Developing a Clear Sense of Direction--The Team Charter | Tools for Team Leadership: Delivering the X-Factor in Team eXcellence

Developing a Clear Sense of Direction ”The Team Charter

The single most important thing you can do as team leader is to help in clarifying your team's goals. Teams exist in organizations to accomplish something, whether as task forces, committees , work teams, departments of salaried employees , or executive teams. If your company is creating teams for teams' sake, get out if you can. Without a sense of purpose, without clear goals and objectives, your team will flounder. As a leader, help your team by finding out what management expects of it. Find out what the team members think they can accomplish. This chapter will help you help your team establish a charter that will clarify its sense of direction. A team charter can be used to clarify expectations about all the components needed for the team to achieve excellence. It can also guide the development of specific team goals. There is no one best way to do this, but never forget: Your team needs to know why it exists and what it is to accomplish ”and your organization must know these things, too.

A charter legitimizes a team. Much like a franchise agreement, it must first be established generically for all like teams in the system and then specifically for each team actually launched. It clarifies not only the reason for the team's existence, but also its operational boundaries. The organization employing a team concept needs to decide these matters prior to the actual launching of any teams and then make sure each team can live up to its charter. This is the role of top-level leadership: upper management in most organizations, or a joint steering committee if the firm is unionized. Leadership at the top has the responsibility to establish the policies surrounding the use of a team concept as a business strategy and structure. Are teams being formed to solve problems within their functional departments? Are cross-functional teams being formed to address issues that cut across the organization's structure? Are work teams being formed to self-manage a significant portion of the business? What is the purpose of forming teams in your organization? What are the rules and boundaries your teams must abide by?

The team charter needs to be specific enough to focus the team's attention. As the Susan Orlean character announces in the award-winning movie Adaptation, "There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go . The reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size ." The team charter announces what the members need to be passionate about as a team and it provides a focus. It helps make team members feel empowered to do something meaningful instead of making them feel like galley slaves. Empowered teams need to know what they are resourced to conquer. Goals that are challenging yet attainable provide the greatest motivation.

The team charter defines the team. It describes the purpose of the team's existence, identifies the responsibilities of its leader, sets the milestones and the timeline the team is expected to follow, and clarifies the resources the team has available to accomplish its tasks . Teams exist to do the work of the organization. The team charter clarifies expectations between senior leadership and the team about the nature of that work. Table 12 provides a list of management guidelines your team can use in establishing a team charter.

TABLE 12: Management Guidelines for Establishing a Team Charter
Senior management decides whether to invest in the establishment of a team ”or to continue support for a team ”to make something, provide a service, or solve some problem for the organization. A team leader is selected by the sponsoring senior manager, or the team members elect a leader according to rules established by senior management. A review of the stages of the team process is provided if necessary. Senior management articulates the mission of the project and its vision of where it could lead. The team leader and senior management draft a strategic plan including a rough timeline for the project or the output to be measured if the team is ongoing, as well as an expiration date for the charter and a description of the process for renewal or modification. The support functions that must be involved and the resources needed are identified by the team leader and the representative from senior management. Senior management ensures alignment between this project and other projects and functions in the organization. Senior management announces the birth or rebirth of the project or work team to all managers and directs them to provide support. The leader and the senior manager agree on the process and the frequency of reports from the team.

The team charter also exists to clarify expectations among team members. It must clarify the team's mission, but it should also describe a vision of what the team will look like when it is performing at its best. The charter could contain sections covering any or all of the seven key components needed to achieve excellence:

Clear goals and sense of direction (by establishing the mission, reason for existence, goals, objectives)
Identification of talent (by justifying who is on the team by clarifying what knowledge and skills are needed to accomplish its tasks)
Clear roles and responsibilities (by establishing what is expected from each member and from the leader)
Agreed-upon procedures (by outlining the rules governing meetings, problem solving, decision making, and other team actions)
Constructive interpersonal relations (by establishing a code of conduct to ensure respect for differences, communication between members, effective conflict resolution, etc.)
Active reinforcement of team-oriented behaviors (by providing recognition and appreciation for these behaviors and the means to hold members accountable for fulfilling expectations)
Diplomatic external ties (by establishing methods of communicating with key managers, union leaders , and heads of functions that are either suppliers or customers of the team)

There is no one best way of establishing a team charter. The guidelines and elements described in the previous sections represent the domain to consider. Your organization needs to consider how thorough it wants these charters to be. The more thorough they are, the clearer the expectations will be, but the more time it will take to develop them. In addition, these charters will serve to establish the credibility of the organization's use of the team concept. This is an opportunity to take teams seriously; it cannot be merely an exercise. The team can draft the charter with your help as a facilitator, or the organization can provide a model for the team to fit to its unique circumstances. Either way, the charter must be negotiated and approved by senior management. That is why it is useful to include members of upper management in the charter development session. This may relieve the competitive nature of subsequent negotiation and approval-seeking sessions. Exercise 13 includes a series of questions used with a newly established team, and the key managers enabling that team, in a manufacturing setting. Use these questions or modify them as you facilitate a chartering session for your team.

Following is an example of a team charter that was established in a pharmaceutical research facility. The names and some specifics have been modified to ensure confidentiality.

Charter for the A Team

Mission of the Team

The A team is being formed to investigate the viability of the B compound for use as a drug to reduce hemorrhoids. The team is to take the investigation through the preclinical stages, at which time a review will be undertaken by senior management to decide whether to go through with clinical studies. Company C is under contract with company D to conduct this investigation and report the results to them in the next twelve months.

EXERCISE 13

Developing Your Team's Charter

Directions: Use the following questions or adapt them to your situation in guiding the development of your team charter.

Purpose: What is the purpose of your team? Why does this team exist?
Goals: What are the priority goals that need to be accomplished in the next twelve months? Establish "SMART" goals for this particular team. For which goals will the members of this team be held collectively responsible? How?
Responsibilities: What are the responsibilities of each team member? How will individual team members be held accountable?
Procedure: What procedures (e.g., meeting, planning, scheduling, budgeting, information sharing, decision making, problem solving, project management, task assignment, progress evaluation, etc.) need to be established for this team to be effective, satisfying , and efficient? What rules, principles, and guidelines for team procedures have worked well for you on teams in the past? Is the team willing to make a consensus decision regarding adopting any of them?
Ground rules: What will be this team's interpersonal code of conduct? What are the ground rules of behavior that each member of this team will agree to abide by?

Leadership Responsibility

Mr. E will serve as the sponsoring senior manager. He will update the team regarding any changes in the contract for the B compound, review minutes of team meetings, and be available for consultation upon the request of the team leader. He will also assist in efforts to gain the needed support from line managers and will also be expected to provide significant input for the performance review of the team leader.

Ms. F will serve as the A team leader, since she is familiar with the earliest efforts to investigate the B compound. She is responsible for identifying the expertise needed to take the investigation through the preclinical stages. She is to recruit members from the needed line functions and to convene regular meetings of the team and will chair the meetings in a manner that ensures cross-functional input ”but she is free to offer her own facts, opinions , and suggestions as well. Ms. F will meet periodically with the sponsoring senior manager to update him and to negotiate additional resources (people, lab equipment, databases, etc.) as needed. She will be the primary author of all formal reports but must include the input of the various points of view expressed on the team. At this point, she is expected to devote 20 percent of her work time to this project. She is also expected to provide input regarding the contributions made by members of the team. The team leader is expected to attend the team development process training session as soon as possible.

Coordination/Alignment Issues for This Project

Company C research is currently investigating two other compounds for possible relief of hemorrhoid symptoms. It is imperative that Ms. F meet with the leader of the team investigating the other hemorrhoid compounds to share insights and report progress. Information regarding these investigations is to be considered confidential. Reports are to be shared only with company C team members and senior managers.

While the B compound is not considered a top-priority project, it does represent an important contract to the organization. In order to fulfill the obligation of completing the preclinical investigations in the next twelve months, Ms. F is empowered to excuse herself from another team assignment to be able to dedicate 20 percent of her time to this project. Objectives listed on her current performance review are to be changed to reflect this change of assignment.

Since resources in the G function (e.g., chemistry or toxicology) are currently being utilized to near capacity, the A team is expected to schedule its need for those studies ninety days from now. If this presents a major problem, the team can recommend outsourcing one or more of these studies to a laboratory that can conduct these studies when needed to ensure fulfillment of the contract.

In addition to developing a written charter, leaders need to be able to succinctly verbalize the mandate for their team's existence. Be sure you regularly remind team members of their purpose. Make sure others in the organization ”other managers, human resource staff members, engineers , members of other teams, and so on ”understand your team's charter, too. You won't be reading the charter to these people and explaining all its nuances , so you must be able to capture in a few sentences the essence of what your team is attempting to accomplish and how they are set up to operate . You may enjoy completing exercise 14 as useful practice. It asks you to pretend you are in an elevator when a key vice president steps in and happens to ask you about your team. Can you capture the key elements of your team's charter in the thirty to sixty seconds you would have on this elevator ride?