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Make your common purpose compelling by making it personal and shared. The poster says ‘There is no I in team’ but in fact a powerful way of delivering high performance is not quashing self-interest but aligning it with the team’s interest. It is far more productive to focus on ‘the right thing for me is also the right thing for we’.

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Move hearts as well as minds. Inspire your team with a vivid picture of a better future. Connect the team’s work to an exciting, meaningful outcome and a result that’s worthwhile to them. It doesn’t have to mean anything to anyone else. It only needs to matter to your team.
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Inject a sense of urgency. Action trumps inertia when the alternative is worse. Turn your team’s attention to the peril and the price of doing nothing. Make the most of a crisis by harnessing the focusing power of urgency to propel them into purposeful action. Build momentum through early successes that demonstrate progress is possible.
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Go beyond business as usual. Shifting gears to become a higher performing team requires the energy and excitement of a real challenge. An adventure where success is not guaranteed will mobilize your team to act differently. Becoming better will not happen by doing the same things in the same way.
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Agree your definition of victory. If everyone in your team shares the same specific understanding of what success looks like, when you shout ‘Go’ everyone will move in the same direction towards the same target. In sports winning and losing is usually clear-cut. The challenge for all teams is targeting the same level of clarity.
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Take a robust view of reality by taking off your rose-tinted glasses. Form a brutally honest assessment of what is working and what isn’t. Confronting the pain early enough to be able to do something about it is far better than attempting to recover from failure when it’s too late.
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Build the plan for your team together. Doing itas a team will help you get the most out of your team. You can draw on their diverse experiences, expertise and perspectives to build accuracy and robustness. In addition, involving the team engages them and fosters commitment to the purpose and plan.
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Keep focused and keep flexible. It’s like sailing: the team’s common purpose is the north star, the fixed point for navigating. To reach the destination the team needs to tack continuously to make progress. You cannot fight the winds of changing circumstances; you need to adapt and work with them.
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Constant communication of the common purpose sustains momentum over the inevitable bumps in the road. Forget mouse mats with inspirational slogans. This is all about making purpose a vibrant, continuous conversation amongst team members. Reinforce the message of common purpose and remind the team about it as often as possible.
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Team leadership is its own task. Leadership in teams covers three core responsibilities: 1) delivering team objectives, 2) building a cohesive and effective team; 3) managing and developing individual team member performance. The three are separate but related. As a team leader you need to juggle these three balls, and not drop any one of them.
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Team leaders go first and last. As team leader you are the architect of the team. You start with primary responsibility for all tasks of building and managing your team to deliver results. As well as going first you also remain fully, finally accountable for whether your team wins or loses. The buck stops with you.
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Create a team of leaders. Developing leaders across the team is developing a better team. The strongest teams are those in which more members inspire, support, challenge and hold each other accountable. Yet even in teams full of capable leaders you remain ultimately accountable. A leader’s work is never done.
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The ideal team member has a strong but not a big ego, with the confidence to flourish amid the give and take in a team. They are masters of their own role but also inspire, challenge and cajole the best from others. They act as multipliers of their teammates’ performance.
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Aim to build a team of the ‘best twelve’ not the ‘twelve best’. Great players are necessary for victory, but a constellation of stars will still lose against a star team. Chemistry matters. Target a balance between the cohesion of like-minded teammates and the creative abrasion that comes from diversity.
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Get rid of the derailers. The worst apple in a team is not the person with poor skills. The team members who can spoil the whole barrel are those with bad team attitudes. Man Utd manager Alex Ferguson’s terse law of creating a great team: 'Get rid of the c**ts'.
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Focus on those who fit your team’s purpose. Finding the right talent for your team is not a popularity contest about who has the most friends. Selection is the laser focus of separating the talent you need from everyone else. An effective common purpose will attract the talent you need and repel those who lack the right stuff.
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Keep standards high. One of the most certain ways of diluting your team’s performance is to allow selection standards to slide. Allowing weaker talent to slip through the net sends a strongly misleading signal to the rest of the team. Remember that first-class people hire first-class people, but second-class people hire third-class people.
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Excellence is a habit. No team becomes better without practice. The most powerful process for teams to become better is to identify the most important areas where they need to collaborate, define a shared approach to working together and then practise it over and over until it becomes second nature.
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FERRARI F1Main Menu
‘Ferrari is the myth of Formula 1. The tradition, the soul, the passion.’ Ayrton Senna

Sunday, 13 October 2002, Suzuka, Japan

The seventeenth and final round of the 2002 Formula 1 season is the Japanese Grand Prix. To underscore the Ferrari team’s superlative season, Michael Schumacher begins the race in pole position, records the fastest lap and takes the chequered flag.

He has made the podium in every round of the championship, coming either first or second, with only one third place, in Malaysia. With a total of 144 points, Schumacher is World Champion by a record 67 points from the nearest contender, his own Ferrari teammate Rubens Barrichello.

In fact, Schumacher had wrapped up the title at the French Grand Prix with six rounds to go. Ferrari, having won fifteen out of the seventeen rounds, with twenty-seven podium finishes, take the Constructors’ Championship by an even greater margin – on 221 points, more than all the other teams’ points combined. Extract from Superteams

In the 1980s and early 1990s the Ferrari F1 team – rich in Grand Prix heritage and blessed with the most loyal of fans, the tifosi – was struggling.

The proud prancing black horse had developed a severe limp. Political infighting, internal bureaucracy and lack of technical innovation had seen the team easily overtaken by the likes of Williams and McLaren.

The Ferrari renaissance, led by Luca di Montezemolo and Jean Todt, had one ambition: to make Ferrari winners once again.

In order to achieve that they respected the Ferrari spirit and history, but decided not to be burdened by it. They would adapt and prosper. (0)

Securing the right talent – the driving genius of Michael Schumacher, the tactical and technical brilliance of Ross Brawn – was only part of the story. Ferrari analysed every single aspect of its operation, every component of the car, every second of a pit stop, every role within the team.

Theirs would be a team success: Michael Schumacher, the star driver, knew instinctively that he would only succeed because every member of the team amplified and multiplied each other’s skills and knowledge. (0)

Constantly reviewing their achievements, continually adapting, the Ferrari F1 team returned to total dominance.

There was so much trust between us. We all had slightly different talents and there was immense respect for what each person brought to the collaboration. It doesn’t matter whose idea it is. We use the one that makes the movie better.’ John Lasseter > To Pixar

I didn’t hit a shot out there. My players all played magnificently, all twelve of them.’ Colin Montgomerie > To Ryder Cup team

‘“Who dares wins” is a way of life. It is living and breathing this motto that makes the SAS the best at what they do.’ Andy McNab > To SAS

‘Good enough is never going to be good enough. It sounds dramatic, but what we are doing in those early days is saving lives, and you are never ever going to be good enough.’ Mike Goodhand, Head of International Logistics, British Red Cross > To Red Cross

The Rolling Stones is a vehicle that only works when we put it in motion.’ Ronnie Wood > To Rolling Stones

Dialogue is crucial to any effort to find a solution to conflict.’ Gerry Adams > To Northern Ireland Peace Process

YOUR AGENDA FOR BUILDING
A BETTER TEAM

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NAVIGATION
About Khoi Tu
Blog
Contact

Insight
Forge Common Purpose
Lead the Team
Pursue a Quest for the Best
Shape the Environment for Success
Build Cohesion
Master Conflict
Adapt or Die

Inspiration
Pixar
Ryder Cup
SAS
British Red Cross
Rolling Stones
Northern Ireland Peace Process
Ferrari Formula One

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WHAT PEOPLE SAY
‘Products, companies and organisations that
are brilliant, fun and deliver on their promise
often look super, super simple to the outside
world, but the detail and speed happening
behind the scenes is frighteningly fast. To
achieve this, let alone keep it going, requires
the right team and leadership, and a little bit
of magic based around good, solid
relationships and people skills.
We all work hard to get it right, even people
that are good at it, and nothing good lasts
forever so we need to keep on our toes!
For me, this is what this book is all about
– it shows what humans can do in different
scenarios, especially when the going gets
tough and there's a goal to be achieved.
Nice one Khoi.’
Jamie Oliver, Chef, Entrepreneur, Activist

‘Khoi Tu is the most visionary among
visionaries.’
Management Today

‘Khoi Tu has an inspirational mind, full of
curiosity, and a strong desire to find solutions
for issues that can seem to be unsolvable.’
‘Sir Jackie Stewart, three-time World Drivers’ Champion

‘This is a fantastic book. Do you want to
supercharge your team? Then ‘superteams’
will help you do just that and more. It is
creative, inspirational, and filled with
practical insights into what the most
successful teams do to reach such high
achievement. Reading it brings the
excitement of being part of the teams. WOW!
This book is destined to be a classic.’
George Kohlrieser, Professor of Leadership
at IMD.

‘Insightful… this book will be an essential in
any managers’ toolkit.’
Sir Nicholas Young, CEO of British Red Cross

‘Demystifies and choreographs what’s needed
to create high performance teams. Anybody
interested in teambuilding and teamwork
should have a serious look at this book.’
Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, INSEAD Global Leadership Centre

IN THE MEDIA