CHAPTER 9

Tidying Teams

Marcos landed his dream job. As a senior sourcing analyst overseeing IT purchases for all of North America for a major energy company, Marcos was excited to go to work every day. But a year into his job, the energy industry plunged. His position was eliminated. Marcos’s manager gave him an ultimatum: leave the company or move to a new team.

Marcos was understandably upset. He didn’t want to leave his old team, and the work on the new one sounded pretty boring—sifting through and fixing the fifteen thousand bills the company received each month. Not wanting to be out of work, he reluctantly joined the new team and started the mind-numbing task of correcting billing errors. “It was painful. I was hurt,” he reflected.

Upon arriving, he realized the team’s work was a complete mess. With a double-digit error rate, too many invoices went unpaid or incorrectly paid. The fifteen-person team also had no formal leader. Marcos stepped up. You’ve been given the worst job in the supply-chain organization, he told himself. Can you become a leader without a title? He became the go-to guy to fix invoice mistakes, helping to make other people’s jobs easier. The guidance he provided to the rest of the team made his efforts all the more impactful.

His efforts made a big difference. The team gelled, people started actually liking their jobs, and the group cut the error rate by a few percentage points. They were getting noticed for their quality work. Soon enough, management rewarded Marcos with a new position in supply-chain analytics, a more respected part of the company. When he left the invoice group, management offered his successor the formal position of team leader, a recognition Marcos never received, but a testament to the impact of his informal role.

He kept in touch with his former team. Within a few months, the new leader rolled back many of the changes Marcos had instituted. Morale and engagement sank. Less than a year after he’d moved on, management asked Marcos to return to the group.

For the second time in as many years, he left a job he loved for a team whose work he found tedious. To add to his challenges, the group would, once again, have no designated team leader, and Marcos would not get the formal recognition, nor the pay raise, he felt he deserved. It was disappointing, yet deep down, part of him was excited to take on the challenge anyway.

He approached his second time around with big plans. Even though these people don’t report to me, I’m going to rebuild this team and make it work the right way, he thought. Acting like the leader many of us aspire to be, he set out to tidy the team. It was too big and unproductive, and it had become a place where employees experienced little joy. He set an ambitious goal to reduce an error rate of more than 10 percent to an impressively low 3 percent, while shrinking the group’s size. He wanted to make the team so efficient that there would be no way he’d be called into service a third time. “Everybody on the team knows that I’m trying to automate myself out of a job,” he boasted.

He helped design a bot to do the equivalent work of five team members, which paved the way to reduce the team’s size by more than half. Afterward, he found his teammates better jobs. One moved from the manual and mundane work of fixing invoices to taking over responsibility for the group’s meetings. Another finally got the courage to move to a team that could better utilize her skill set. Due to his efforts, the company saved a lot of money and employees were doing work that brought them more joy—a far cry from the monotony of correcting thousands of bills. Marcos felt fulfilled by helping everyone, referring to his work as “absolutely satisfying.”

When teams are in sync, work feels energizing and our productivity is high. Members are filled with pride and committed to making a difference. But when we find ourselves on a team that’s disorganized, we waste time and get frustrated. We may even check out completely, showing up unprepared or unwilling to speak up with our own ideas.

Given the nature of most jobs, it’s hard to experience joy at work if the teams you’re on aren’t joyful. Marcos seized the opportunity to improve his team, even without a formal leadership role. He transformed an inefficient team doing uninspiring work into an organized one doing much more enjoyable and higher-quality work. Although you might not lead a team, you can do your part to make it more joyful!

Visualizing Your Ideal Team

You’ve probably encountered two types of teams. Primary work teams are permanent groups typically organized around a department area or other organizational need. Examples include a unit of nurses, a battalion of soldiers, or a cross-functional leadership group. Project teams are temporary and are formed to solve a specific problem, launch a product, serve a client, or make a decision. Both types involve collaborating with others, putting together different viewpoints, and generating and implementing ideas.

Take a moment and imagine what your ideal team is like. How does it feel? Is it full of positive interactions and nurturing relationships? Is it a “business only” team that quickly tackles a task, or is there room for connection beyond the work, including hanging out with colleagues? Is your ideal team one that challenges you to do your best work? Does it provide support, encouragement, or growth? There’s no right or wrong answer here, as long as it feels right to you.

Make a Teams Pile

It’s time to gather up all your teams in a pile. At the top of an index card (or on a spreadsheet), write the name of each team, including your primary work group and all project teams.

Now let’s figure out what’s going on in each team. Sure, there’s the “[blank] task force” or the “generic problem-solving team.” But what’s the real purpose of these teams? Purpose is the genuine belief in the value of the work you are doing. It helps us find meaning in our efforts by connecting us to a larger goal. Without a purpose, teams quickly become messes, straying from task to task, lacking a clear reason to exist.

The team leader is supposed to outline a team’s purpose—and if you’re that person, get going! The rest of us want to understand a team’s purpose, even if we’ve never been told of it, so we can feel like our efforts add up to something and our time is well spent. Simply saying “to grow,” “to solve problems,” or “to improve the process” is way too vague. It’s also uninspiring. In the most concrete way you can, connect the team’s work to helping a person or group. For Marcos’s invoice-corrections team, it wasn’t about fixing mistakes. His team felt the call to restore integrity to the company by paying vendors accurately and in a timely manner. A product-development team is at its best when its purpose isn’t just launching products but delighting customers and making their lives better.

In one truly inspiring study, researchers observed a team of hospital cleaners. Their job was to maintain patient rooms and public spaces, an often messy task and one that usually has unhappy employees. Yet this team was thriving, and employees loved their jobs. Their secret? Instead of narrowly defining their team’s purpose as cleaning up after patients, they saw themselves as offering critical care to the sick. Besides providing a comfortable environment for patients undergoing difficult treatments, the team made patients feel better, for example, by handing out tissues to people crying or a glass of water to those suffering from nausea.

Write a sentence on each index card summarizing the purpose for each team you serve on. Ask yourself: What contributions does our team make to the company’s goals or vision? What useful information or ideas are we generating? What do I personally enjoy about participating on the team?

Are you struggling to answer these questions? Talk with others on the team about how they view the team’s purpose. If you’re still struggling, there might not be a reason for the team to exist. Some teams may have had a purpose in the past—but they’ve already met it.

Evaluate Your Teams Pile

Now pick up each index card, moving from the easiest one to consider to the most difficult. For most, that will mean starting with the team you’re least involved with and ending with your primary work group. Ask these questions for each team:

Is the team required for my job? Unless you’re changing jobs, you’ll need to stay engaged with your primary work team. Other teams need to be kept because they provide information needed to get your work done, your input is required, or simply because your boss demands it.

Does the team help move me closer to my ideal work life? Maybe it motivates you or will equip you with the skills or connections for the joyful future you want.

Does it bring joy? For example, is working toward the team’s purpose itself joyful?

Before putting a card down, recognize that no matter how bad a team feels at times, there’s usually something to value in it. What can you learn from someone on the team? Who are you closest to and enjoy talking with the most? What kind of work do you perform for the team that is worthwhile?

Sort the teams into two piles: those you’re happy with and those that need improvement. If your primary work team sparks joy, that’s a terrific place to be, as it’s usually the one where you spend the most time. If a specific project team is bringing you joy, what’s drawing you to it? Knowing the source of joy will help you learn more about yourself and what you’d like to get out of work.

As much as I’d like to share with you a trick to discard the pile of joyless teams, that’s not practical for most people. What is possible is to make the team better—and a source of greater joy (and less frustration). Focus on this pile of teams, but the advice I’m offering can also make a good team even better. Remember, no matter your job title, there are some simple ways to make a team more joyful.

Don’t Create Messes for Your Teammates

One checked-out team member can quickly turn a joyful team into a messy one where everyone becomes disengaged. Nobody wants to put in extra effort to make up for team members who slack off and show up unprepared. Free-riding is toxic for a team’s atmosphere. “Why should I work hard, when so-and-so isn’t working hard?” the reasoning typically goes. When this attitude spreads, teams become a mess. Beyond the finger-pointing and defensiveness, fewer people show up prepared and even fewer deliver their best work. Those who work extra to pick up the slack start to feel resentful and may burn out.

There’s an explanation for why people check out of teams, and it’s usually not because they’re lazy or irresponsible. Have you ever not participated in a team because you thought others were smarter, knew more, or had greater experience? A lack of confidence often blinds people to the unique treasures they bring to work. It’s often the least-experienced person on a team who can help solve the hardest challenges. Don’t let the false belief that you have nothing to contribute sideline you from participating—and create a team atmosphere that looks like you’re not fully present. Help build confidence by letting everyone know (including yourself!) that they have a valuable contribution to make. Be specific by identifying one thing they do that truly makes a difference to you, the team, another member of the organization, or a customer.

Trust Keeps Teams Tidy

In today’s fast-paced work world, trusting one another helps people avoid burning out and bringing work problems home—returning grumpy, with little time to spend with loved ones who deserve the energy you don’t have. Besides creating a much more pleasant work environment, trust helps teams reach important goals. When you’re in a group with high trust, everyone tries to better the collective. In low-trust groups, those efforts go toward individual goals, usually at the expense of the group. The result: a messy team full of arguments that spends a lot of time accomplishing very little.

Trust is difficult to build at the moment it’s needed, so don’t wait. Spend time getting to know team members outside the office. Openly share information that encourages others to reciprocate. Don’t be quick to blame other team members for mistakes, as they’ll be less willing to admit to them in the future. Instead, candidly talk about previous mishaps and learn from them. And admit to your own mistakes. Once we acknowledge our own limitations, we stop being so hard on ourselves for every small slip. This creates a much safer environment where we can all fess up to our shortcomings for the betterment of the group.

Disagreements Don’t Always Make a Mess

It’s relaxing to be in a room with a bunch of people who agree with you. The problem: If they don’t disagree, they’re likely not fully analyzing a decision or generating a rich discussion. What won’t be relaxing is when the team underdelivers because people were afraid to raise an opposing viewpoint. This is commonly referred to as groupthink, and teams like this perform poorly. For the best outcome, you’ll need to get comfortable talking to people with different views.

Even with diverse teams, research shows that people tend to focus on what everyone knows in common, for example, the client preferences, prior projects, and the typical way the company operates. Despite the fact that we tend to talk about what we know in common, each person also brings distinct knowledge. It’s often these seemingly small bits of information that prove vital for an effective team. Everyone on a team can do their part by bringing their unique experiences, ideas, and backgrounds to the work.

If you find that the group is in too much agreement over ideas, assign someone to play the devil’s advocate. By explicitly accepting the role, you’ll feel safe pushing back on other members’ ideas and pointing out missed perspectives. Just make sure you give others the opportunity to try out this role. It will bring in new perspectives, and it’s not fun always having to be the skeptic.

If you’re still struggling to generate different ideas, don’t do one thing that teams frequently turn to: brainstorming. Brainstormed ideas often fall short of their promise because the sessions in which they’re produced combine both generation and evaluation of ideas. While trying to create a safe, respectful atmosphere where everyone can keep proposing ideas, it’s all too common to dismiss an idea before it has even had the chance to develop. After a few rounds of watching others’ ideas quickly sacked, it’s no surprise that some people decide to remain silent. It’s also hard not to take negative comments made about our ideas as personal criticism.

Instead of brainstorming, make a suggestion to replace brainstorming with brainwriting—the written generation of ideas within the group. It’s an initially silent exercise that can produce the same benefits as brainstorming without its costs. The generation of ideas is separated from the evaluation of those ideas. It’s pretty simple to do. Ask team members to silently write their ideas on note cards. After an idea-generation period (usually around fifteen minutes), a team member takes responsibility for grouping similar note-card ideas together. Each idea is then anonymously presented to the entire team and evaluated.

Clean Up Personal Conflicts

If a team has too much conflict due to personality differences or political posturing, it can do real harm to both the team as a whole and its individual members. Nobody wants to be the target of or even a spectator to a lot of fighting and personal attacks. Talk about a joyless environment!

Steer clear of getting drawn into other people’s drama. Avoid gossiping or speaking negatively about others. And don’t be tricked into thinking that complaining about someone with other teammates creates a real and lasting bond. Any intimacy that does arise is false, short-term, and damaging to your integrity.

Recognize that when someone challenges an idea, it doesn’t mean they don’t like you or are mean-spirited. I know that’s hard. Our pride and insecurities can make unflattering comments about our ideas feel like a personal attack—even if there are no bad intentions. If the team worked to build trust beforehand, it’s got some protection. Trust turns disagreements over ideas into productive conversations, while making us feel better about hearing the news.

Clean up any messes you’re responsible for by resolving personal conflicts. It sometimes requires you to take the high road in order to clear the air. I know how hard it can be to approach someone to say, “I’d like for us to be great partners and to support each other’s work. I can see I haven’t been fully acting that way, and I’m sorry.” More often than not, the other person will reciprocate your gesture of good will. If they don’t, they might have what researchers call an egocentric orientation—a strong individualistic focus—that blinds them to your goodwill gesture. Give it one more shot, this time more explicitly laying out your desire to overcome past differences.

Big Teams Are Usually Full of Clutter

Big teams can create big messes. Research shows that larger teams are less satisfying than smaller ones. With so many other people around, there’s a good chance that there will be a lot of overlap in members’ contributions, making it more likely that teams become chaotic and disorganized. Also, it’s hard to stand out and see the impact of our own work with too many people around.

A bigger team is also almost always a slower one. Trying to reach a consensus with a big team takes a lot of time, and sometimes it isn’t even possible. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos lives by the “two-pizza rule”—no team should be large enough that it needs to be fed with more than two pizzas. Research backs up Bezos’s rule of thumb. Studies peg the optimal size for most teams from four to six people if they’re trying to generate ideas, make decisions, or innovate, with teams of more than nine people pushing the limits of what’s effective.

Although it’s usually up to the team leader to determine its size, knowing the drawbacks of larger teams can help anyone. When on a larger team, propose breaking out into smaller working groups. Don’t be so quick to recommend another team member who doesn’t offer a unique perspective. And when you’re in charge, aim to create small teams.

KonMari’s Secret to Joyful Team Building

Sparking joy at work is important to the KonMari team. The first step we take is to identify what kinds of things spark joy for each team member and then delegate jobs accordingly. Our executive assistant, Kay, for example, loves managing tasks on Excel and tackling them systematically. She’s also very good at handling little details that need to be dealt with right away, so these are the kinds of things we always ask her to do. She’s the type of person who gets energized the more she works.

Jocelyn, our social media community manager, has a keen interest in making a social impact, so rather than focusing on increases in the number of followers, I always share with her the ways in which our work makes the world a better place.

Andrea loves to make customers happy, so she is the one we ask to handle communications with our clients. At our weekly company meeting, she has an opportunity to share what she has done that week to make our customers happy, called the Wow Moment. This always boosts the team’s motivation.

As for Takumi, my husband, what makes him happy is interacting with others and creating a work environment that allows everyone to tap into their strengths. He is currently in charge of team management while also serving as my producer. This job is such a perfect fit, I think it must be his calling in life.

If we want to enjoy our work and be highly productive, it’s important to know what our passion is, to share that with the rest of the team, and to know what sparks joy for them, too.

M.K.

Although teams can be a source of joy for all their members, they too commonly fall short of their promise. Know that the success of a team is everyone’s responsibility, no matter their job title, seniority, or tenure—and a privilege for us to enjoy at work. Do your best to tidy your teams, and you’ll bring joy not just to yourself but to everyone else in the group.