VI. Do you need a great team?

Probably my very first team I joint and will never forget about it’s a team of my roommates in the boarding school. When I was just 8 years old, our family has been relocated to Karachi where my father — chemical engineer was building the metallurgical plant. So, I stayed with my parents over there and attended a primary school during 3 years, but then for secondary school I was moved back to Moscow to the special boarding school for 1 more year. So, I was 11 years old boy when I found myself in the boarding school 7’000 kilometers away from my parents in the company of similar boys of the same age. I remember a big building of the boarding school combining under the same roof the school, canteen, living rooms, library, stadium and the swimming pool. Pretty much the concept of Hogwarts in 10 km from Moscow in the forest.

There were 10 of us living in one room. From different cities with different habits. It was amazing time indeed and formed me as a personality to the very big extend. We did many great things and learnt a lot, but the dominating feeling was still the feeling of loneliness. Especially in the evenings when it’s time to sleep and darkness and quietness is surrounding you and you get the impression that it will digest you by the morning. Then I found a way to combat our loneliness. I started to tell the fairy tales before we were falling into the sleep. It was a long long series about the small boy and the ghost. The story started very sadly, the parents of the boy have been killed by the gangsters, he escaped to the small chamber under the roof of the house and found a friendly ghost there. Then they started to travel together, I don’t already remember what was the purpose of this quest, but they went through many adventures and found some treasury in the end… Probably the story never ended indeed.

So, I was telling the stories, we were of course fighting sometimes, doing some crazy things, studying together and we really trusted each other. Then after one year my parents came back, the story with the boarding school has finished and I lost my boys. The miracle happened few years ago, when thanks to Facebook one after another they found me back. Not the boys anymore, some of them left Russia and live abroad like Bakhtyar (we used to call him simply Bakh), some like Sergey from Novosibirsk not, some of them with the families or single. They told me many things I didn’t remember after many years — I taught them how to play the Battleships game, I gave them gifts — astronomy books about the stars. Great memories.

Another great team was also the team of roommates, this time it was university (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) and one room with 4 young students inside. We were studying together, shopping, cooking, cleaning the room (sometimes), reading newspapers and the books, going to the theatres. From this time I keep the sense of very special relationships with Slava, Sergey, Victor, Maxim. It’s very special feeling of trust, transparency and closeness.

Recently one head-hunter (I have many meetings with the recruitment companies nowadays) asked me how I build the trust in my team. Suddenly I realized that subconsciously I’m again and again reproducing the experience I got in my early days in the boarding school and university. I love to take my team out for cooking classes. Cooking together is the best teambuilding for me. Another thing — is to go off site to some remote hotel for 2–3 days to recreate this “living together” experience. Traveling together, joint trainings give us a lot. Of course it’s not a unique tip or recipe, I just was amazed how this team building techniques correlate with my past.

One of my best team buildings happened in South Africa recently. It was all arranged by Daniel W who was leading the business in Sub-Sahara and got together all the team from Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, Turkey, Belgium, South Africa. Many of us saw each other “live” very first time and after the business review we all went out of Joburg for outdoor activity. It was an amazing experience to zip line over the gorge. The gorge was quite big, I guess around 400m deep, not everybody agreed to zip, few people stayed in the car. The experience was great of course but very scary in the beginning and people helped each other to overcome the fear, helped each other to pass the route. Amazingly trust have been built in this 1h of zip line (indeed many lines) experience. People were not afraid of sharing their fear, supporting each other, relying on colleagues support.

So, here we came to the fundamental of the great team — “trust”. People who knows me, remember that I really admire the concept of “5 disfunctions” from the famous “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” wrote by Patrick Lencioni. This book is standing out for few reasons: first, it doesn’t say what SHOULD you do to build the great team (personally I believe there is no any common recipe here), but instead it says what you SHOULD NOT DO or WHAT ARE THE REASONS why your team may not be actually THE TEAM.

It starts with the Absence of Trust. The team will not exist without the trust. Trust in the sense you feel free and safe to share (and you actually share) with your team members your ideas openly, your concerns and your fears. The foundation of trust within a team is both affective (relationship based) and cognitive (objective performance) based. Affective trust means you trust the motives of the other person and you trust them to think in the best interests of the team, occasionally against their own best interests. This significantly contributes to the feeling of mutual integrity. Team members treat each other with honesty, fairness and authenticity. So real team relationships are built. In addition to this we also need to have cognitive trust, a belief in the team ability. Team members need to be aware of and trust the knowledge, skills and experience of others.

I have two stories for you reflecting my understanding of trust. You may think there is no direct correlation between the topic and the stories, but there is some, you just need to dive into atmosphere of the story and switch on your imagination.

When talking trust one person is immediately coming to my mind — Thabo. Thabo — was a short, bold, around 50 years old and he was a sales director of my Distributor in Mpumalanga and Joburg CBD. And at the same time he was a priest in one of the Church communities in Soweto. The moment you meet him you feel the trust to this person. It’s subconscious feeling, seems like Thabo did really nothing to build this trust. One day he explained me the secret of successful marriage — “you get married, you make 4–5 kids and then you do whatever you want, your wife will never leave you”. You ask him — “Thabo, how many kids do you have?” and he is asking smiling slyly “internally four”, so you have no doubts there are many more somewhere.

When Thabo was negotiating it was real piece of art.

- Thabo, we do not give discounts to this customer

- Yes, yes, no discounts

- Thabo, why did you give this customer a discount?

- It’s not a discount, it’s just verrrrry verrry good price

Nevertheless, somehow Thabo radiated the confidence and trust around him. One day I finally understood why. We were driving from Joburg to Nelspruit in two cars. Thabo was the first and I was following him. And it was fast drive. At least for me 160 km/h is really fast, for me, but not for Thabo though. I bet he was complaining silently in his car, that I can’t move even faster. The point is that in some places the speed limit was 60 km/h and in one of such places we have been caught by the traffic police. 100km/h over the limit in South Africa means not a fine, no, but 2 years in the prison… Thabo jumped out of the car immediately and in the next 10 minutes I saw him demonstrating all the skills of a real priest. I understood something as I was learning Zulu for quite some time already. So, Thabo didn’t give policemen any chance to say a word. He jumped on them, crying something like: “guys-you-know-I-have-5-kids-at-home-and-this-foreigner-he-is-the-animal-he-will-fire-me-if-in-1-hour-we-will-not-reach-Nelspruit”. He said many many other convincing things, I was supporting him, pretending I understand nothing and just looking at him very aggressively and finally traffic police just let us go, even without fine. It was magic. This moment I understood I can rely on Thabo is a sense he will always act in the best interests of the business and his team members. Needless to say we respected all the traffic signs from now on.

After this story with the traffic police I felt I can go with Thabo to Hillbrow in Joburg CBD and be safe there. “Mike’s Kitchen” in a Parktown is a lovely place which became my informal office in the center of Joburg on the outskirts of Hillbrow. It’s standing along German/English style house colored from outside in white with the black crossbars. Inside it reminds American diner with the red compartments. Here you can leave your car safely and food was (and I’m sure still is) great. We are leaving our cars there and from this point we are all in Thabo’s car and he drives us further. It takes 3 minutes along Andrews Drive, right turn and we are in the middle of Hillbrow. Before 1994 it was the place where students, artists, banking and governmental clerks use to live. Place was full of art galleries and cafes. Somehow it reminded me SoHo in NYC. Big buildings but not a skyscrapers, nice porches with concierges, paving slabs, front gardens, parks, churches all colored in reddish and pale orange. Large plane trees close in crowns. Small cozy shops. New York type street plan with rectangular quarters and streets number 5,6,7 and even 11th street is there . I spotted Pretoria street, Claim street and of course Broadway street. You immediately feel that this place was built with love and was very well planned and designed.

I do not know how things are in Hillbrow nowadays, but 12 years ago, when I went there first time with Thabo the whole area was full of migrants from all over the Africa. Crowd was everywhere, garbage was covering the paving slabs, front gardens were transformed into an open markets, many buildings lost their tenants and windows lost the glasses. People were everywhere and surprisingly almost no cars. There was a strong smell of carry, fallen leaves and fried chicken offal. Indeed people were grilling offal and sausages right on the street in the used oil cans. Women were walking with the big bales on their heads with the kids behind in the blankets.

I’m in a good hands of Thabo. He is unusually serious. He strongly advises me to take out my watches, hide my mobile phone and then we are leaving the car next the Portuguese fish shop under the supervillains of two Portuguese brothers from Mozambique and here we go. In two hours we are passing by 30–40 shops, meeting the owners, Thabo is doing presentations, we are learning and selling, selling and learning. I’m in my suit and some shop keepers are afraid of me thinking I’m from tax inspection. Some of the people approaching us. Thabo stays focused and managing all the issues even before their occur.

Right on the street hairdressers are doing hair cut to the men and hair extension to the women. There are dozens of pawn stores. Hawkers. Sellers of newspapers. Baggers. On the floor woman is selling potatos in the paper bags. Nosy and chaotic mass under the blue African sky and the sun. After 2 hours we are exhausted and coming back to the base — “Mike’s Kitchen” for lunch, recap and next steps planning.

You are right guys, this is not exactly the team building story. But this is the story about what trust means for me — it’s a confidence that person will always do his/her best for the team, company, people, community. Once trust if there we can move forward. If there is no trust we better not even to start.

The second short story is from my recent past and it shows what we can grow if we have a trust as a soil.

My last “pre-covid” live meeting with my team. It’s a very nice hotel in Florya in Istanbul right on the shore of Marmara sea. It was March, warm already, so you can sit outside. The official part was over and we had just a dinner in our plans. And then our Pakistani GM Ameen asked if we can get all the team together to discuss the Pakistani defense plan against our competitors. The point was indeed, for some reasons competition over there was getting stronger and stronger sliding to tough price war and we didn’t have enough money to respond and at first we even didn’t want to respond with the price reduction. To put things into perspective — Ameen was the only person who was directly dealing with Pakistan. All the other team members (not a big group though, 8 people only) were from all around Middle East, Africa and Asia. So, technically they all have no any interest in Pakistani business. But almost all the team gathered together in the evening at the terrace overseeing Marmara sea.

In the next hour or two the magic happened and this magic made me very proud of my team. Without any fear people started to share their experience in similar situations, actions they undertook in the similar circumstances, failures, success, ideas. The fundamental was a trust between us and sharing and brain storming came very naturally. Indeed it was probably my best brain storming session. I’m not sure what exactly Ameen took away from it, but his notebook was full of notes and he definitely got few good ideas and directions. This is the power of trust based sharing.

Now we are moving to the second element which is a Fear of Conflict. The conflict here doesn’t mean the battle. It simply means you feel free (and you do it) to argue, to disagree and prove to the others you are right, stay for your point of view. In another word — debate around your ideas. And of course you are ready to change your opinion if proves wrong or agree to disagree. If we can’t learn to engage in passionate, unfiltered debate about what we need to do to succeed, business won’t succeed.

It may come as a surprise but the symbol of a conflict for me is Angola. And specifically Roque Market.

Generally speaking usually I feel tough in Angola without any obvious reasons. This is the place with some special and strong energy. Everything starts with the airport. Now of course there is a new larger airport in Luanda, but back in 2007 it was still tiny, small, crowded. Hot and wet. Long queues. Luanda may also change since that time (sure it did), but the city I remember had a very strong smell. Luanda is on the ocean shore but you could feel the smell of the ocean only on Ilha do Cabo — long strip of foreland protruding far into the ocean. In all the other places around Luanda it was a smell of rotten vegetables, fried chicken and asphalt. There were many Chinese workers everywhere in a blue uniforms with the pointed straw hats. Water is an issue (as in many places in Africa) and you may spot large groups of kids and women sitting among big yellow cans waiting for the water to be delivered by the special truck. Life is happening on the streets. People are doing laundry and washing right on the street. Mountains of garbage are everywhere. There is a local proverb: “if you don’t move away the pile of rubbish in the end somebody will settle down there”. And the quintessence of everything is the Roque Santeiro Market probably the biggest in Africa spreading through a 1 kilometer length by 500 m width area (the equivalent area of 500 soccer fields) where marketers sold various kinds of goods, from food to computers, in tin-roofed stalls. Finally Roque market was shut down by municipal government in 2011, but at the time I happened to be there it was flourishing.

This is the recipe how to make the smell of Roque market: take salty fish, salty pork, chicken, bananas, mango, washing powder and rotten vegetables. Add fried fat, fried chicken and sausages plus the small of the burnt oil. Put all the mix under 40 degrees temperature, wait a bit and then add the smell of 10 000 people congested in the crowd in this environment. This is the perfect smell of Roque market.

Indeed Roque market it’s the city inside the city. Under you feet is a layer of metal cans, rags, plastic bags, rotten unrecognizable stuff — everything is covered with the thick layer of dust. Thousands of hovels, sheds, awnings. Very chaotic but with the strict hidden logic. There is an area dedicated to Nestle trading with the walls from yellow cans with the powder milk and baby food. There is a place with the mountains of salty fish, pork and chicken on the ground on the plastic bags covered with the layer of salt. Boys hawkers are going around selling deeeep fried bacon nailed on the toothpicks for convenience. There is a big area where people are cooking meals — in the metal shacks girls are frying chickens and sausages but also bread, bananas. Quarter of hair dressing — fifty women are under the tent experiencing hair extension. Hundreds of men doing head shaving. Big piles of bananas, mango, orange fruits of the palm tree. Quarter of the black land — ten senior women are selling coil over there. Tap with the water and crowd of girls around — taking the water, washing, doing laundry, washing kids, drinking. Queue to nowhere literally — it happened lately that people were waiting for the ice delivery.

Woman is walking around with the big pot of the soup on her head. She is selling the soup. Putting the pot in the dust, pours soup into a plate, taking the money, bringing the pot back to the head and sailing on in this sea of people

I hope I managed to convey you the atmosphere of the place. It’s not peaceful at all and you feel the hidden conflict, kind of hidden debates all the time. This was the environment me and my team came to in 2008. We had a very typical challenge to solve. We didn’t have any good distribution there and we needed to impose some changes to step up.

Our distributor was the company owned by Faizal (I mentioned him in one of my previous chapters). He was a great person, but his team was not doing well at all. The main reason was the total lack of trust. The team was led by few expats Indians, they came for temporary assignment and were talking to Angolese Portuguese speaking team using the help of few English speaking managers. From the very beginning they told us “those Angolese people can’t work properly and we are tired of them”. Not healthy if somebody speaks this about his team to the supplier in the very first meeting. Obviously it wasn’t the team. Lack of trust and if we go one step further — due to the lack of trust they didn’t have any debates, disputes or what we call “positive conflict”. They were selling just what may be sold easily. So, that day we didn’t find any of our products on the Roque market the biggest market in Africa. We spent few days with the team on the ground and I was shocked by the fact how disintegrated and frustrated were all the employees.

Obviously we set some targets and gave directions, came back next month and saw no changes. We started to look at the new distributor and found a very good local company led by Angolese guy, who was studying in Portugal and then came back to his homeland to “help building the future” as he said. And it was totally different story. Firstly it was a team of strong professionals from top to the bottom with the clear mission, sense of trust and common goal. Here we are touching conflict and I may tell you we spent together team by team many hours disputing and debating go-to-market strategy. And you could feel that those people can freely express their opinion and they do not afraid to disagree with the top managers and with the other team members.

Honestly I believe handling the “lack of trust” and “fear of conflict” is the main thing and if you managed this than 80% of your team building is done. Yet there are 3 more disfunctions left in Lencioni’s pyramid. The third disfunction is a Lack of Commitment. The evidence of the presence of this dysfunction is ambiguity. When people don’t unload their opinion and feel like they’ve not been listened to (due to fear of conflict), they won’t really get on board. Here we are not talking about consensus. Consensus is horrible. It’s rare everyone really agrees on something naturally and quickly. Typically consensus becomes an attempt to please everyone, which typically turns into displeasing everyone equally. Most reasonable people just need to be heard, and to know their input has been understood, considered and responded to. You can call it disagree and commit.

I have two very short stories related to “Commitment” for you. The first one happened in two parts. Back in 2009 I remember I got all the Sub-Sahara Distributors in Joburg for a training and some go-to-market alignment. Very different owners of Distributors came from Nigeria, Senegal, Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania. I do not remember any specific actions I did to build the trust or any hot debates. It was fun. We went through few business reviews, workshops, of course field visits, training and team building. And they left to their home countries and in 6 months I also left South Africa back to Russia. And few years later visiting one of the Distributors in Ukraine the owner of Ukrainian company told me the story. They were looking for Distributor partner in Tanzania and found a very good reliable company, the best on the market. Victor (the owner) spent few day observing the operations and he noticed that every morning all the sales reps are getting together for morning meeting, talking something in Swahili and then singing something like “Pasha-Pasha-Pasha Distribuuuuutioooon”. He was wondering what is it and they explained that few year ago they went to South Africa and some Pasha (my nickname) taught them how to build distribution and how the whole process should look like. The owner came back from South Africa very inspired and since that time they follow the directions and managed to build a great business. Needless to say I was positively shocked and all the good memories came back to me. Apart from the fact that my ego was obviously very happy I was reassured that the team with such level of commitment can do miracles.

The importance of commitment came again to me in Ethiopia. From outside it was a phenomenal growth of the business — 10 times in 3 years. But what was inside? Inside it was a team of strong professionals without a fear of debating and sharing. But what else?

It was a time when I first time came to Ethiopia and back that date Daniel G was the only representative of the company on the ground. It was typical export based business where the local distributor was buying from outside of Ethiopia and selling to the market. I fell in love with the country at first sight. You are coming out of the airport and immediately feel the smell of the fresh grass, burnt coffee beans, coal, myrrh and the traffic fumes. And I just love this combination. Smiling Daniel G is meeting me every time day and night with no exceptions and we drive to the city. Addis is changing rapidly and every time you are coming you find something new in the city. I remember old blue taxi cars first times when I just started to travel over there. Then suddenly in one of my trips all the blue taxies disappeared and instead there were hundreds of yellow taxies. It was a special governmental program to change the old cars to the new ones and the change happened overnight. I remember few quarters of the shacks in the center of Addis which were disappearing, shrinking been replaced by the modern buildings. I was discovering churches, culture, nature. Almost immediately I thought that the market of 100 mln people definitely deserves to have it’s own local manufacturing facilities and project with the local plant started. It took us 1 year to persuade the Company to invest and another 1 year to start up operations.

To get to Hawassa by car (airport was not there these days) you need to wake up at 5 and leave the hotel in the center of Addis at around 6 otherwise inevitably you will be stack in the traffic and loose few hours with you do not have usually. Addis at 6 am is empty. According to Ethiopian time it’s the first hour of the morning. The sun is rising, fog spreads across the ground and there is a smell of coal and the burnt coffee. Fresh. Addis is just waking up. You are passing by the presidential palace, buildings of different ministries, financial district, going to the south of the city in the direction to the airport, to the Bole district, passing by Medhane Alem Cathedral and you are already on the outskirts of Addis and the road is surrounded by the brand new compounds and building. Addis is growing fast indeed. Half an hour more and we enter Addis-Adama highway. It’s one of the few highways been built in Africa, we drive with the speed of 130 km and green fields and hills rush towards us. Adama is just in 90 km from Addis and I never miss the chance to check in there and meet our local distributor — very energized lady with the small warehouse on the second floor of a tiny shopping mall and one mini van to do all the deliveries. One hour in Adama, visiting stores, pharmacies, superettes, market, exchanging the ideas with Distributor and the team and we are taking off to Mojo. Mojo is an important place. Firstly the dry port is here — bonded warehouse where all the goods are coming in before been dispatched all around the Addis and this part of the country. And secondly from Mojo the “land of the lakes” starts. There is no highway anymore and we are driving through numerous villages, towns. In the villages all life is happening on the road. People are drinking coffee, trading, cows, donkeys are all around, buses, horse carts carrying brushwood driven by the kids, big trucks going to the south in the direction to Kenya. We are passing by the lakes: Koka lake, Ziway lake and my favorite three lakes — Langano, Abijata and Shala. I’m asking to make a detour and we are stopping by Langano for a few minutes. High lake shore, the lake is in 100 meters below. Absolute silence, just cries of birds far away. Lake is colored pink, literally the color of the water is pink (probably because of some component of the soil). You may see some villagers far on the right fishing and washing on the shore. Absolute silence, pink big lake and on the other side of the lake mountains and the running clouds.

After recharging batteries at Langano shores and passing by all three lakes we are coming to Shashamene town. Shashamene is a quiet peaceful place with 100’000 or may be 200’000 inhabitants. And it’s unique place. At first it was not always was so quiet. In April 1941 here was a big battle between the Italian troops retreating from Harar, Somalia and Shoa from one side and the British Army and Ethiopian Roomaa from the other side. Lately in the 1950s Emperor Haile Selassie I donated big piece of land here to African Americans who were victims of racism and injustice and shortly after that big group of settlers from Jamaica came to reside. It was within a couple of years that a moderate trickle of Rastafari immigrants began, with the population swelling past 2000 at one point. So, you may imagine that the Bob Marley’s cult came to Shashamene and perfectly merged with the local musical tradition, vibe and soul. Bob Marley is everywhere indeed: t-shirts, scarfs, flags, caps. We came to Shashamany and the rain started. I was hiding under the tent of the shelter at the open market and looking at the people running out of rainfall wearing t-shirts and scarfs colored in red, yellow and green — colors of Bob Marley but also the colors of Ethiopian Flag. Red represents the blood of martyrs, green the beauty of Africa, and gold the wealth of Africa.

From Shashamene we are taking the road to the south and shortly just in 30 min we are entering Hawassa and reaching the final destination — Haile hotel at Hawassa Lake. Haile resort been built by the Ethiopian celebrity — Haile Gebrselassie a retired long-distance track and road running athlete. He won two Olympic gold medals over 10,000 meters and four World Championship titles. It’s very common in Ethiopia — I saw it many times in different places here, young people are dedicating themselves to running, many of them becoming famous runners (Ethiopia is famous for its runners), earning money at different competitions and then investing back to Ethiopia building hotels, schools, resorts, other businesses. Hawassa is famous not just due to the Haile and its beautiful lake, but also for it’s industrial park (HIP) where we decided to bring our manufacturing facilities.

Looking back I’m asking myself what made our team so committed to this project? It was rather big multinational team led by Thierry V. What was the source of passion for Thierry V, Daniel G, Daniel W, Gabi, Seifu, Kahsai, Feven, Ingrid, Timothy, Marc, Nicky, Michael, Martin, Aysegul, Aylin, Hakan, many other people? First, of course it’s a trust and the healthy debates we constantly had. But more than that it was a sense we are doing something new, something unique and significant for Ethiopia and for ourselves. Simply the feeling that you are doing something really great drives the passion, commitment and you desire to be accountable for the success

Thus we are coming to the forth disfunction which is an Avoidance of Accountability. Simply it means the attitude where the standards are low and it’s not easy to hold someone accountable. People decide to tolerate peers with low standards on issues which matter, to avoid the discomfort of an affective of interpersonal discussion. Typically, performance standards are very personal and bringing low standards up is challenging as it hits to the core of a person. Teams that avoid accountability encourage mediocrity, miss deadlines and key deliverables, create resentment among team members who have different standards of performance, and place an undue burden on the team leader as the sole source of discipline.

Trying to achieve an outstanding results in the atmosphere where significant part of the company avoids accountability is my recent past. The point is that when things goes well (for many reasons) everybody is nice and successful, small mistakes and outages tend to be easily forgotten and covered. Then one day the amount of underperformance and mistakes reaches the critical mass and this is when all the big visible issues starts. What always surprised me is the people around. Very strong trustful professionals. So we never ever had any issues with the trust. No any fear of conflict, so we were absolutely ok debating, agreeing, disagreeing (remember my yes-no exercise with the CEO?). People were highly committed. Most of the people was working hard dedicating personal time, all the efforts, creativity and the passion to the company. But when it was coming to accountability very often it was a full stop. Sometimes I’m asking myself what kind of mistakes didn’t I experienced, I think I saw everything: missing raw materials inside the finished product, damages of the packaging, quality issues, mistakes with the designs, missing documents, missing deadlines, wrong numbers, wrong codes… And inevitably I failed to find inside the company somebody personally accountable for the damage caused. Smart, committed, professional people with whom yesterday you were debating the strategy, today where like in the castle surrounded by the enemy saying “mistake did happen”, “quality issue occurred”. When it’s somebody from my own team, than it’s easy to dig deeper, discover the root cause and thus been able to improve things. When it’s coming from outside and you can do nothing with it, than you feel frustration and get easily demotivated. With this you are focusing on fire fighting more than on your goal. And the goal, result is what on the top of Lencioni’s pyramid.

So, the last disfunction is an Inattention to results. The key here is to define goals for the team in a simply measurable way which leaves no room for interpretation when it comes to success. And important is to have SIMULAR GOALS for all the team members not separated in siloes. I had few debates in my career when I tried to pursue the top management of the Company that Net Sales targets should be applicable for all the Functions not just sales. I still strongly believe that Even HR should have Net Sales targets due to the simply fact that HR performance is in direct correlation with the engagement, capabilities and efficiency of the employees, thus has direct impact to Net Sales. Simple logic, but how difficult it finds it’s way through the current corporate mindsets.

Following the logic of Patrick Lencioni if step by step you eliminate all five disfunctions starting from the “absence of trust” than in the end you have very good chances to build the great team.

The “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” triggered my another thinking — “what is the team and what is my role in the team?”. According to Lencioni (and it came to me as a big surprise) the team is a group of peers. So, my direct reports are not “my team” as per the book, but my peers are. Here I have my own observation and experience. I would see “my team” as any team actually I can influence at. In different periods of my career I was deeply involved in multifunctional teams (in the frame of one company), teams of distributors (rather communities, yet may be considered as teams) not mentioning the teams of my direct reports or peers. In the end of this chapter let me look at another great book which is the “Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World” written by Stanley A. McChrystal with the group of co-authors.

The main idea of this book is that hierarchical management techniques no longer work because organizations are too large for any one person to make all the decisions. So Stanley A. McChrystal proposed a new management style where your team operates as a network with a shared consciousness and every member is empowered to execute. Shared consciousness may be created by sharing information building genuine relationships and trust. Once you have shared consciousness focus on empowered execution where anyone in the organization can take action without needing approval as long as they provide all contextual information to leaders. Leaders can then take an eyes on hands off approach to management and instead of executing they can focus on fostering an environment conducive to shared consciousness and empowered execution.

This is exactly how Thierry V was building his Growth Markets team and what I was trying to implement later within Middle East Africa and Asia Division. Few observations I may share here. First observation — yes, it works well! The brilliant example is our Ethiopian plant I just told you about earlier on. Another brilliant example is a new Fem Care brand launch in China recently. The East Asian team acted exactly as per the book: great team eliminated all the disfunctions and adopted the principles of shared consciousness and empowered execution. As a result the launch was done in a record 6 months’ time, it was using totally new for European company tools — TikTok and Alibaba platform and it was a great success. Been aligned directionally I was only helping with resources and internal communication and team took full responsibility for all the decisions and results.

The second observation is less obvious — it works well both in lean egalitarian cultures but also in hierarchical cultures (like Middle Eastern or Russian). It just takes more time to build fundamentals, work out 5 disfunctions and ensure shared consciousness is in place. But in the end all the efforts worth it, people on every level are happy to be empowered to execute.

And my last observation is that if you invest your energy, passion, time, soul in building the great team it goes far beyond the business, these people, this team may stay with you forever and the business relationships with time may convert to the true friendship and the family. And this probably is the best recognition you may have in your life.