- Organizations rely on team-based work arrangements to provide organizational benefits and to help them better navigate the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) operating environment.
- This is becoming more challenging in a hybrid model as interactions now rely less on casual encounters and now must become more intentional.
- A high-performing team is more than productive. They are more resilient and able to recognize opportunities. They are proactive instead of reactive due to trust and a high level of communication and collaboration.
- IT teams are more unique, which also provides unique challenges other teams don’t experience.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
IT teams have:
- Multiple disciplines that tend to operate in parallel versus within a sequence of events.
- Multiple incumbent roles where people operate in parallel versus needing to share information to produce an outcome.
- Multiple stakeholders who create a tension with competing priorities.
Impact and Result
Use Info-Tech’s phased approach to diagnose your team and use the IDEA model to drive team effectiveness.
The IDEA model includes four factors to identify team challenges and focus on areas for improvement: identity, decision making, exchanges within the team, and atmosphere of team psychological safety.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
9.5/10
Overall Impact
$12,599
Average $ Saved
5
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Edmonton Regional Airports Authority
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
We have engaged with Jane Kouptsova to have her conduct the Team Effectiveness workshop for our technology business branch at EIA. After collecting... Read More
Zimmer Biomet
Guided Implementation
9/10
$12,599
5
Great trainings and Great material. Looking forward to the opportunity to work together again in the future.
First Ontario Credit Union Ltd.
Guided Implementation
9/10
$20,500
5
I think we had some great conversation and reviewed some very relevant tools to enhance my team leadership. I look forward to diving deeper into th... Read More
Zodiac Pool Systems LLC
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
2
Workshop: Improve IT Team Effectiveness
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Assess the Team
The Purpose
Determine if proceeding is valuable.
Key Benefits Achieved
Set context for team members.
Activities
Outputs
Review the business context.
Identify IT team members to be included.
Determine goals and objectives.
Build execution plan and determine messaging.
- Execution and communication plan
Complete IDEA Model assessment.
- IDEA Model assessment distributed
Module 2: Review Results and Action Plan
The Purpose
Review results to identify areas of strength and opportunity.
Key Benefits Achieved
As a team, discuss results and determine actions.
Activities
Outputs
Debrief results with leadership team.
Share results with team.
- IDEA assessment results
Identify areas of focus.
Identify IDEA Model activities to support objectives and explore areas of focus.
- Selection of specific activities to be facilitated
Module 3: Document and Measure
The Purpose
Review results to identify areas of strength and opportunity.
Key Benefits Achieved
build an action plan of solutions to incorporate into team norms.
Activities
Outputs
Create team charter.
- Team Charter
Determine action plan for improvement.
- Action Plan
Determine metrics.
Determine frequency of check-ins.
Improve IT Team Effectiveness
Implement the four critical factors required for all high-performing teams.
Analyst Perspective
All teams need to operate effectively; however, IT teams experience unique challenges.
IT often struggles to move from an effective to a high-performing team due to the very nature of their work. They work across multiple disciplines and with multiple stakeholders.
When operating across many disciplines it can become more difficult to identify the connections or points of interactions that define effective teams and separate them from being a working group or focus on their individual performance.
IT employees also work in close partnership with multiple teams outside their IT domain, which can create confusion as to what team are they a primary member of. The tendency is to advocate for or on behalf of the team they primarily work with instead of bringing the IT mindset and alignment to IT roadmap and goals to serve their stakeholders.
Amanda Mathieson
Research Director, People & Leadership Practice
Info-Tech Research Group
Executive Summary
The Challenge
Organizations rely on team-based work arrangements to provide organizational benefits and better navigate the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) operating environment.
This is becoming more challenging in a hybrid environment as interactions now rely less on casual encounters and must become more intentional.
A high-performing team is more than productive. They are more resilient and able to recognize opportunities. They are proactive instead of reactive due to the trust and high level of communication and collaboration.
Common Obstacles
IT teams are more unique, which also provides unique challenges other teams don't experience:
- Multiple disciplines that tend to operate in parallel versus within a sequence of events
- Multiple incumbent roles where people operate in parallel versus needing to share information to produce an outcome
- Multiple stakeholders that create a tension with competing priorities
Info-Tech's Approach
Use Info-Tech's phased approach to diagnose your team and use the IDEA model to drive team effectiveness.
The IDEA model includes four factors to identify team challenges and focus on areas for improvement: identity, decision making, exchanges within the team, and atmosphere of team psychological safety.
Info-Tech Insight
IT teams often fail to reach their full potential because teamwork presents unique challenges and complexities due to the work they do across the organization and within their own group. Silos, not working together, and not sharing knowledge are all statements that indicate a problem. As a leader it's difficult to determine what to do first to navigate the different desires and personalities on a team.
How this blueprint will help
Assess, diagnose, and address issues to realize your team's full potential.
This research helps IT support:
- Work Teams: Operate under one organizational unit or function. Their membership is generally stable with well-defined roles.
- Project Teams: Typically, are time-limited teams formed to produce a particular output or project. Their membership and expertise tend to vary over time.
- Management or Leadership Teams: Provide direction and guidance to the organization and are accountable for overall performance. Membership is structured by the hierarchy of the organization and includes a diverse set of skills, experience, and expertise.
Traditionally, organizations have tried to fix ineffective teams by focusing on these four issues: composition, leadership competencies, individual-level performance, and organizational barriers. While these factors are important, our research has shown it is beneficial to focus on the four factors of effective teams addressed in this blueprint first. Then, if additional improvement is needed, shift your focus to the traditional issue areas.
Common obstacles
These barriers make it difficult to address effectiveness for many IT teams:
- Teams do not use one standard set of processes because they may have a wide variety of assignments requiring different sets of processes.
Source: Freshworks
- There are multiple disciplines within IT that require vastly different skill sets. Finding the connection points can be difficult when on the surface it seems like success doesn't require interconnectivity.
- IT has many people in the same roles that act independently based on the stakeholder or internal customer they are serving. This can lead to duplication of effort if information and solutions aren't shared.
- IT serves many parts of the organization that can bring competing priorities both across the groups they support and with the IT strategy and roadmap itself. Many IT leaders work directly in or for the business, which can see them associate with the internal client team more than their IT team – another layer of conflicting priorities.
IT also experience challenges with maturity and data silos
48% |
of IT respondents rate their team as low maturity. Maturity is defined by the value they provide the business, ranging from firefighting to innovative partner. Source: Info-Tech Research Group, Tech Trends, 2022 |
---|---|
20 Hours |
Data Silos: Teams waste more than 20 hours per month due to poor collaboration and communication. Source: Bloomfire, 2022 |
Current realities require teams to operate effectively
How High-Performing Teams Respond: | |
---|---|
Volatile: High degree of change happening at a rapid pace, making it difficult for organizations to respond effectively. |
Teams are more adaptable to change because they know how to take advantage of each others' diverse skills and experience. |
Uncertain: All possible outcomes are not known, and we cannot accurately assess the probability of outcomes that are known. |
Teams are better able to navigate uncertainty because they know how to work through complex challenges and feel trusted and empowered to change approach when needed. |
Complex: There are numerous risk factors, making it difficult to get a clear sense of what to do in any given situation. |
Teams can reduce complexity by working together to identify and plan to appropriately mitigate risk factors. |
Ambiguous: There is a lack of clarity with respect to the causes and consequences of events. |
Teams can reduce ambiguity through diverse situational knowledge, improving their ability to identify cause and effect. |
Teams struggle to realize their full potential
Poor Communication
To excel, teams must recognize and adapt to the unique communication styles and preferences of their members.
To find the "just right" amount of communication for your team, communication and collaboration expectations should be set upfront.
85% of tech workers don't feel comfortable speaking in meetings.
Source: Hypercontext, 2022
Decision Making
Decision making is a key component of team effectiveness. Teams are often responsible for decisions without having proper authority.
Establishing a team decision-making process becomes more complicated when appropriate decision-making processes vary according to the level of interdependency between team members and organizational culture.
20% of respondents say their organization excels at decision making.
Source: McKinsey, 2019
Resolving Conflicts
It is common for teams to avoid/ignore conflict – often out of fear. People fail to see how conflict can be healthy for teams if managed properly.
Leaders assume mature adults will resolve conflicts on their own. This is not always the case as people involved in conflicts can lack an objective perspective due to charged emotions.
56% of respondents prioritize restoring harmony in conflict and will push own needs aside.
Source: Niagara Institute, 2022
Teams with a shared purpose are more engaged and have higher performance
Increased Engagement
3.5x |
Having a shared team goal drives higher engagement. When individuals feel like part of a team working toward a shared goal, they are 3.5x more likely to be engaged. Source: McLean & Company, Employee Engagement Survey, IT respondents, 2023; N=5,427 |
---|---|
90% |
Engaged employees are stronger performers with 90% reporting they regularly accomplish more than what is expected. Source: McLean & Company, Employee Engagement Survey, IT respondents, 2023; N=4,363 |
Effective and high-performing teams exchange information freely. They are clear on the purpose and goals of the organization, which enable empowerment.
Info-Tech Insight
Clear decision-making processes allow employees to focus on getting the work done versus navigating the system.
Case Study
Project Aristotle at Google – What makes a team effective at Google?
INDUSTRY: Technology
SOURCE: reWork
Challenge
Google wanted to clearly define what makes a team effective to drive a consistent meaning among its employees. The challenge was to determine more than quantitative measures, because more is not always better as it can just mean more mistakes to fix, and include the qualitative factors that bring some groups of people together better than others.
Solution
There was no pattern in the data it studied so Google stepped back and defined what a team is before embarking on defining effectiveness. There is a clear difference between a work group (a collection of people with little interdependence) and a team that is highly interdependent and relies on each other to share problems and learn from one another. Defining the different meanings took time and Google found that different levels of the organization were defining effectiveness differently.
Results
Google ended up with clear definitions that were co-created by all employees, which helped drive the meaning behind the behaviors. More importantly it was also able to define factors that had no bearing on effectiveness; one of which is very relevant in today's hybrid world – colocation.
It was discovered that teams need to trust, have clarity around goals, have structure, and know the impact their work has.
Overcoming barriers
Teams often lack the skills or knowledge to increase effectiveness and performance.
- Leaders struggle with team strife and ineffectiveness.
- A leader's ability to connect with and engage team members is vital for driving desired outcomes. However, many team leads struggle to deal with low-performing or conflict-ridden teams.
- Without adequate training on providing feedback, coaching, and managing difficult conversations, team leads often do not have the skills to positively affect team performance – and they do not appreciate the impact their actions have on desired outcomes.
- Team leads often find it difficult to invest time and resources in addressing challenges when the team is working toward deadlines.
- Team leads who are new to a management role within the organization often struggle to transition from independent contributor to leader – especially when they are tasked with managing team members who are former peers.
- Some team leads believe that soliciting help will be viewed as a personal failure, so they are reluctant to seek support for team performance management from more-senior leaders.
It's unrealistic to expect struggling teams to improve without outside help; if they were able to, they would have already done so.
To improve, teams require:
- A clearly defined team identity
- A clearly defined decision-making paradigm
- Consistently productive exchanges within the team
- An atmosphere of psychological safety
BUT these are the very things they are lacking when they're struggling.