Team Capital

Teamlet Head is Better Than One

Recently, I just completed an assignment at a client. This assignment was for a client who wanted to transition one of their large teams to an more effective state of operation. They were adopting Scrum and wanted to move about 45 people into what we call a Well-Formed-Team state so that they could realize the benefits from productivity gains.

We engaged this client as two people on site. Previously I had done many of these types of assignments alone or once in a while with someone. However, this was the first time that I was doing this with a business partner with whom I had previously established a solid working report. We engaged the client as a teamlet (2-3) and we ourselves were a Well-Formed-Team and operating at a fairly high level of synergy.

The effect compared to previous engagements was nothing short of remarkable. While one of us was heads down capturing observations, areas for improvement or preparing our next question, the other was engaged actively listening and working with the client. What we created was a duet of synchrony with each of us playing off the rhythm and beat of the conversation that provided tremendous value and insight for the client from the word “Hi”. We rarely got lost, the energy was good, and the value added was powerful. By working together we always seemed to know what to do next.

After this experience I would always recommend that those engaging organizations on transitional level topics of change, do so as a Well-Formed-Team and not as an individual. It really takes a team to help an organization start to transition effectively. The amount of energy, dynamicism and responsiveness are just not possible for one individual to maintain and even if they did then they would not have enough bandwidth to capture where to go next. Again we loose the power of the social intelligence that comes from 2 or more people forming a duet as a Well-Formed-Team.

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