Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman have investigated what makes teams succeed and fail. In their book, X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed (2007), they describe, among other things, why good teams fail.

The answer may surprise you: They fail because they do exactly what they have been taught.

Traditionally, teams focus on getting it internal to work - the collaboration, the skills, the work processes etc. But it doesn't work. According to Ancona and Bresman, the internal motivation that characterizes most teams is hopelessly out of date, and the approach is also based on an almost 80-year-old experiment. Namely the Hawthorne experiment that showed that we are motivated by that type of internal motivators. Even being part of the control group gave, in the Hawthorne experiment, increased productivity. It is on the basis of this insight that researchers have later based their theories on group dynamics. Theories and methods still used today to teach teams.

But much has changed since the 1920s. Today's organizations and the demands placed on employees are completely different (much more changeable) and therefore it is time for a new angle of attack.

Successful teams have external activities

Or perhaps I should rather write "have". also external activities”. Because what Ancona and Bresman write is actually that there is nothing wrong with what traditional teams do as such. Focus on group dynamics, cooperation etc. is important. But what makes successful teams is their parallel attention to the external activities.

Ancona and Bresman describe the external activities as activities that are carried out outside the team itself. Both "outside" the company but also outside it. In other words, the team members draw on external experts, colleagues, managers, customers etc. in their quest to achieve the project goal. By involving others, the team's strength is increased, and it strengthens the project at the same time.

Because of the external focus, the authors call successful teams X-Teams. An X-Team's success is made up of three main components:

External activities

First, there is the team's external activity, which consists of three core activities:

1. Reconnaissance. Get an understanding of the terrain the company is in. E.g. technology, market, competitors, cultural.
2. Ambassadorship. Create dialogue up and down the organization. Present the team's needs up and down the hierarchy.
3. Task coordination. Involving people inside and outside the company to get feedback, identify key resources and get others to help.

Extreme execution

Don't throw away what you've learned about a team's internal processes. Leaders of X-Teams develop processes that build an open and supportive culture that helps members coordinate their work effectively while performing external activities. X-Teams collect large amounts of information about the company's customers and translate it into the products or functions that the customers want.

Flexible phases

The good team is able to shift the focus from "exploration", getting many new ideas and understanding the surrounding environment, to "exploitation", which is about moving from the rich world of ideas to one core idea that is implemented . And finally on to "exportation", where the team's ideas are pushed into the market or into the organization.

According to the authors, this focus on both internal and external conditions makes for more successful and innovative teams.

The X-Team's 5 success factors

What does it take for your teams to have the X factor? In an article in ASK Magazine Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman give us five good tips along the way:

1. Select your team members based on their networks as well as their personality, skills and compatibility with others.
2. Make the external mindset "the way you do it" from day one.
3. Provide tools, such as checklists, to help the team with both internal and external activities.
4. Establish milestones and milestones to guide the team through exploration, exploitation and exportation.
5. Ensure there is full commitment from senior management.

Tip: 10 good tips for creating successful innovative teams

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