In a world impacted by COVID-19, what does productivity mean? And can you be sure that you’ve set yourself and your team up for success?
Here at Pitcher, there has been much internal discussion around hybrid work best practices, remote work, digital meetings and multichannel customer experiences.
I’ve been thinking back to some research that Google carried out some years ago. It was a multi-year research study around high-performing teams, and it found that they all had five things in common. In my opinion, this is still one of the best pieces of research that I’ve read in years.
Google analyzed data from executives, team leaders and team members to determine the key dynamics of what makes a successful team. Researchers studied 180 teams, including a mix of high- and low-performing teams. The best teams were effective because they worked well together, regardless of who was on the team.
5 Qualities of Effective Teams
According to Google, these are the five qualities that make a great team:
1. Safety
Team members feel safe when they take risks and have the confidence to speak up in front of one other. It’s about creating a safe culture in which team members can share their opinions without being judged, even if they go against what the wider group believes. They will never be viewed as disrespectful or incompetent. In such an environment, ideas can flow and this leads to better outputs.
2. Dependability
Team members get things done on time and meet the company’s expectations on excellence. It’s all about trust. Every team member is accountable and reliable.
3. Structure and Clarity
Team members have clear roles, plans and goals. It’s about specific and clear performance standards and directives that allow the team to work and achieve. Everyone has a clear understanding of their function and responsibilities.
4. Purpose
Work is important to team members on a personal level. Google found that there are ways to create meaning in work, like developing a sense of financial security, supporting one’s family, helping the team to succeed, and self-expression.
5. Impact
Team members believe their work matters and creates change. Work is about creating value and having a positive impact on others. Team members want to feel like the team’s work helps to advance the organization’s overall mission and goals.
Pitcher + Remote Work
Since last year, we have been working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this experience, it has become clear that relying on common goals and building structural clarity is even more important. And so too is the availability of digital tools that enable processes, like easy employee onboarding, team training, optimizing remote productivity, driving insights and, as much as possible, the simplification of work activities both online and offline.
The team here at Pitcher are specialists in increasing the effectiveness of sales and marketing teams. Commercial excellence and customer engagement driven by technology has never been more important for enterprises. Our customer’s best practices go from sales enablement, closed-loop marketing towards instore execution, sample management and multi-channel communication using an all-in-one approach to align and streamline marketing, sales and field force to increase the efficiency of hybrid processes.