High-performance teams (and the arts)

These Militias were formed mainly to protect different cities and city districts in the Netherlands, and to bring a degree of law enforcement. They were comprised mainly of well-to-do citizens, and they often commissioned artists to commemorate them in group portraits. I’m sure several of them were high-performance teams!  

Rembrandt was the first artist to paint figures in such a group portrait actually performing their activities. Instead of just a stiff and formal collection of faces, Rembrandt painted a more vibrant story: a living scene. However, some members of the militia were displeased that they were represented in a less prominent position than others. Rembrandt had defiantly broken all the conventional rules of portrait painting at that time.  

While eminent artists often worked in the studios they established with their followers and so developed a team approach, these days, a lot of our common reference points for teams are through sport, so I may need to reference these as well as arts for illustration.  

My wife sometimes speaks of “the art of design” to bring attention to beautifully creative developments in objects not normally thought of as works of art. While neither of us are “petrol-heads”, we have adored our visits to the Louwman automobile museum in The Hague which really highlights brilliant and beautiful engineering design. This includes the design of racing cars, so you may allow me to use a racing team as a useful sporting illustration of team characteristics and art! 

The Ferrari team won occasional championships in the early days of Formula One, but by the end of the 1990’s hadn’t won a championship for two decades. They seemed to have fast cars and a focus on winning the Italian Gran Prix at Monza, but reliability issues meant that they didn’t accumulate sufficient points across a whole season. However, in the mid-late 1990’s, the team became led by Jean Todt and Ross Brawn who instituted a new approach and era.  

Ferrari went on to win the championship in 2000, followed by another four back-to-back championships as they dominated the sport for the next half-decade. A friend of mine led technical support services from my previous company to the team, and has given me insights into this high-performance period, which I’ll use as illustrations below.  

Here are the five characteristics I’ve found to be present in all the high-performance teams I’ve experienced or studied.

1. Strategic narrative:
   An understanding of the purpose or approach of the team that is shared across all members even though they may articulate it differently in their own words. In Ferrari, this seemed driven by the observation “To finish first, first you have to finish”. So they shifted their focus to high reliability as a foundation and then made adjustments over time that added more speed until they could win race after race.

2. Credible performance feedback:
   Good feedback is necessary to judge progress and performance, but also to build credibility with key stakeholders (like investors). In sports like racing, this is generally straightforward to receive, e.g. your position in races.

3. Positive emotional energy:
   It is important to collectively recognise and celebrate progress, performance, contributions and success. After they won a race, the whole Ferrari team would celebrate enthusiastically together for the rest of the weekend, but then knuckle down on Monday morning to work together in preparation for the next race.

4. Legacy mentality:
   High-performance teams develop a sense that they are involved in something that is significant with a strong link to a deeper purpose, and that also helps prioritise ongoing attention towards supporting longer-term objectives. The mentality of Todt and Brawn was not focused on a single race or even a single championship, but on developing a team and string of cars to win multiple back-to-back championships.

5. Learning ethos:
   In all teams that maintain high performance, there is ongoing creative attention to improvement and renewal. One of my illustrious predecessors in my role leading Shell scenarios, Arie de Geus, liked to point out that the ability to learn faster than competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage. The Ferrari team was dedicated to learning from data, experience and the insights of its suppliers to improve first reliability and then pace.

Question of the fortnight

Every fortnight I’ll be asking a thought-provoking question in hopes of sparking interesting and enlightening discussion.

I’d love to hear your response! You can do so by simply responding to this email.

Today’s question is:

Do you feel you have experienced being part of a high-performance team?  Did that feature the characteristics highlighted above?  Were there other key factors that other teams could learn from?