Over the years, as teams have grown more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic, collaboration has become more complex. But though teams face new challenges, their success still depends on a core set of fundamentals. As J. Richard Hackman, who began researching teams in the 1970s, discovered, what matters most isn’t the personalities or behavior of the team members; it’s whether a team has a compelling direction, a strong structure, and a supportive context. In their own research, Haas and Mortensen have found that teams need those three “enabling conditions” now more than ever. But their work also revealed that today’s teams are especially prone to two corrosive problems: “us versus them” thinking and incomplete information. Overcoming those pitfalls requires a new enabling condition: a shared mindset.
This article details what team leaders should do to establish the four foundations for success. For instance, to promote a shared mindset, leaders should foster a common identity and common understanding among team members, with techniques such as “structured unstructured time.” The authors also describe how to evaluate a team’s effectiveness, providing an assessment leaders can take to see what’s working and where there’s room for improvement.
Buy CopiesTeams are more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic than ever before. These qualities make collaboration especially challenging.
Mixing new insights with a focus on the fundamentals of team effectiveness identified by organizational-behavior pioneer J. Richard Hackman, managers should work to establish the conditions that will enable teams to thrive.
The right conditions are
Weaknesses in these areas make teams vulnerable to problems.
Today’s teams are different from the teams of the past: They’re far more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic (with frequent changes in membership). But while teams face new hurdles, their success still hinges on a core set of fundamentals for group collaboration.
A version of this article appeared in the June 2016 issue of Harvard Business Review. For HBR Subscribers Must Reads on Leading TeamsHBR’s definitive articles on managing teams will help you understand how teams have come to the fore in organizations today—and how best to lead them.
Show Reading ListMartine Haas is the Lauder Chair Professor of Management at the Wharton School and Director of the Lauder Institute for Management & International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD from Harvard University. Her research focuses on collaboration and teamwork in global organizations.
Mark Mortensen is a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD and for over 20 years has studied and consulted on collaboration and organization design, with a focus on hybrid, virtual, and globally distributed work. Mark publishes regularly in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and INSEAD Knowledge, and is a regular fixture in popular press outlets like the BBC, the Economist, the Financial Times, and Fortune.
