A questionable purpose for your teams
Questions on purpose can drive a team’s performance. Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash
Ben Hunt-Davis has co-authored a book about his experience of winning gold at the Sydney 2000 Olympics with the Great Britain rowing team. The book is titled “Will it make the boat go faster?”
The title is a reflection of the question that guided the team throughout its whole preparation for the competition and towards its ultimate objective. To win a gold medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. That purpose was clear. What was required to achieve that was for their boat to be the fastest on the water in that race. Therefore everything that they did in the lead up to that event was about making the boat go faster.
One of the many reasons that teams don’t succeed is that members become individually busy, but not collectively productive. This story is a great example of how a clear and compelling purpose can guide teams to make choices and take actions that lead to the outcomes that they seek together. To be able to align their efforts with their objectives.
It’s also a lesson in the power of questions. How effective would this have been as a statement? Something like “make the boat go faster” doesn’t sound as helpful in real time as that well-crafted question.
The right question allows every decision and every action to be put through the same test of ensuring that it aligned to the team’s purpose.
Spending time with your team to translate your compelling purpose into a powerful question is time and energy well spent.
Some questions for you to consider in your teams:
How clear is your team on its purpose?
Can this purpose be translated into a useful question to guide decisions and actions?