ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Hello and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast. I'm Mike Parsons the CEO of Qualitance and we continue the journey into my favorite product strategy tools. Today we're getting into the five dysfunction. Other team pyramid, a bit of a mouthful, but this tool, I, I cannot tell you, I come back to this day after day, no matter whether I'm working with a big enterprise or a startup, the five dysfunctions of a team is some groundbreaking work from Patrick Lindsay.
Yeah. And it is the perfect guide on how your team should behave when they're going about creating an idea or whether they're building a product or anywhere in between. This tool is in dispensable. Now you might be thinking to your mind to yourself like Mike, you know, we've talked about growth, marketing funnel, great product to been talking about the lean hypothesis, the [00:01:00] value proposition, canvas, you know, that teamwork.
How is that so relevant to product? Well, what I would propose to you is that if you don't have a great team, if you don't have a tool that you can look at. That can provoke you and nudge you to think about the best design of your team. Not only on the work that they do, but how they do it, then it doesn't matter.
What other great design thinking or agile or lean frameworks they use. It doesn't matter if the team is no good. So this has been the huge breakthrough in the work that I've done over the last. Year or so is that you cannot really entertain product development, product discovery without looking at team design simultaneously the way in which we collaborate is a huge dependency of any good thinking.
You must have the right alignment connection. Trust [00:02:00] you must be cohesive. You have to be like a dream team. If you want to tackle big problems in the world and create solutions to it. So this is why we're going to look at the pyramid of the five dysfunctions of a team. Now, this is groundbreaking work that you can jump over to bottom-up dot IO and get a free copy of this.
Have a look at our agility in the digital age course, it's totally free. You can get a complete breakdown of the five dysfunctions of a team pyramid. I'm so. Delighted to share with you right now on the podcast, this tool, because I think it's informed not only how I build teams, but how I lead a company of over 250 people.
These themes come back time and time again. This is the key go-to tool that I use when I want to crack how to improve a team. When I want to support them to be the best versions of themselves and to do some great work. [00:03:00] All right. So let's do two things together today. We're going to talk about what the problems are and the good news is I've got solutions too.
So I'll give you the antidote as well, but we have to get a little dark here. We have to go into the valley of darkness. We have to look at some of the things that we've all seen throughout our career that happen on teams. All right. So teams that aren't doing well. Teams that are not producing the results.
They will have five common factors. Now this is built around the enterprise, this work frankly, you could easily apply this to sports teams and far beyond, but let's kind of cast our minds to our experience in the office at work. What would be the five things we could commonly use as a checklist, as the likely culprits of an underperforming team?
Well, [00:04:00] the, the first and foremost thing I would say to you is you've probably got an absence of trust. This is when you know, the politics are ruling the business. When it becomes a little dog eat dog, when people feel that there are members of their team. That are being selfish that are looking for personal advancement and putting themselves before the team.
That's what happens when you have an absence of trust, because to use a sporting metaphor. You've got to, you've got to believe that your teammates are going to be there when you're going to make the pass. When you're going to make the tackle, you've got to really just instinctively know, think about Michael Jordan and the bulls.
When they're at their peak, they were so good that Jordan could just pass it off to his teammate. And these teammates would make the shot because he trusted in them. That was the difference. [00:05:00] Well, it's just the same at work. And if there's an absence of trust, if your direct manager. Doesn't have your back.
If your peers are not wholly and heartedly supporting you, if you cannot be open, if you cannot have all of the kind of right conversations, it's often the central problem. Two teams. The one that occurs the most is this app absence of trust people, not being direct people, not being honest people. Not sharing what's really on their mind.
And as a result, they get a little defensive, you know, the ego kicks in. And so it's fight or flight. You see this classically in the tension between departments in companies, particularly large companies. So absence of trust, number one on this pyramid of five dysfunctions of a team. So what [00:06:00] happens if we've got this checklist teams underperforming, there's probably an absence of trust.
What else could there be? Well, for sure. Fear of conflict. That's right. People not saying not people not being able to give constructive feedback. People are not talking about the tough. Issues. So what happens is when there are not tough, but respectful competition conversations, when those conversations are not happening, it's what we call as a fear of conflict.
And the great problem with that is if you're not able to talk about biggest problems of the company, the biggest problems of your product or your team, then how on earth do you expect them to get solved? I mean, it's not magic, doesn't exist. So it's pretty wishful thinking if you're not going to have the conversation about the big problem, there's just [00:07:00] no way it's getting solved.
So that's the checklist. Number one, absence of trust. Number two, also very likely and very common, a fear of conflict, just not having the right conversations. Now let's get up into if those are the two big underlying ones, there's three other characteristics of the low performing teams. And I'll tell you what, they're probably, as a result of the first two, let's look at it.
Lack of commitment, number three. So let's say you've got a trusting team. That's having tough conversations, but they're not really aligned around a common go initiative. Desire outcome result, whatever it is, it's a lack of commitment. And if we don't know what's expected of us, if we don't know what we're trying to get done well, how, I mean, it would be a lottery to think that we're going to hit target if we're not even really committed to it.
Number [00:08:00] four avoidance of accountability. This one really comes if you're not committed to a target, if you're not having the, the, the, the really tough discussions, fear of conflict. If you're not trusting each other, I like, I don't know how anyone can be accountable with any of those underlying, so avoidance of accountability, if people are not prepared to say.
I dropped the ball. I missed that one. That's on me. Here's what I'm doing to fix it. Here's what I need your help to fix it. That would be great accountability. But often we see the fourth part of this pyramid is underperforming teams have an avoidance of accountability. What happens in the sporting field?
Classic blame the referee for a bad call? Well, what a great coach will tell you is if you lost by a point and let's say it was a bad call. It was your fault for letting the score be that close, or if do you use that's a common [00:09:00] mantra from bill Belichick, the coach of the new England Patriots, another great guy.
Charlie Munger talks about accountability saying don't be a victim, take responsibility for everything it's on. You. Because being a victim and saying, oh, it was somebody else. So judging somebody else, nothing good comes of there. And lastly, number five in these reasons teams, underperform and dysfunction is the inattention to results.
And this is a big one because as you can see, it's at the highest form, if you've set a big annual target or a big launch target, Whatever it might be. If you're not obsessed about achieving those results chances are, you're not gonna be totally going in a right direction. It's a bit hit or miss. So they have five big, big dysfunctions of a [00:10:00] team.
Let me give you just briefly what those answers are. How do you solve the absence of trust you as a leader need to be vulnerable. You need to show that it is safe. To be open and to be vulnerable, to say things like I screwed up, I messed up. I don't know the answer. That's vulnerability. That's how you build trust.
Because if you do it then your other teammates will follow with you. Fear of conflict actively go and consider every single idea from everyone do not shy away from inviting everyone to participate in the discussion of problems and solutions. Next one lack of commitment, be clear, set their expectations.
How are you going to reach the results? Be very clear. Get people on board. Number four, avoidance of accountability, have the tough conversations. [00:11:00] Lastly, inattention to results. It's all about talking about communicating the team goals and particularly in these last three. Tough conversations, setting expectations and goals.
Everybody needs to get on board and agree to a challenge to discuss and to finally own those results. Don't just tell people the goals. Don't tell people the expectations, invite them to be part of it too. So there you have it. Patrick, Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team. It's a beautiful pyramid. You can get a copy of that at bottom-up dot IO.
Just take the agility in the digital age masterclass, and you'll be able to enjoy that. And hopefully like me, you will be able to refer to it all the time and you need to be looking at this from day one. From when you have that original idea, you need to grab it, hold it. Check it go back to this time and time again, and you'll be on your way to making a great [00:12:00] product.
The other thing you can do, if you want to make great products, head of it, a bottom-up dot IO, you can check out all our free courses, design thinking, agile, lean, you name it. It's all there. So you can make the very best products possible. All right, that's a wrap of the bottom-up skills podcast. We'll catch you next time.
