Teams work best together when they work to accomplish the same objectives.

Stewart Butterfield is the founder and CEO of Slack – a cloud-based service that brings teams and tools together in one place. Their website says, “It’s the foundation for teamwork.”  Butterfield interviewed Andre Iguodala of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors on teamwork at a Slack sponsored conference and his answer on how teams work was, “You should have the best talent, but everything fails if everyone’s just out for themselves.”

Butterfield summed up the talent versus teamwork discussion in this thought, “You can take a team of absolute all-stars in terms of their native abilities, but if they are not working together, they are much less effective than a team where there is less native ability but a higher degree of teamwork and cohesion.”  

Teams work best together when they work to accomplish the same objectives. If you want your team to work, you have to define the objectives, align the objectives, and assign the objectives.

Define the objectives.What are you trying to accomplish?  That is the most important question you can answer for a team.  Before you start anything, you have to define success. From the biggest goal to the smallest goal, the purpose of the team, its objectives, and the work it does must be established.

“When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.”– Howard Schultz

Align the objectives.The goals are set, but is the team aligned with the plan to achieve the objectives?  This is the second most important question in teamwork.  Notice, I didn’t say does everyone agree with the plan, that is a different bar. There will be many ways identified to achieve the objectives.  Once the plan is set, it is important that the entire team execute the same plan.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford 

Assign the objectives. A team is made up of individuals. These individuals are unique and bring different strengths and abilities to the team.  It is the best teams that look for ways to capitalize on this breadth of talent and allow each person to give their all in the way they do best to support the objectives.

“We can’t all be good at everything. This is partly the logic behind having a team in the first place, so each role can be filled with the person best suited for that role and together, every job and every strength is covered.”– Simon Sinek