Do you want a team that is sailed or one that has to be driven? Two very different organisations with striking similarities are the subject of this article.

The 35th America’s Cup was recently sailed in Bermuda and New Zealand’s win brought back memories of my intense interest in the first win, 22 years ago. While the technology advances over that period are mind-boggling, certain success factors endure.

Consider some of the common success factors and ask: are these factors as true for my organisation’s success? Compare these with success factors from an iconic business story from the 1980’s and similarly ask: are these factors as true for my organisation’s success today? There are many ways in which success is more about how people are, than about the enterprise, business model, product concept or technology. Feel free to disagree!

“It’s very hard to make things simple but Team New Zealand made it work and that is a tribute to the people on board, the culture and the environment they established. This is the kind of hard-won simplicity that is pure poetry.” Philip Macalister in 1995

Hard-won simplicity that is pure poetry. The culture and environment.

Key success themes are as follows – see how many would readily apply to success in your field:

  1. Lead thinking to come up with a breakthrough design: Out-thinking instead of out-spending the rest. The ’95 team built two identical boats so that speed-gains could give sailing insights.To this day, I apply that principle in client organisations, where people buddy up and meet weekly to review and plan, taking their weekly insights to a monthly manager catch up. The ’17 team was the first to replace traditional arm grinding with cycling.
  2. Knowing when to go public and when to keep cards close to the chest: Both the ’95 and ‘17 teams kept quiet about their plans and let their results on the water do the talking. The “PR” (reputation) game has never been more crucial in this digital world.
  3. Keeping calm under fire: “The tighter the team, the bigger it hits” was a famous quote from ’95. An internal anchor – the team and its purpose – ensures the team can remain focused, blocking out distractions. “Does it make the boat go faster?” was the team mantra.
  4. Taking sponsors and fans along for the ride: In ’95, this meant launching a national fundraising campaign to help get the boat across the finish line – crowd-funding. (Building deep community ties is smart business.)
  5. Aspiring to the very best of what is possible – and even what is not: Back in ‘95, Sir Peter Blake said when people say something can’t be done, that is when I want to have a go. The team set the iterative goal of chasing one second of speed each time they sailed – those successive micro improvements led to massive speed gains and competitive dominance.
  6. Everyone’s contribution counting: Whether you’re sweeping the base or getting lunch for the guys, it’s all part of winning the Cup
  7. Team agreement – clear rules of engagement were sacrosanct: E.g. play nicely together; respect personal goals but not hidden agendas; value simplicity. The team’s mantra was: “Does it make the boat go faster?”1
  8. Team first – a team-driven campaign: Sir Peter Blake insisted the team make decisions that directly affected them such as the color of the boat (Black Magic) and placement of equipment

Team-driven success created a culture of breakthrough innovation and do-or-die commitment. Compare this with Ralph Stayer’s incredible account of learning to let his workers lead at Johnsonville Sausage in Wisconsin. He realized he had a vulnerable business model requiring a complete transformation from ‘Point A to Point B’.2

Point A: He had an organization dependent on him, the leader. He saw a herd of buffalo.
Point B: He wanted a flock of geese – a V of individuals who knew the common goal, took turns to lead and adjusted the structure to the task at hand.

He had been focused only on the financial side of the business with people as the ‘tools’ to make the business grow. To his annoyance, they lacked commitment.

Key themes from the transformation from Point A to Point B are:

  1. Leader looking in the mirror: Stayer admits he went from authoritarian control to authoritarian abdication, shifting from telling them what to having them guessing what he wanted. He chased mirages of detailed strategic and tactical plans that would realize HIS goal. The plans overwhelmed and bogged everyone down. He realized his first instincts were dead wrong and had led the organization to Point A.
  2. Semantics: He checked every decision with: “Will this action help us reach Point B?”
  3. Learning leadership: “I had to learn to be a better coach” meaning “communicating a vision and then getting people to see their own behavior, harness their own frustrations, and own their own problems.”
  4. Context management: He realized people managed themselves – he didn’t (couldn’t) directly control people’s performance. His job was to manage context.
  5. People controlled their own and each others’ work quality and contribution: Those who made the sausage quality controlled their work and waste dropped significantly. When people started complaining about mediocre performance around them, they were charged with resolving the issue. (Peer pressure.)
  6. Teams became self managed: They gradually took over functions previously done by managers.

“The most important kind of learning teaches us to question our own actions and behavior in order to better understand the ways we perform, work and live. Helping human beings fulfill their potential is of course a moral responsibility, but it’s also good business.” Ralph Stayer

This is consistent with Owen McCall’s recent assertion that leaders are the problem when it comes to issues with innovation and change.3

Successful teams always have a purpose larger than themselves. Yet, I still hear managers say their team’s purpose is to maximize profit; then they complain that people wander around like zombies.

For the yachties, their vision was to “build a challenge the country can be proud of – to succeed in all aspects.” For Johnsonville Sausage, they really believe they have a moral responsibility to make the world’s best sausage. It is human nature – no one will empty the tank for money/for someone else (unless they care deeply for them).

If you want a team, indeed an organization that is sailed, not one that has to be driven, these are the timeless and universal success principles. They will stand the test of massive market disruption and the passage of time, if the last few millennia are anything to go by…………..

“We shrink from change; yet is there anything that can come into being without it…..?  Is it possible for any useful thing to be achieved without change? Do you not see then, that change in yourself is of the same order.” 
Marcus Aurelius AD 121-180

Sources:

1 Mazany, Dr P. Team Think:Team New Zealand. Vision Plus. 1995.
http://credu.bookzip.co.kr/Resource/EnglishBook/PDF/AE30423.pdf 
2 “How I Learned to Let My Workers Lead” by Ralph Stayer. HBR. Nov-Dec 1990.
https://hbr.org/1990/11/how-i-learned-to-let-my-workers-lead
3 “Innovation and change: When leaders are the problem” by Owen McCall, CIO,1 June 2017
https://www.cio.co.nz/article/620083/innovation-change-when-leaders-problem/

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