As a Bay Area sports fan, 2017 has been a year of highs and
lows. The Golden State Warriors clinched their second NBA championship in 3
years, and they continue to improve their roster through free agency.
Meanwhile, the 3-time champion San Francisco Giants are struggling through what
has now become a “rebuilding year.” Sports teams track individual and team
performance and regularly “watch film” as they prepare for future games.
For the 99.9% of us that don’t play on a professional sports
team, we are generally members of other teams. And these teams can consume
a large portion of our waking hours. We are rewarded for our contributions, and
higher performance can result in improved compensation and career advancement,
even in the absence of lucrative endorsements and eye-popping free-agency
contracts. And some teams are just more fun than others. A highly engaging environment
with great colleagues tends to produce better outcomes and better work. Think
of the freestyle, unselfish team play of the Warriors, and their dominance on
the way to a title.
Over the past 10 years, two years have stood out as my most
enjoyable years as well as my most productive: 2008 at PayCycle and 2014 at
Intuit QuickBooks. In both cases, I belonged to a high-performing team with my
peers and manager, and I also led a high-performing team with my direct reports.
In both years, these teams achieved significant business outcomes and career
growth for their members. We worked incredibly hard, and the work was rewarding
and fun. You could say those were my championship years from a career
perspective.
These high-performing teams exhibited the following
distinguishing traits:
- Great results: The teams delivered significant business outcomes against aggressive goals.
- Work was fun: People worked hard and remained highly engaged, as measured by quantitative employee surveys.
- Career growth: Everyone learned and grew as part of the experience, and we experienced career growth over the coming years.
So what makes a high-performing team?
- Purpose and mission
- Exceptional talent and team chemistry
- Strategic focus and executional rigor
Purpose and Mission
Both teams had clear mission statements: “Be America’s #1
online payroll provider” and “Fuel small business success.” They also had clear
top-level business goals in terms of customer base, revenue, and lifetime
value. In turn, each functional team tracked their own detailed metrics weekly
and shared the results broadly and transparently— the good results as well as
the bad results. The detailed analytics let us know how we were doing, where we
were over-achieving, and where we needed to improve. In addition to the stats, we were “hungry to succeed.” We
had aggressive goals and formidable competition. And we responded with our best
team performances.
Exceptional Talent and Team Chemistry
When I think back to my peers and my direct reports on those
teams, each and every member was an “A” player. They excelled at their
functional roles, and they took the time to teach and mentor others. Now, these
teams did not magically appear with high-performing rosters. They had gone
through rebuilding phases with turnover and personnel changes to fill key roles
or bring new skills. The leader for each team took an active role in talent
development and recruiting with internal mobility and external hires.
But as any sports fan knows, team chemistry can separate
teams with comparable rosters and talent. The Warriors are known for their
great team chemistry, unselfishly passing the ball, and their enjoyment of the
game. Team chemistry plays a similar role in working teams. In great teams, team
members excel at their functional role, they contribute across the team
wherever help is needed, and they help their colleagues. The team’s overall
goals are a higher priority than individual goals.
Strategic Focus and Executional Rigor
In 2008 and 2014, our business success hinged on some big,
strategic bets that also required significant technology investment. In 2008,
PayCycle redesigned the user interface (UI) and developed a new product line
beyond payroll. The UI redesign introduced a change in technology from JSP
& Servlet to JavaScript with micro services; and developing the new product
line required a change in development methodology to Agile Scrum. In 2014,
Intuit was investing heavily in the global growth QuickBooks Online with
expansion to the UK, Canada, Australia, and India along with a new streamlined
experience across the small business portfolio. To deliver both initiatives, we
internationalized the technology stack from UI through database, switched to
JavaScript for the UI, and introduced a services architecture.
PayCycle and Intuit QuickBooks are SaaS businesses that
acquire new customers weekly and allow customers to “pay as they go” with
monthly subscription plans. As a result, customer acquisition and retention are
key business drivers. Dissatisfied customers can leave at any time, and they
will generally tell their friends and the Internet on social media. So
executional rigor matters on the business side and the technology. Engineering paid
attention to business metrics as well as operational metrics which included
conversion, customer growth in each market, performance of key work flows, availability,
and recovery time.
Lasting Contribution
In both cases, the teamwork from those years paved the way
for great outcomes as a team and as individuals. PayCycle grew significantly during
the 2008 tech recession, was acquired by Intuit in 2009, and has delivered
significant revenue contributions post acquisition. QuickBooks became Intuit’s
flagship offering and has helped drive growth in revenue and market
capitalization. All of the individuals from those teams have experienced
career growth in the following years. The members of that original PayCycle
team have moved into bigger roles at Intuit and other tech companies. The
members of that QuickBooks team from 2014 have taken on significant leadership roles.
One thing in common, though, all of these leaders have developed their own playbooks
and are investing in their own high-performing teams.
As you think about your next season, what investments can you make to build a higher performing
team?
