Elite Team Priniciples

So, given the state of the political landscape, we thought, “what can we do to help?” A quick check around the business found that no one was up for setting up an ad hoc “anarchy rules” party and no one was willing to offer to be Primie Minister. So, we thought that something a little more passive might be the order of the day and writing something that outlined how Elite Team principles might be used to drive a really good coalition government seemed best!

So, if Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Brown do nothing else today, we hope they familiarise themselves with these simple observations that will guide them to being a great coalition performer, whichever combination we end up with.

Step 1: Have a very clear, shared view why you exist as a team, that you stay focused on at all times. Define clearly success, both in terms of what you’ll achieve and HOW you’ll achieved it. Do nothing else than try to be superb at delivering on these goals.

Step 2: Be absolutely clear of your roles and what is expected of those roles in delivering the goals agreed in step 1. Hold yourselves and each other accountable for consistently delivering on those roles. Keep checking that role clarity is clear, accepted and being performed with regularity – don’t assume that people aren’t straying outside of their agreed roles (for positive or negative reasons). Make sure that roles play to strengths and that each team member is clear why they are particularly well equipped to lead performance from that role.

Step 3: Recognise the alchemy of the team and ensure you use this to your advantage. Natural conflict in a team is a great resource provided everyone is held accountable for ensuring that the conflict is used productively to help deliver on success for the team. Using conflict as an excuse for not delivering on agreed goals is simply choosing to fail, which would be an unforgiveable performance choice.

Step 4: Hold regular reviews to ensure that both “how” and “what” goals are being achieved and to provide feedback to each on other things that need to be maintained and things that need to be improved. The open honest, performance focused feedback used by a team is the most powerful tool that it has and failure to engage in this information exchange regularly and with purpose is once again a choice to willfully fail (and let the country down).

Step 5: Make sure every team member knows that they have to constantly “earn their shirt” by performing to agreed standards and that failure to deliver effectively in line with the collective purpose is an open request to be “substituted”.

So, 5 simple steps… off you go chaps, think about your core elite team principles and create a coalition .

Remember to play nice!