How to Launch a Team: Start Right for Success. Kim Kanaga

      The crucial business of a team launch is to become a team—to bring a group of disparate and formerly disconnected people with their varied skills and experience and styles to bear on a challenge. The actions you take as team leader before, during, and after the first team meeting—the time of the team’s launch—will help your team achieve that first important step. Team members will learn why they have come together to make a team, get to know each other, begin to trust each other, and learn to work together outside of and across from their usual channels and boundaries. They will set up the terms of how they will interact with one another to achieve their shared purpose. Throughout this process you will lead your team in setting its purpose and direction, defining team member roles and responsibilities, settling on procedures, and building relationships.

      When it comes to launching your team you may find that getting all the members together in one place poses a significant challenge. Many teams today are likely to be geographically dispersed, separated by time and distance. In preparing your team for launch, pay careful attention to the logistical challenge of getting your team together for its first meeting and, further, to coordinating additional meetings (especially if your team will be working together for six months or longer).

       The Important First Meeting

      The first team meeting should be face to face. It can be as long as 2–3 days or as short as 2–3 hours with a scheduled series of meetings to follow. The initial meeting should include all team members, the team leader, the high-level sponsor of the initiative, and perhaps a meeting facilitator. The agenda should include:

      • discuss team purpose/charter

      • discuss vision/mission/goals/timelines

      • understand why each person is on the team

      • understand processes of how work will get done

      • get to know individuals and their roles

      • work out team norms

      • work out communication processes

      • work out decision-making processes

      • set up meeting documentation/minutes/records of key decisions.

      After this first face-to-face meeting, distribute meeting minutes and descriptions of the processes and norms to which the team has agreed. Also send a schedule of future meetings to team members.

      Videoconferencing and other communication technologies make it possible to hold meetings in which the participants work in a variety of locations. But CCL research suggests that the benefits of at least one initial face-to-face meeting are significant to reinforcing a team design that empowers its team members to take initiative, work together, and achieve team goals. The benefits of an initial face-to-face meeting include creating a sense of camaraderie that can’t be produced by other forms of communication, laying the groundwork upon which team members can build trust (trust that will be needed to work through inevitable conflicts and to solve complex problems), and providing clarity about the team’s goals.

Setting Purpose and Direction

       What are we here to accomplish?

      Research at CCL indicates that a lack of clarity about team purpose is a major cause of team problems and failure. As the team’s leader, it’s up to you to start communicating the team’s purpose to members even before they come together for the first time as a team. Because you have already recruited, or your organization has assigned, people to your team, use the time before the first meeting to keep team members informed of the team’s purpose. One effective way to pass on this information is through one-on-one meetings with team members. You can also use informal channels such as e-mail bulletins or broadcast voicemails to carry out this task. Make your communications useful. Some of the information new team members will want to have include the date of the first team meeting; travel and lodging information, if necessary; a list of team member names and their responsibilities; and contact information for team members.

      Sharing this kind of practical information helps people connect to their new roles as team members, and it also introduces other team members and begins to define their roles. You can also use these pre-meeting communications to explain to team members why they are being brought together and what they are expected to accomplish. By contacting your team early you lay the groundwork for members’ feeling responsible for accomplishing a common goal. Achieving that goal, however, requires more than a few introductory e-mails and a meeting itinerary. Successfully setting purpose and direction for your team often hinges on several factors.

      Understanding the team’s mission. A common purpose for why the team exists and what it has been chartered to do must be clearly communicated to all team members. Developing a mission statement or team vision helps to ensure that team members are all working toward a common end. It establishes the big picture that serves as the basis for setting priorities, making decisions, and allocating resources.

      Identifying critical success factors. After the team has clearly defined its mission, it must begin to translate the team vision into action. To take that step during its launch phase, your team should identify the critical factors that will affect its success. Critical success factors are those that the team must accomplish to fulfill its mission. To help your team identify its critical success factors, use a process that solicits input from all team members. Ask the team to think in terms of what it needs to do to be successful. Direct the discussion away from statements of hope, fear, or other intangibles that are difficult to pin down or manage. Ask your team to adhere to a “necessary and sufficient” rule in identifying these factors—each critical success factor should be necessary to the team’s mission, not just something that team members desire. Aim for a mix of strategic and tactical statements. Taken together, the critical success factors should be sufficient to achieve the mission.