This past week I was able to spend parts of three days attending various meetings and workshops on developing high impact teams. Ohio State University Extension hosted Arlen Leholm and Ray Vlasin, authors of the book Increasing the Odds for High-Performance Teams, from Sunday evening through Tuesday. Arlen is the current Dean and Director of Cooperative Extension for the University of Wisconsin and the former Director of Michigan State University Extension. Ray is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus for Michigan State University Extension, the former Director of the Natural Resource Economics Division of USDA’s Economic Research Service, and a Staff Economist for the House Public Works Committee.
It was time well spent. Given the fact that most Extension work is done via teams (and committees) we really need to focus on ways of improving our teams’ performances. As an institution that touts science-based research for decision making, we do a terrible job of actually looking at the literature for teams and applying it to our own work. Leholm and Vlasin do just that in Chapter 2 of their book. This chapter has a very good and very succinct overview of the literature about teams. It is so succinct that it is easy to miss the density of detail it contains. The book also has several case study chapters, including one discussing two Extension High Performance Teams (one at Michigan and the other in Ohio).
The book will be especially valuable for those interested in developing longer term, self-directed teams. Much time was spent discussing the differences between self-directed teams and single-leader teams. And the organizational architecture required to have true self-directed teams. And the time frame – maybe two or more years – to really get the team humming.
So without giving the book’s contents away, here are some key concepts. It is possible for organizations to “increase the odds” of developing high performance teams. But they need to truly empower them, build trust and commitment among team members, and help provide the context to develop clarified and realistic team expectations, rules and team purpose. To be truly self-directed, teams must have an infrastructure to keep them focused on performance. And that infrastructure is their own formalized (read written) purpose and operational statements.
To get a better understanding see this 2004 presentation by Arlen and Ray to. For twenty bucks, the book is a cheap investment for Extension professionals.