12 16 2011 WHY DREAM TEAMS FAIL There are numerous examples of dream teams that have failed in recent memory Ocean s 12 USA Baseball Team Enron how does this happen Dream Teams fail because they are not teams they are just bunches of people Herb Brooks assembled the 1980 Olympic hockey team based on personal chemistry and finding the right players not just on finding the best players o Anti dream team principles 5 Most Common Reasons why Dream Teams fail Signing too many all stars Failure to establish a culture of trust Tolerating Competing Agendas Letting Conflicts Fester Hiding from the real issues Signing Too many all stars Some of the worst teams ever have been teams were everyone is a potential CEO being successful is about effectively working together Chemistry and culture are key Worthington Gas only hires individuals who are voted on by the team to stick around focuses on finding individuals who are focused on the successfulness of the team rather than people who have big egos Detroit Pistons New England Patriots are examples of these types of teams Failure to establish culture of trust Trust is the most fundamental element of a winning team If team members think other people are lying plotting or working against them synergy will not be created dysergy Many dream teams are brought together only for short periods and when they are not on the team they are competing against each other for a championship promotion etc Sharing stories personality type trust building activities Oftentimes only small teams 2 or 3 people are able to successfully establish trust amongst one another and even more often these successful teams would not have been considered dream teams when they were brought together One became famous less famous 2 concentrated on success of enterprise trust Need people who are devoted to the success of the team or organization rather than individual accomplishment Tolerating Competing Agendas Michael Eisner of Disney o Very successful when teamed with Wells but when Wells died he formed one of the most disastrous teams in recent memory Brought in Ovitz an uber agent who had only personal agendas in mind wanted to buy stock in Yahoo buy an NFL team etc Eisner simply dismissed these ideas as off topic instead of getting rid of Ovitz before real disaster could set in The Key is to keep personal agendas from becoming destructive i e Telling members that if they undermine others that they will be let go immediately Letting conflicts Fester Army crew coach would pick his eight best rowers and put them in one boat V and have the next best eight in another JV Problem was that they JV team would beat the Varsity team two thirds of the time Varsity team had internal problems based on who contributed the most while the JV team who had nothing to lose working together completely Once the coach made all the varsity team members wrestle and get their conflicts out in the open the varsity team began to perform better Bringing team problems out in the open and resolving them should be one of the team leaders most important jobs Hiding from the real issues Put the veneer of politeness aside and put the most troublesome issues on the table so they can be resolved Unspoken reciprocity we wont raise our differences in front of the boss Jack Welch CEO of GE master of facing reality o Banned suit and ties from meetings lengthened coffee breaks to encourage informal discussion and create a social architecture Real Definition of a Dream Team Putting together a few talented people who will work vigorously and honestly for something greater than themselves WINNING WAYS Jack Welch retired from GE in 2001 as one of the world s most respected business leaders Said HR was too focused on benefits and forms picnics and parties and not on the developmental process of the leadership process or making sure hiring and firing was right and fair Job isn t just being a people person it s developing them making sure they re treated fairly bigger than people perceive Get real trust listen be confidential tell it straight People are treated right fairly with notice with as much severance as possible Thinks HR managers should be at the CEO level Wants H 1B visas to be increased so the best and brightest are retained here FORCED RANKING AND AGE RELATED EMPLOYEMENT DISCRIMINATION Ford Goodyear and Capital One have all been sued for age related employment discrimination arising from a performance evaluation known as forced ranking Forced ranking is a performance based evaluation system in which employees are ranked against each other based on a particular scheme or design o Totem pole approach ranked top down o quartile 25 is placed in each of 4 cells ranked further o bell shaped curve cut off points for top middle bottom o Typically ranking decisions are made by managers Ford force ranked employees into three categories A top 10 percent B middle 80 percent and C bottom 10 percent o A and B bonuses and raises 2 Cs termination Goodyear implemented similar 10 80 10 ranking system o Common denominator in all three cases is the allegation that older workers were targeted for termination and they were consistently ranked in the lowest category at a disproportionately high rate o GE Cisco EDS Hewlett Packard Microsoft PepsiCo Supporters o Think forced ranking identifies best and worst performers and by generously rewarding the top ranked people and culling the bottom dwellers ensures that the employer will have a dynamic and continuously improving workforce o Loyalty to company Critics than it solves o Opponents of forced ranking believe that the system creates more problems o Systems that force managers to cut a certain percentage of their people often don t reveal the root causes of problems often do not elevate performance and can ultimately be counterproductive o Competing against each other low morale mistrust o Acts as a crutch to weak managers Several companies that had adopted forced ranking systems have scrapped them in the wake of court challenges decreased by more than 300 since 199334 of firms Companies review the rankings to be sure there is no disparate impact on statutorily still make frequent use of forced ranking protected groups of employees ARMY CREW CASE 12 16 2011 The West Point rowing team was split into Varsity and JV teams with Varsity being the 8 best individual rowers and everybody else on JV In the first race between the 2 teams Varsity won but after that JV won more than 2 3 of the
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