishing a little more than what’s required, being more available for contributing towards the wellness of the team & the overall cause. As to what makes one responsible enough is anyone’s guess really. It’s the amount of experience each one of those team members carry, which is why such teams are so often comprised of people with a certain degree of expertise / mastery over their craft & is certainly not for everyone or maybe the ones who are just set out to start their careers.
Here are a few metrics that can stand testimony to one’s own & the team’s responsibility:
05) Conflict Resolution Rate
A team without conflicts is Utopian & doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean one could begin the day with conflicts or friction & continue to do so over every step that they take. When there would be conflicts given the multivariate experience people carry & bring to the table, the clash of thoughts ought to work their way towards making things more better for everyone around in the org. One of the metrics worth tracking could be:
No. of conflicts, disagreements resolved / total no. of conflicts or disagreements
06) Team Satisfaction Score
Now that you are tracking the no. of conflicts & the rate at which they are getting resolved you also need to follow that up with a measure of the satisfaction of the team members given the course of the resolutions sans which it’d be down to a few odd assumptions which could be no good & serving nothing great really. Measuring this could just be down to floating one simple question internally & tracking the responses over them:
How satisfied would you say you are over the resolution your immediate manager provided to the most recent conflicts you have had with the other team members? [LIKERT Scale of choices]
NOTE: Make sure you keep the survey anonymous to attract real responses & remove the bias to a large extent.
07) Overall Stress Rate
It is possible that there is more than enough pressure one is dealing with over their regular workflow / jobs, which is also why orgs. hire & build teams. But as a prerequisite, high performing teams ought to be able to soak up all that pressure (&tons of it too) going about their regular tasks chin-up like it was a cakewalk sans any sweat whatsoever. One could observe teams closely for these parameters:
Consistently declining performance =>TAT (time taken for tasks) on a steady upward slope
Amount of time wasted on unwanted arguments / blame games
Degree of bitterness between the team members
Behavioural changes in team members
Rate of Absenteeism
INNOVATION
As one quotes the phrase “innovation” one often tends to think of “technology” as a follow-up to that. When that’s not altogether false, innovation in the parlance of teams here could indicate the efforts towards making the process move effective by studying, analysing frontline metrics & introducing those fine changes so as to make teams more efficient & to keep doing that regularly like clockwork as the sky is the limit here.
So, whether your teams are innovative or not could be down to just one frontline metric:
08) Process Change Rate
Being innovative could be down to how quickly one is making the necessary changes towards enabling teams to achieve more than they did over the last iteration, after-all one ought to be northbound to make progress. So, tracking this one could make a lot of sense:
Cadence at which the internal processes undergo changes (minor / major)
CLARITY
Success of teams depends on how clear they are about the job / task on hand, the clarity over their outputs. But when one talks of high performing teams they are one step ahead & more dynamic over their awareness of how their quantum of work adds up to the value the users would derive out of it & of course the overall goals of the org.
Whether the team members carry the necessary & required amount of clarity could be measured by tracking these:
09) NSM (North Star Metric)
Products built by such teams more often than not tend to hit PMF & have a proper well-defined NSM so as to enable strategic alignment internally all throughout those XfN teams. So, just ask:
Do teams have better focus & prioritization?
What’s the NSM (North Star Metric)?
Are all internal teams aware of the NSM?
10) Agility
No, I’m not talking about the Agile Methodology here. High performing teams tend to be flexible & exhibit a sense of agility when it comes to jumping from one initiative to another one. The comfort factor that they share even when collaborating over an outcome that’s too cohesive could be startling to observe from the outset. Just looking for these metrics ought to help you determine such a team:
How susceptible are they to change?
Do small changes lead to friction amongst team members?
Even if they do, what’s the lead time for teams to spring back to normalcy?
RECOGNITION
The reason high performing teams stay that way for long is because they are totally motivated at all times & know that their efforts would / are going to bear fruit eventually, if not today / right now in due course for sure. Recognition is something we all humans crave for as it has a deep psychological root given the way we are all wired.
These metrics would lead to establishing whether or not teams really feel recognized:
11) Retention / Attrition Rate
Just as mentioned already, high performing teams tend to stick that way for longer given how their satisfaction levels, the move they made to join an org. seems totally justified & validated, not just once on one fleeting occasion but stays so continually, over a really long period of time. So, just check for:
No. of team members deciding to quit / leave the team over a given cadence
No. of team members who have spent [> (n) years] in the org.
12) Utilization Rate
The health of a high performing team could be correlative to the number of team members who have their plates full at any given point in time. Whether it is the adherence to a methodology like a Kanban that limits WIP & allows for more collaboration or whether it is the normal Scrum teams, there ought to be no team member with even the minutest of scope to stay away from deep productive work. To measure that one could simply track:
No. of team members indulging in deep work / total no. of hours spent at work
NOTE: When 75+% could be considered a good rate at some orgs., high performing teams tend to shoot for 85-90% depending on the mix of the teams & the stage the org. or the product is in.
TRUST
There can never be a high performing team without trust. All the above parameters ought to work their way & lead towards building such a strong brand of trust amongst the team members, so much so that they go from blaming / pointing fingers at each other to covering for each other, trying to nullify the effect of the mistakes so committed. When of course, the metrics covered thus far ought to be enough to add up towards establishing a grade of those trust levels, one could additionally tap into these metrics at an organizational level:
13) Employee Satisfaction
Just as much as the satisfaction of the users is mandatory for the health of a product, an organization ought to place the satisfaction level of the employees at the helm as for building high performing teams, gauging which could be done by tracking:
No. of employees who have given positive reviews / high rating to the org., which of course could intern be correlative of these metrics:
Percentage of employees are really happy with the learning opportunity they are offered over their jobs
Percentage of employees have been working overtime over a given cadence
Percentage of employees who have taken a week-long vacation in the last quarter
Conclusion:
A good question to ask now could be “who is responsible for tracking all these granular metrics?”. But if you want to take credit for building high performing teams as a product leader, you’d better get down & track as many as these metrics as you should be given the team / org. / situation you find yourself in. When tracking them is just half the game, they ought to work as a nice starting point for one as they usually pin point to the epicentre of problems more often than not.
PS: Do look out for the next article covering the resolutions to the problems these metrics would bring to light.