The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Kathryn refocused the discussion. “But how are we working as a team?”
Jan replied, “I think we’re doing okay. We seem to be moving in the right direction and definitely having more productive conflict.”
The group laughed.
“I don’t know. I’m starting to have my doubts.” Kathryn wouldn’t have usually been surprised by a remark like that at this point in the process. Except that it came from Carlos.
“Why is that?” she asked.
Carlos frowned. “I don’t know. I guess I still feel like we’re not always talking about the big issues. Maybe I’m just getting impatient.”
“What big issues are you thinking about?” Jan won- dered out loud.
“Well, I don’t want to stir things up here . . .”
Kathryn interrupted. “I want you to.”
Carlos smiled. “Well, I guess I wonder whether we have our resources in the right place to make this work.”
Martin seemed to sense that he was the target of Carlos’s remark. And he was right. “What do you mean by resources?”
Carlos stammered, “Well, I don’t know. I guess we have a pretty big engineering organization. Almost a third of the company, I think. And, well, we could probably use more resources in sales, marketing, and consulting.”
Martin didn’t attack statements like that with emotion.
He preferred what he liked to call a Sarcratic approach—
a sarcastic version of the Socratic method. He was about
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to challenge Carlos’s remark cleverly, until Mikey joined in.
“I agree with Carlos. Frankly, I don’t know what half our engineers do. And I salivate over the thought of using our money for better marketing and advertising.”
Martin sighed audibly as if to say, Here we go again.
His disgust was not lost on anyone in the room.
Kathryn set the tone for what was about to happen.
“Okay, let’s have this out. And let’s not pretend we’re doing anything wrong. We owe it to our shareholders, and our employees, to figure out the right way to use our money.
This is not a religious battle. It’s about strategy.”
Having defused the tension just a bit, Kathryn then stoked the flame. She directed her statement at Martin. “I’m guessing you’re tired of people questioning our investment in engineering.”
Martin was calm, but intense. “You’re damn right I am.
What people can’t seem to understand is that it’s not engi- neering we’re investing in—it’s the technology. We are a product company. It’s not like I’m spending money taking engineers on golfing trips.”
“Come on, Martin,” exclaimed Nick. “Engineers don’t golf.” After lightening the moment with humor, the new head of sales then resumed the conversation. “It’s not that we’re saying you aren’t being personally responsible. It’s that you might be a little biased.”
Martin was not ready to relent. “Biased? Listen, I go on as many sales calls as anyone else around here. And I speak to analysts . . .”
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Jan jumped in now. “Hold on, Martin. We’re not ques- tioning your commitment to the company. It’s just that you know more about engineering than anything else, and maybe that makes you want to invest in the product.” Jan finally went to the heart of the matter. “Why do you get so defensive when someone makes a comment about engi- neering?”
It was as though Jan had thrown a bucket of cold water on Martin, spilling a little on everyone else in the room.
Mikey piled on, but more gently than usual. “She’s right.
You act like we’re questioning your intelligence.”
More calmly now, Martin persisted. “Isn’t that what you’re doing? You’re saying that I’m overestimating the amount of resources it takes to build and maintain our product.”
Jan explained with more tact than Mikey could. “No.
It’s broader than that, Martin. We’re questioning how good our products need to be for us to win in the market. We’re questioning how much effort we need to be putting behind future technology, because that might come at the expense of having the market embrace our current technology.”
Kathryn stepped out of her facilitating role and added to Jan’s perspective. “And there is no way that you could figure that out on your own. I don’t think anyone here is smart enough, and has the breadth and depth of knowl- edge, to know the right answer without hearing from every- one else and benefiting from their perspective.”
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Ironically, the more reasonable the explanation was, the more wound up Martin seemed to become. It was as though he could easily deflect the insecure rants of Mikey, but was being trapped by the fairness and logic of Jan and Kathryn.
“Listen, after all the time we’ve put into building this product, I am not willing to read a bloody epitaph of our company that blames our demise on bad technology.” Be- fore anyone could point out to him that this was a blatant demonstration of the fifth dysfunction, Martin beat them to it. “And yes, I know that sounds a lot like I’m more inter- ested in avoiding individual blame than I am in helping the company win, but . . .” He didn’t seem to have a good ex- planation for his behavior.
Jan bailed him out. “Why do you think I’m so anal about finances?” It was a rhetorical question, so she an- swered it for everyone. “The last thing I want to do is read in The Wall Street Journalthat we didn’t manage our cash and had to close the company down. And Carlos doesn’t want customer support issues to sink us, and Mikey does- n’t want us to fail because we can’t build our brand.”
Even with such an even distribution of blame, Mikey couldn’t seem to accept her own portion. She gave Jan a look that said, I’m not worried about that.
Jan ignored her and commented to the rest of the group,
“It sounds like we’re all scrambling for lifeboats on the Ti- tanic.”
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“I don’t think it’s quite that desperate,” countered Nick.
Kathryn qualified her CFO’s metaphor. “Well, then we’re all trying to stand as close to them as possible just in case.”
Nick nodded as if to say, Okay, I’ll give you that.Kath- ryn put the conversation back on topic and directed her leading question toward Martin. “So where were we?”
Martin took a deep breath, shook his head as if he were disagreeing with everything that had been said, and then surprised everyone. “Okay, let’s figure this out.”
He went to the white board and mapped out his entire organization, explaining what everyone was working on and how it fit together. His peers were genuinely amazed, both by how much they didn’t know about everything go- ing on in engineering and how it all fit together.
After Martin had finished, Kathryn gave the group two hours to discuss the relative merits of expanding or reduc- ing the resources allocated to engineering and how to use them in other areas. During that time, the team argued ve- hemently at times, changed their minds, retrenched on their original opinions, and then decided that the right answer was not so apparent after all.
Perhaps most important of all, every member of the team, including Kathryn, at one time picked up the marker and went to the white board to explain a point. If anyone yawned, it was because they were exhausted, not bored.
Finally, it was Jeff who offered a solution. He proposed cutting one future product line entirely and delaying an-
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other for at least six months. Nick then suggested rede- ploying the engineers from those projects and training them to assist sales reps with product demonstrations.
Within minutes, the group had agreed, laid out an ag- gressive time line for implementing the change, and stared in amazement at the complex but workable solution on the white board in front of them.
Kathryn then suggested they go to lunch and added,
“When we get back, we’re going to be talking about deal- ing with interpersonal discomfort and holding each other accountable.”
“I can’t wait.” Martin’s facetious remark was not in- tended to be an indictment of the process, and no one took it that way.
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