The Fundamental Purpose of Your Team

You’ve been put in charge of a task force recently created to resolve a severe quality problem with one of your company’s most popular products. Your mandate: “Fix it.”

You’ve been given the job because after two weeks under the previous leader, the task force has made virtually no progress. At your first meeting, you realise why. Members are consumed with pointing fingers and deflecting any blame from the design, manufacturing or other groups they represent.

We suggest your first step is to settle on the fundamental purpose of the team.

In an hourlong meeting with the group, you prod members past their obsession with placing blame. And that leads to more productive discussion, from which emerges the real purpose: Restore the company’s reputation for quality.

This was a purpose the task force members could rally around because the company’s quality-based brand was indeed at stake and that affected everyone. Finding the real purpose lifted the whole effort above the level of parochial interests.

Purpose plays this critical role because it is the source of the meaning and significance people seek in what they do. Research has revealed that the vast majority of us want to feel part of something larger and more important than ourselves. When workers were asked how important it was that their lives be meaningful, 83 per cent said “very important” and another 15 per cent said “fairly important.” That’s an astounding 98 per cent to whom it was at least “important.” No wonder collective purpose is the first requirement in creating any real team.

Purpose also needs to be made tangible and kept vital through concrete goals and plans. To create a team capable of extraordinary collective work, team members need to know not only that they do something important (purpose) but also that they are going someplace worthwhile and challenging (goals and plans).

How about the people for whom you’re responsible? Are they a cohesive team that’s working collectively at the highest level they’re capable of achieving? If not, look first at the purpose you’re all pursuing. Are you solving a technical problem or restoring the company’s reputation for quality?

(Linda Hill is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Kent Lineback spent many years as a manager and an executive in business and government. They are the co-authors of “Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader”.)

© 2011 Harvard Business Publishing