Now that we've looked goals, let's talk about another important foundation for team success, clear roles. A person's role is who they are and what their responsibilities are in a team. Think of a basketball team, you have a sender, the player who protects the area right around the rim and grabs rebounds from his shots. This role is very different from the point guard, who stands away from the basket and is usually the one setting up other players for open shots. For the basketball team to play well, the center and the point guard both need to be clear on their roles. Otherwise, they might both crowd the key or argue over who's controlling the ball. If goals answer the question, why are working together, rules answer the question, what do we do? When rules aren't clear, they lead to overlapping work, confusion, and important tasks being dropped. Take the example of a financial services company I advised. This was a business that had grown from being just a small start-up with less than 50 people, to a company with several hundred employees. This was a real challenge for the leadership team, their work became a lot more complex and hard to manage. We got to the heart of the problem when, in a meeting, we looked at one of their most important projects, which was creating a new website. While they all agreed that getting this new site ready was really critical for the business, they were still falling behind schedule. I asked the team to identify the people responsible for this project and they were surprised when they heard lots of different answers. In fact, one person who said they were responsible for the website, was the only one in the room who thought so. If nobody knew who was really in charge of the project, it's no wonder it was getting delayed. The point is it's important to define really clear roles for each person on a team. One way to do this is to use what's called a RACI matrix. To create a RACI matrix, list all of the projects or task your team is working on. Write those projects across the top of the matrix, and list the names of each person on your team on the left-hand side. In each box, you'll write the letter R, A, C, or I. R stands for responsible. This is a person who's directly involved in actually doing the task or carrying out the project. A means accountable. The accountable person delegates work to those who are responsible. She approves any major decisions, and is also the person who makes sure everything is on track. C stands for consulted. Someone who is consulted is not involved in actually carrying out the task, they just give advice and ideas as needed. Oftentimes this is someone who's an expert or has a lot of experience with the type of work involved in the project. I stands for informed. This is just someone who needs to be kept up to date on what's happening with the task, but doesn't have any other involvement. So for each task or project in your matrix, go down the list of team members and decide whether they are responsible for the task, accountable for the results, someone who needs to be consulted for advice, or someone who can just be informed about your progress. If you fill this out with your team, It can be a good way to clear up any confusion about who is doing what. I used a RACI matrix with the financial services firm to help uncover the misunderstandings about who is actually responsible for their website. Another important question to ask is whether roles are interdependent. Interdependent means you rely on someone else to get your work done. You can't just do it yourself. Without interdependence, there's no reason for a team to exist. If each person on the team can fulfill their roles without support from each other, you might ask whether you need a team in the first place. In the example I gave of creating a website, the person who's designing it might need to talk to colleagues in different parts of the company to get important information that needs to be displayed online. Maybe they have to work with others to write customer testimonials for the homepage, for example. The important thing, in general, is to ask, who else do I need to work with to get this done? To summarize, high performing teams need roles that are clearly defined and interdependent. The RACI matrix is one useful tool for creating roles, but whatever tool or framework you use, the most important thing is to make sure you have the conversation. Next, we'll turn to the third foundation for team success, good norms.
