We looked at over 7.500 teams from 14 industries in 32 countries (a whopping 17.428 team situations in total) how the ambition from individual team members aligned – or not – with what their managers had in mind. In only 20% of the cases, bottom-up and top-down were in sync. Hence, in 80% ….. they were not. Ouch!
Despite a lot of attention in scientific literature on ‘groupthink’ (do the team members all share the same purposes) and ‘process clarity’ (clear division of tasks and mandates), there is, apparently, not automatically such a thing as ‘Roadmap clarity‘. We all know that sales have to go up by 15%. But how!? So, all team members are running around in all kind of directions – most often with the best intentions – but the aggregated net result is disappointing.
How to remedy?
- Check the alignment profile per team per topic. No, not with Excel. Take a course in cluster analysis. Or consider specialized consulting software from Transparency Lab.
- For the most disagreeing teams: sort the target items by level of disagreement
- Discuss what’s not negotiable and what is. Consider the minority view. The wisdom of the crowd usually outperforms the smartest manager.
(Stats provided by www.no-suits.com)