How should we work together as a team? Two types of values which can guide mutual expectations
A well-established predictor of team effectiveness has some similarity with a predictor of good partnerships or even marriages: moderate diversity of cognitive style but strong alignment around goals and values. The benefit of agreed values is that it can make decision-making simpler since all managers and staff can refer to principles rather than needing longer sets of rules or requiring a senior manager to provide ad hoc guidance.
The cognitive diversity aspect of that equation makes sense in terms of equipping teams with multiple ways look at problems and a mix of styles to handle details as well as big picture, calm contemplation as well as action orientation etc. Likewise, alignment around goals and priorities is clearly efficient to avoid a constant tug of war over what to do. But what sort of values should we align around? There are two kinds of values to consider:
Good vs. bad
These are positive values being promoted as ideals – where the opposite is usually fairly self-evident and definitely worse. Take these examples from some successful British brands who are still small enough to remember being growth companies:
Innocent Drinks
Be natural
Be entrepreneurial
Be responsible
Be commercial
Be generous
Brewdog
We bleed craft beer
We are uncompromising
We blow shit up
We are environmentally conscious
We believe in better
Graze
Put the consumer first
Keep it real
Think like owners
Never stop learning
Win together
Hotel Chocolat
Originality
Authenticity
Ethics
Innovation in chocolate
Octopus Energy
Customer first, always
Be bold and entrepreneurial
No bureaucracy
Be straight up
Create a positive impact
My sense of the values chosen by companies in the companies Catalysis meets (a gut feel suggests about a third of them) suggests that they tend to fall into four main categories:
Attitudes to work (‘Entrepreneurial’, ‘No bureaucracy’, ‘We blow shit up’, ‘Never stop learning’)
How we should deal with colleagues (e.g. ‘Win together’, ‘Be generous’)
How we should deal with clients (e.g. ‘Keep it real; ‘Customer first’)
Universal values - Towards society (e.g. ‘Create a positive impact’, ‘Environmentally conscious’)
In most cases, what these values share is that they are uncontroversial: does anyone think we shouldn’t show ethics or collaborate with colleagues? Some companies may give more emphasis to, say, innovation than excellence but any tension between those objectives isn’t visible in the values displayed for staff, clients or shareholders.
The articulation of these values seems primarily designed to assist in transmitting important priorities from long-serving staff to newer ones and prevent the business from losing its specialness over time – i.e. the risk of cultural entropy.
To be effective in that role, good-bad values need to be clear in their intent and meaningful in their impact. The risk is that, without reinforcement, company values fade away and come to be seen as ‘just words’. To avoid that fate, one medical technology company we worked with had a committee of employees who met periodically and pointed out any variations between stated values and behaviours.
Good vs. good
The other kind of values are ones reflect the kinds of dilemmas leadership teams grapple with. For example, both short term performance and medium term value creation are important but they can conflict at times and top teams need to balance them carefully. Likewise, loyalty to colleagues and efficiency are both positives but can create headaches in certain situations. Individual vs. collective interests, and company vs. client interests are other classic examples.
Unlike good vs. bad values, where more of the good is always better and the values are unvarying, there is nothing here which can be optimised simply. Any balance between good vs. good values is likely to be imperfect, and the balance may evolve over time.
What do those look like?
Catalysis asks teams to consider ten sets of good vs. good values which should guide interactions within the team and business. For example, both building consensus and showing independence of thought can be valuable in a team – but different kinds of business might give more emphasis to one over the other depending on circumstances: a thinly resourced start-up in a growth spurt may value people able to get things done autonomously; a company with a need for joined-up delivery may want team members to act consensually. Likewise, a sense of fun can create a positive working environment – but seriousness has its own charms.
In practice, most respondents are unlikely to score their views in favour of one side of those options to the complete exclusion of the other. Instead, managers place their views on a continuum, usually leaning more towards one end than the other. Collectively, that describes a team’s sense of the ideal work values.
How do teams score themselves?
The table below shows average values across many growth company teams. The numbers show where, on a scale of 0 to 100, the teams place themselves between a score of 0 (e.g. totally prefer building consensus) and 100 (totally prefer independence of thought.
As can be seen, some pairs are fairly balanced (Tight vs Wide decisions; Individual vs Team; Discipline vs Flexibility). But others suggest stronger preferences:
Most teams lean gently towards a pursuit of opportunity over caution and more strongly towards new ideas over doing what works.
Similarly, the majority of teams appear to prefer sacrificing some seriousness for a sense of fun, and humility for celebration.
Both of those resonate with an entrepreneurial spirit in growth companies which makes intuitive sense.
At the same time, however, the same companies lean towards building consensus, considering stakeholders and favouring process over informality – suggesting more measured approaches to making decisions and professionalisation.
Averages can tidy away variations, of course. For example, it is not unusual to find differences of emphasis across a team across these values, suggesting varied approaches to decision-making. Across companies, we can intuit that a smaller start-up may display different preferences than a 500-person more managed company.
The evidence about the effectiveness of executive teams suggests that individual members tend to align around values even as they diverge in cognitive styles. That alignment usually takes effort and compromise which is why longer established teams tend to be greater fluency in their work together, i.e. in their cohesion, communication and performance.
In that context, where is your team in agreeing your internal ways of working and the values you want to project to colleagues, clients and other stakeholders? Some questions can guide a team conversation:
What are our core values, really?
How do these values guide our decisions and behaviours?
Are there any inconsistencies between our stated values and our actions?
How can we better align our team around shared values?
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