The Traits Of An Extreme Team

Extreme Teams is a fascinating book by Robert Bruce Shaw, where he takes you inside top companies and examines not just great teams (your more “conventional” teams), but extreme teams.

According to Shaw, extreme teams:

View work as a calling—even an obsession.
Value members’ cultural fit and ability to collectively produce results.
Pursue a limited set of vital priorities—less is more.
Strive to create a culture that is at once both hard and soft – simultaneously tough in driving for measurable results on a few highly visible targets and supportive of individuals to create an environment of collaboration, trust, and loyalty.
Value conflict among team members—recognizing the benefit of being uncomfortable.

Companies with extreme teams will go to great lengths to ensure that their extreme teams are well equipped to address not only the challenges of today, but also the challenges of the future. The central questions to ask, therefore, are:

What is it your team will be accomplishing six months from now?
What specific results do you want/need to see?
How is that different from what your team is doing today?
What is needed to make these results happen?

One of my favorite takeaways from the book includes these suggestions for hiring:

Most firms hire based on a job candidate’s resume—assessing how well his or her skills fit the demands of a specific job. Cutting-edge firms, in contrast, place equal if not greater emphasis on a person’s fit to their culture.

Shaw explains that, “cultural fit is important in three areas: each person must embrace the group’s higher purpose, the value it places on results, and the value it places on relationships.” He adds, “the best firms and teams develop robust processes to screen for these traits in the hiring and promotion of their people.”

My other favorite takeaway is about context setting. “Getting everyone to align around a set of priorities begins with context setting,” explains Shaw. “The goal is to ensure that everyone understand the environment in which a company operates, as well as the strategies it will use to be successful in that environment.”

Shaw says that context explains the “why” of a firm’s specific priorities, including the opportunities and threats facing it. This requires clarity on the part of group’s senior management on the business environment in which they operate.

Further, “at the minimum people within a company need to understand the following,” says Shaw:

Why do we exist as a company—what is our reason for being?
How do we make money? What drives our results?
Who are our most important customers?
What products or services do our customers value the most?
Who are our competitors—existing and emerging? What threats do they possess?
How do we measure our success as a company?
What is our plan to win in the marketplace?
What capabilities do we need to be successful?
What values are most important to us?
What behaviors are expected of us as members of the company?

Finally, Shaw shared these important lessons in his book:

An understanding that the discomfort that comes with conflict is necessary and productive. The enemy of high performance is not conflict—it’s complacency.
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” --- T. S. Elliott
“You should find someone who has complementary skills to start a company with. You shouldn’t necessarily look for someone successful. Find the right people, not the best people.” – Jack Ma

Shaw is a consultant specializing in organizational and team performance. He is also the author of, Trust in the Balance and Leadership Blindspots.

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me a copy of the book.

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