What makes a Team High Performing?
- High performing teams have a number of key characteristics: they share a common purpose, collectively agree on the plan of attack and all team members understand how they will individually contribute. Team members have a shared understanding of how they will work together and what’s expected of each other and ensure there’s regular communication on progress, roadblocks, challenges and achievements.
- Each of these components are defined for a high performing team from the moment it is formed.
- Once these are defined, then the progress of the team is measured regularly through pulse checks to ensure that individuals and the team collectively are held accountable to what’s been agreed upfront that the team will achieve
Creating a High Performing Team
- Creating a high performing team in Kendo allows you to bring together a group of individuals and define a common purpose and direction, and define how the team will operate in order to achieve it.
- High performing teams can be:
- Reporting lines teams – based on organisational hierarchy and reporting lines.
- Project teams – independent of organisational reporting lines and can be cross – functional teams and project based. These teams may include short term teams created to deliver a defined project with an end date
- Anyone can create a high performing team in Kendo
- High performing teams can include anyone from across the organisation
- Creating a team means that you can define the core components that will make the team successful, such as:
- A team’s overall mission
- The Team Business Plan and objectives assigned to and set by the team, including the progress of those objectives
- All the team members and their roles
- The team’s operating practices, including ground rules and delegations
High Performing Teams Based on Reporting Lines
- People managers can create a high performing team for their direct reports (their reporting line team). To ‘activate’ the team functionality select ‘Activate’ on the Team Settings page under My Reporting Team or from the My Company section
- All individuals who report to this people manager will automatically be selected to form a high performing Team, however any indirect reports can also be added. This will enable the high performing team functionality for all team members
- Any previously agreed objectives owned by the team leader can be selected to form part of the Team’s Business Plan
- The team will appear in the left hand menu for all team members selected
- Then continue by defining the core components that will make the team successful:
- The team’s overall mission
- The Team’s Business Plan and objectives
- Team members team roles
- The team’s operating practices, including ground rules, meetings and communication, values and behaviours, and delegations
Create other non-reporting line teams
- From the My Company>Teams menu, select +Team
- This allows the creation of teams independent of organisational reporting lines, for example, cross functional or project teams
- These teams may include short term teams created to deliver a defined project with an end date
- Anyone can create these a high performing teams in Kendo and the can include anyone from across the organisation
Define the Team & its MissioN
- Give the high performing team a name
- Determine the visibility of the team and all it’s details
- Add the team owner and leader
- Each high performing team will have a team owner and a team leader as a minimum. The team leader is the individual responsible for guiding the team to deliver the team mission and objectives. (Both will need to accept the creation of the team)
- The team mission acts as a compass by which the team can then define the team deliverables. It is a short statement that covers:
- What the team does (what it delivers or produces) and how they do it
- Who they do it for (could be internal or external stakeholders)
- What value they bring (how what they do is important and impacts the stakeholders)
- For short term or project teams add the start date for the team and the date by which the mission is to be achieved
- The pulse frequency determines how often the team leader with pulse check the overall Team Business Plan. This is independent of the individual objectives’ pulse checks
Team Business Plan and Objectives
- The Team Objectives tab includes the Team Business Plan as well as the Team Business Plan Objectives
- The Business Plan details the high level plan for how the team will go about achieving the mission during the relevant financial year – this needs to be agreed by the team owner and can be submitted for approval either along with all the Team Business plan objectives or separately
- The Business Plan will show as Pending until it has been agreed
- The Team Leader or Owner can also attach supporting documents to the Business Plan that provide further detail if required. These documents will be available to view by anyone who has visibility of the team
- Team Business Plan Objectives are the team level objectives that the define the priorities for the team and the main activities the team will focus on in order to achieve the business plan. These will be redefined each financial year
- They can be added here or from the Team Business Plan page once the team has been agreed
- They can be added and owned by anyone on the team, but will be approved by the team leader before they can become a team business plan objective
- Objectives can be added and then sent for agreement individually or all at once
- Note: individuals on a team can also have other objectives that are not classified as Team business plan objectives, that may be relevant to their role on a team but not necessarily the key priorities for the whole team. These objectives will not be visible on the Team business plan but will be visible to the team in the Objectives section within the team section on the menu
- When adding an objective from the team’s Business Plan, the team leader will determine whether the objective is to appear on the business plan
- See the Setting Objectives guide for more information on setting an objective
Add Team Members
- Add all the team members
- Reporting lines can also be defined within teams where team members do not directly report to the team leader
- Team members can also be allocated a role on the team. This does not necessarily need to be their role title but is an indication of the role they perform on the team (for example; project lead, 2IC, team coordinator, technical specialist, coms specialist, budget control, creative). These roles are later referenced when allocating decision making authority
- Team members will receive a notification that they have been added to the team
- Team members can also be removed from the team by the Team Leader if the cease to be a member of the team. If the team member has any assigned objectives, the Team Leader will be prompted to either reassign the objective to a new objective owner or close the objective
- If the objective is reassigned, the new objective owner will be asked to agree to the objective
Define Team Operating Practices
- For high performing teams to be successful, they need to agree how they will operate and work together
- Team operating practices describe ‘how’ the team will operate on a day to day basis. Agreeing these upfront reduces confusion, frustration, and enhances transparency and the efficiency of the team.
- These guidelines can be created collaboratively and agreed up front as the team is formed.
- Operating practices includes:
- Ground rules and policies
- Values and behaviours
- Meetings and communication
- Delegation and authorities
Operating Practices – Ground Rules and Values
Ground rules and policies
- Refers to any processes or practices that are important for the team to follow in order to work together effectively
- Could include reference to existing processes, or a list of other practices that will be important for the team
Values and behaviours
- Describe the core principles that guide decisions, actions and behaviours and describe what’s important.
- By agreeing ways of working and expected values and behaviours upfront individuals understand how to work with each other, what’s ok, and what’s not
- The Team Values should align with the organisation’s values, but may be articulated in a way that is specific to the context of the team through specific behaviours
- Add the Value and the individual behaviours that describe what that value looks like in practice
Operating Practices – Communication and Decision Making
Meetings and communication
- Identify the team’s meeting and communication cadence, including the processes the team will use to communicate with each other and with others
- Includes, meetings, reporting and other communication methods, their frequency and who will be involved
Delegation and authorities
- Define who is responsible for particular decisions or approvals
- This helps the team make decisions more efficiently and effectively and avoids unnecessary delay, miscommunication or conflict
- Type of authority – what needs to be decided or approved – eg expenditure, headcount, project decisions
- Parameters – the level of decision to be made, trigger or minimum or maximum range – for example a monetary amount, whether it’s within budget
- Team role – who has the responsibility to approve or make this decision within the team
- Select from the roles that were defined in the ‘Team members and roles’ tab
- Operating practices should be discussed and agreed with the team as a whole and reviewed regularly as the team evolves and further practices are identified that are necessary for the team to be effective
Submit Team to Finalise
- Once the high performing team is saved, both the team leader and owner of the team need to agree to the creation of the team
- If the team is ‘rejected’ by either party then a comment is added to explain the reasoning and the team creator is notified. The creator of the team can make any adjustments and then re-save
- Once the high performing team has been created and approved the team leader will be able to:
- Do team pulse checks and retrospectives
- View the team talent profile (if team members have shared their Talent profile with you)
- Clone, Stop or Delete the team
Now the High Performing Team is Ready to Go
- Now that the high performing team has been created and the operating principles defined, the team is ready
- Any high performing teams you are an owner, leader or member of will appear on your left hand menu for easy ongoing access to how the team is tracking
- Access the Team business plan from here for each team to view, update and pulse the progress of the plan, or add additional objectives
- Objectives will be pulse checked by the objective owner, however team members will be able to view the objective and pulse score if it has been made visible to the team
- Team Settings allows you to view, and for team leaders edit, the team’s mission, game plan, members and operating practices
- For reporting line teams, team leaders can view career talent profile information, feedback and one on ones
- A team’s Objectives page shows all objectives team members are working on, including other non team business plan objectives
- Any Pending objectives are listed separately allowing team leaders to review and agree them easily
- The Kanban view of objectives shows all tasks that have been added to any of the team members’ objectives.
- Team Leaders can also add tasks to team member’s objectives from here
My Company – Teams
- The Teams section of My Company on the left hand menu will display any high performing teams that you are a member of or that have been made visible to you by the team creator
- From here you can create other non-reporting line high performing teams by selecting +Team
- For each high performing team, you can create or view:
- The team’s overall mission
- The Team Business Plan and objectives assigned to and set by the team, including the progress of those objectives
- All the team members and their roles
- The team’s operating practices, including ground rules, values and behaviours, meetings and communication, and delegated authorities
