written by Marcin Floryan and Arne Roock

Part 2: Team Cohesion

In the first part of our mini series on teams of teams, we have suggested that we need two main ingredients in order to build highly effective teams: Team cohesion and the right technical capabilities. In this post we will discuss the former, while the next post will cover the technical capabilities part.

When several teams collaborate on a large piece of work, they often organize like in a relay race: After it has been defined which team is responsible for which tasks, each team works on their respective part and then the deliverables are being handed over across team boundaries. Depending on the context, this might or might not be an effective model. But it’s not what we call a team of teams. In a team of teams setting, the teams move forward as one unit, passing the ball back and forth continuously - like in a rugby match.¹

Because a team of teams acts as one close-knit unit, it can be fast, innovative and adaptive - and many people have reported that it’s very motivating and rewarding to be part of such an initiative. Unfortunately, we don’t get teams of teams for free. Instead, we have to take deliberate action to create high (team of) team cohesion in two different dimensions: task cohesion and interpersonal cohesion.²

Task Cohesion

Task cohesion refers to the level of members’ commitment to the team task (because they feel the task is enjoyable and important to the overall success of the organization). Key for high task cohesion is the creation of a superordinate goal - a goal that is shared across the various teams who need to collaborate. This goal has to be strong enough to temporarily overwrite the respective team goals. In order to achieve this, the superordinate goal needs to be clear and meaningful to everyone involved in the initiative. If folks don’t understand why this big new initiative is important (or even worse: if they don’t really understand what it is they are supposed to work on in the first place), then they will probably not show a high degree of commitment.

Another critical success factor is effective prioritization. The superordinate goal should be the single most important thing to work on for everyone involved. And the second and third most important goal as well. As simple as this might sound, companies struggle a lot with this aspect. What happens a lot in practice is that teams are asked to focus on the big initiative and their team backlogs simultaneously, which is a recipe for disengagement and decreased cohesion. It not only creates split focus, but in this case most folks will probably gravitate more to their respective teams and identify less with the team of teams. Another prioritization issue arises when an organization has several large initiatives in flight and the same team is asked to contribute to several superordinate goals at the same time. In our experience, this setup inevitably changes the game from rugby to a relay race again.

Interpersonal Cohesion

Interpersonal cohesion refers to phenomena like liking each other, getting along with each other, feeling a sense of belonging to the group or even pride. People often assume that interpersonal cohesion happens automatically (or is not important at all) and therefore don’t pay much attention to it. But in order to create a strong team of teams, we need to counter the natural pull of our product teams (“I am proud to be a member of this team”) with an equally strong pull towards our team of teams (“I am proud that I am also part of this larger team.”) The last thing we want is that people view the team of teams as a burden that distracts from their “real work” or even compete with the other teams they are supposed to collaborate with.

In our experience, these are some good practices for creating interpersonal cohesion:

A proper kickoff. Although organizations often feel tempted to “roll up our sleeves and get to work” immediately, this approach often backfires. It’s worth taking the time and running a well-planned and facilitated kickoff workshop. The purpose of this workshop is to make sure everyone is on the same page about what needs to be done and why this is important, but also to make sure folks need to get to know each other and get a mutual understanding of capabilities, roles and responsibilities.
Transparency. It helps tremendously if each of the teams has visibility on the overall progress of the initiative, as well as roadblocks, changes in scope and priority etc. Secrecy, on the other hand, quickly erodes trust and can create a feeling of “someone is driving their own agenda” and “we are not in this together.” Note that it may not be sufficient to make the existing work tracking of each team accessible to everyone. We also need to make sure that progress information from each team is clear and understandable across the team of teams.
Celebrating success together. Highlighting and celebrating success together (even supposedly small ones) can easily create a virtuous cycle: The more positive signals folks are seeing that their approach is working, the more they will engage in the initiative, which in turn leads to more successes. Regular demos can be a great way to celebrate success together.
Shared Retrospectives. While it’s common for organizations to run post-mortem retrospectives after a big initiative is completed, it’s less common to run frequent cross-team retrospectives on a regular cadence. In fact, one of the most common statements we have heard during post-mortem retrospectives is “I wish we had done this earlier / more often.” Reflecting on our ways of working, learning together and trying new things is a great way of maintaining and improving interpersonal cohesion. In large initiatives, it’s often not always feasible to include everyone in every retrospective. In this case it can be a good practice that each team is sending one or two representatives who will participate and report back to their teams.
The fun stuff. Of course there’s also the fun stuff that can help increase interpersonal cohesion. For instance, a fun name and swag for the team of teams, meeting for dinner and fun activities, offsite meetings etc. It’s worth pointing out that the fun stuff is important but will probably not be enough if it’s not part of a larger package that includes some of the other bullet points.

Summary

High coherence is one of the two important conditions that must be in place to form an effective team of teams. This coherence usually does not appear automatically, deliberate action is required in two dimensions. Task cohesion can be increased by creating and communicating a clear and compelling superordinate goal and strict prioritization. Interpersonal cohesion is supported by effective kickoff workshops, transparency, celebrating successes together, shared retrospectives and “fun stuff”.

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¹ This metaphor was used by Takeuchi and Nonaka in their 1986 paper The New New Product Development Game.

² “Too close for comfort? Distinguishing between team intimacy and team cohesion.” Lisa Rosh, Lynn R. Offermann, Rhonda Van Diest 2011

Building a Team of Teams (2/3)

Part 2: Team Cohesion

Task Cohesion

Interpersonal Cohesion

Summary

The Authors

Questions? Get in touch.

Building a Team of Teams (2/3)

Part 2: Team Cohesion

Task Cohesion

Interpersonal Cohesion

Summary

The Authors

Building a Team of Teams (3/3)

Building a Team of Teams (1/3)

Questions? Get in touch.