Tiger teams and True Colors
You don’t want more technical people tweaking the project.
You want more diverse-skilled people on the team. That’s what will get the job done by the deadline.
Your project team needs thinkers, doers, talkers and take-it-over-the-liners.
Risk takers and risk checkers. Big picture painters and detail drill sergeants.
And tiger teams need diversity.
Why?
If all the personalities on your team have the same skill sets, they might have the same mindsets and preferences.
The shared comfort zone spreads, thickens, stifles, smothers and eventually silences new ways of thinking.
Not a problem if the work is repetitive and non-competitive.
But a big one if growth is your goal. Or solving a complex problem fast.
Tiger teams and True Colors
A True Colors client (let’s call her Traci) introduced me to the concept of “tiger teams”.
Traci wanted to know quickly what strengths, values and expectations characterised the new department she had been appointed to lead. It had been cobbled from existing teams after a corporate restructure.
Tiger teams, according to project management trailblazer Asana, are groups of
“… experts brought together to solve a specific problem. Tiger teams disrupt how your business is typically organized by putting cross-functional specialists in the same room—so you can remove silos and approach critical problems from multiple perspectives. This type of team is small and nimble, so the group can act fast and come up with novel solutions that more traditional teams couldn’t manage.”
Aeronautical engineer Walter C. Williams coined the term 60 years ago in a paper on improving program management issues. Perhaps the most famous tiger team was the one whose efforts in the Apollo 13 mission won the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Traci’s new department would have standing functions but also be tasked with specific short-term projects. She planned to assemble smaller tiger teams with cross-functional expertise as required, to investigate problems and prioritise solutions.
But Traci also wanted to make sure her tiger teams could do more than hunt down answers with stealth. Unlike the big cats in the wild, which can be aggressive when one intrudes on another’s territory, her tiger teams would value differences and be strategic with individual strengths.
Small teams with each tiger bringing more than technical skill to the group effort, making one helluva tiger in total!
What do tiger teams need?
Writing for Forbes, innovation futurist Robert B. Tucker suggests “human factors like trust, empathy, ability to resolve conflict, and seek and offer forgiveness” are vital to tiger teams’ success.
Tucker quotes an interview with Will Wright, a computer games entrepreneur who said, “You can have a great person who doesn’t work well on the team, and they’re a net loss. You can have somebody who is not that great but they are very good glue, and [they] could be a net gain.”
His article supports Wright’s view that “glue” team members “share information effectively, motivate and improve morale, and help out when somebody gets stuck. Be aware of not only the needed skill sets but who works well together and who does not.”
(In True Colors-code, these are the Blue personalities).
The True Colors training helped Traci identify the thinkers, doers, talkers and take-it-over-the-liners in her bigger team.
And the attributes the new department currently lacked.
Traci said these insights proved valuable not just for forming tiger teams, but for recruiting new people and planning professional development.
Want to discover who has the traits mix for your tiger teams? Book a complimentary, unconditional Tell Me More call.