Good To Great

In the world of organizational development, figurative lightning has stuck Highland twice. The first was the choice by Jim Collins to write his seminal book Good To Great right here at Highland. The second has been the club's great fortune to welcome new member Steve Morris whose life, work, and profession is all about peak team development, applying many of Jim's principles.

Steve knows of what he speaks, having been on the performance team competing in what could be the oldest (first contested,1851), most demanding, unforgiving sporting competition in the world -- that pinnacle of yachting known as the America's Cup.

Join us as Steve shares his expertise on the value of building high-performance teams -- arguably more important for organizational success than money, individual talent, or initial success -- applied to virtually any startup, from coffee to crypto. Per Steve:

"I was amazed at seeing what I regarded as huge investments being made to try to win the America’s Cup, with over $100M being spent each round. Yet that figure is dwarfed by the investments made in startups -- over $75 billion in the second quarter of 2021 alone. That’s a lot of investment hoping for the win!  But what if you made these investments, spent the money, and you still didn't achieve your goal?  What if spending money wasn't enough? Only one group gets to win the America’s Cup, and over 50% of startups fail, so the search for a path to enhance success is paramount.

It turns out that achieving many great, worthwhile goals requires a lot more than money, it requires a group of people, working together cohesively, effectively pooling their skills and capabilities, and combining them to create something more than the sum of the parts. In other words, a high-performing team.

However, getting a group of people, however talented and skilled, in a room together, doesn’t guarantee they will work together. I experienced working with amazing teams that got this right and achieved great things, and teams that didn’t get it right, falling short of their goals.

With so much on the line, we will talk about what needs to be done to build a high performing team.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins wrote about getting the right people on the bus, but who, exactly, are the right people to get on the bus?  My goal is to relate how one of the best high-performing teams I ever worked with did this innately, and how this experience was now applied in the teams I've coached.  

Yet, having got the right people on the bus, the challenge is always how to get the team to function cohesively together. I will talk about how to start with a foundation of building trust, and a particular environment of trust that Google found was successful in their research of 180 high-performing teams, then what has to be done to create that team where each has the other’s back, engages in healthy conflict, commits to decisions, holds each other accountable and focuses on results.

That's the power of building a high performing team, a dedicated group of talented people, working cohesively together and focused on results.  What have you seen work, or not work, in high-performing teams?"