Ep235: Teams and the Value of Structure, Why Design Shapes Performance

What if your team’s “people problems” are actually design problems?

In this episode, David Wheatley is joined by Dr. Judy Brown and Dr. Rick Eigenbrod to explore a leadership question that doesn’t get asked enough, how much of team performance comes down to structure, not personalities.

You’ll hear why collaboration may be more natural than we think, how organizations accidentally get in the way of it, and what leaders can redesign to create real flow, clarity, and shared ownership, without forcing it.

Topics include:

• Why structure can trump culture, strategy, and good intentions
• “Roundabouts vs stoplights,” a simple analogy for healthier systems
• Who gets in the room, and why one wrong seat can stall the whole team
• Boundary conditions, meeting design, and business literacy across leaders
• Reward systems, accountability, and the difference between ownership and compliance
• The inner work, maturity, ego, and what it takes to lead for the greater good

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Transcript

David (00:10)
Well, welcome to this episode of the Humanergy Leadership Podcast. My name is David Wheatley, and I’m your host. I’m joined today by our wonderful doctors, Dr. Judy Brown and Dr. Rick Eigenbrod, who are on either coast of the USA, waiting to give us what could be Boxing Day or Christmas wisdom on the structure that’s necessary to help create high-performing teams.

And as many of you may be aware, down in the bottom corner here is a great book called What Great Teams Do Great that comes out of Humanergy. But one of the questions we’re looking at today is this: are there some structural things that actually support teams that go beyond just the people?

So that was our question, Rick. What are your kickoff thoughts?

Rick (00:59)
Well, David, I don’t think we could talk about teams and team development without referencing the fabulous work that you do and the program you have. Can you put that up for a second? Do you have access to it?

David (01:14)
Oddly enough, I had it queued up and ready to go.

Rick (01:18)
There you go.

David (01:19)
And so for those who are just listening, because we do have both a video and an audio version, if you pop over to humanergy.com, there’s a dropdown called Tools. And in the Tools section, you’ll see the What Great Teams Do Great model.

Rick (01:31)
I was familiar with this, David, from our past conversations, and I was so taken by the richness of it. It’s so comprehensive. You’ve covered everything.

It’s a wonderful model as a tool to help teams do two things: work on the nature of their work, and how they are to work together to do it.

You have things like: what is the external reality, what do we do, what are our values, and so on. It’s just really comprehensive.

I boil that down to this: what you’re really helping people with is what I call task and maintenance functions. Task functions are what do we do. Maintenance functions are how do we go about doing it.

You provide them with a tool, with a way to think about addressing those two issues. So I think it’s a great place to start.

In our previous conversations, I got to thinking more deeply about teams. I’ve been invited, as you have, and Judy has, to talk about teams. And I’ve found that my thinking has drifted a bit away from the mainstream.

So if you look at the model you use, I want to ask this question.

If I make a fundamental assumption about this, all of this depends on their capacity for collaboration. Would you agree?

David (03:36)
Yes. And some of it directly addresses that capacity for collaboration.

Rick (03:41)
Absolutely. That’s the maintenance function.

So what struck me is how much money, time, energy, and effort we spend as organizations trying to help people do exactly what you’re helping them do, all based on their capacity for collaboration.

So I started asking myself: what is the basic assumption underneath our approach to teams?

Let me ask you both this. From what you see in your work, are we assuming that we have to teach people how to collaborate? Or are we assuming that people already naturally collaborate?

That it’s in our evolutionary history. You don’t have to tell musk oxen how to form a circle. You don’t have to teach wolves how to form packs. You don’t need to teach bees how to hive or ants how to heal.

There’s a natural inclination toward collaboration that’s rooted in evolution.

Those two assumptions lead you down very different paths.

If collaboration is already in our DNA, then maybe the issue isn’t that we need to teach people how to collaborate. Maybe the issue is that we need to get out of the way of their collaboration.

David (05:39)
Great concept, and I definitely want to keep pulling on that thread.

I’ll add one more layer. Sometimes we’ve actually taught people to stop collaborating because of the structures we’ve put in place. So we often need to remind people how to collaborate appropriately.

Honestly, if you gave people ten minutes, they could probably draw this model from their own experience.

Judy (06:15)
And what I’d say is that the three of us doing these podcasts comes out of the natural fun of collaborating.

To Rick’s point, it’s fun, it’s full of learning, and it’s something we’re genuinely happy to do.

So Rick, do you want to keep pulling on that thread a bit more?

David (06:45)
Before we do, I just want to add something.

This all started 30 years ago when two consultants were in the same manufacturing plant and chose collaboration over competition.

People joke that there’s nothing worse than two consultants in the same room because they’ll compete with each other. But what you and I said was, we can actually do this better together than separately.

So there’s a natural inclination to collaborate, and there’s also some structural training out of it, which I’d love to explore with Rick.

Rick (07:24)
Yeah. It really changes the mindset.

Maybe the lack of collaboration makes total sense to people given the structures they’re operating in.

So I want to focus on what I’ll call structural issues, or design issues as Judy named them. Specifically, ways we get in the way of the natural flow of collaboration.

Let me ask you a question.

If you went into a group and asked, “Who runs this business?” what do you think they’d say?

David (08:29)
They’d point to some boss figure.

Rick (08:31)
Exactly.

And there’s part of the issue. There are physical structures, but there are also mental structures.

If you look at Smith and Katzenbach’s work on teams, they say high-performing teams share three characteristics: accountability for the whole, results greater than the sum of the parts, and high interdependence.

If a team had that mindset and you asked who’s responsible, they’d say, “We are.”

Getting there is the issue.

Judy (09:26)
Yeah.

Rick (09:31)
So let’s talk about what gets in the way.

We hear “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” but I’d argue structure trumps everything else.

David, you were a Bobby once, right?

David (10:13)
Way, way back.

Rick (10:20)
So let me ask you both: what creates the greatest traffic flow, stoplights, stop signs, or roundabouts?

David (10:33)
I think MythBusters tackled that and found roundabouts create better flow and reduce accidents.

Rick (10:44)
Exactly. Structure.

When structure fails, people fight with each other. “It was my turn.” “No, it was my turn.”

Structural issues that are unresolved get addressed at an interpersonal level.

Judy (11:38)
Wow.

Rick (11:39)
And then it looks like a personality problem. Road rage. Rule breakers.

We bring people into rooms to resolve interpersonal conflict when the root cause is a system dynamic.

David (12:16)
We’re treating the symptom, not the cause.

Rick (12:23)
Exactly.

Let me give you another example.

Who gets to be in the senior team room? What’s the requirement for admission?

David (13:10)
Traditionally, title. You’ve reached a certain level.

But the better question is whether you have the right people in the room for the decisions being made.

Rick (13:36)
Yes. And when admission to the room is unexamined, you invite problems.

I asked colleagues how many teams they work with that are truly high-performing. Very few.

I ask leaders, “If you were leaving, how many people on your team would you poach?” No one ever says everyone.

Judy (15:01)
So the question becomes: why are the others in the room?

David (15:22)
I do an exercise where leaders put up their org chart and mark people green, yellow, or red.

Green means I’d poach them. Red means I wouldn’t hire them again.

If there are red dots, the question becomes, why are they still here?

Rick (16:21)
One wrong person in the room dramatically reduces collaboration.

Never suboptimize the whole to optimize a part.

Everyone pays the price.

David (17:39)
And even tolerating the behavior creates the lowest common denominator.

Rick (17:58)
So the real structural question is this: on what basis do people get into the room?

I believe one criterion should be level of development.

I love Kegan’s stages of development. Development defines capacity.

At stage two, the imperial mind, people are focused on getting their own needs met. They can’t operate for the greater good.

Stage three is the socialized mind, focused on rules, norms, and approval.

Stage four is the self-authored mind, where people can hold the whole.

David (21:11)
That connects directly to our Four Choices model.

Leadership is about choices that serve the greater good rather than self-interest.

Someone recently overlaid Maslow on that and said greater-good thinking is a privilege.

You’re overlaying Kegan and saying developmental level determines whether someone can even get there.

Rick (22:21)
Exactly. Development is a hidden structure.

You can see it in behavior.

I’ll ask leaders, “How old is this person behaviorally?” It’s almost always adolescence.

David (23:16)
We see that everywhere.

Rick (23:28)
So who gets into the room matters.

Another structural factor is boundary conditions. What’s okay and what’s not?

Another is business literacy. Do people understand the whole system?

Judy (25:19)
And another is how people interact.

If teams start meetings with a real check-in, hear from everyone without interruption, and practice productive disagreement, it changes everything.

Those structures stretch people developmentally.

David (27:54)
That reminds me of the Challenger disaster, where the structure silenced engineers.

They had to redesign the system so small voices could be heard.

Rick (29:19)
Another huge structure is the reward system.

If senior leaders always get paid regardless of results, accountability disappears.

I worked with a firm where missed goals came out of salaries.

That changes behavior.

David (30:28)
Our systems reward performance but barely address underperformance.

Rick (30:51)
Exactly. We don’t require people to act for the greater good.

I once watched a leader argue against the very decision he’d make if he were two levels up, because he didn’t want to explain it to his team.

David (31:43)
That’s ego driving structure.

Rick (32:44)
Yes. The difference between ownership and compliance.

David (32:52)
People leave when everything is compliance.

Rick (33:28)
To sum up, we need to remove the things that block natural collaboration.

David (33:28)
That requires ego getting out of the way and high emotional intelligence.

Rick (34:00)
We need big selves, not big egos.

Judy (34:23)
Leadership is an inside job.

David (34:30)
When rewards are external, we reinforce immaturity.

Rick (34:40)
And tolerate it.

David (35:06)
I keep a book on my desk called Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld.

One line sticks with me: the longest journey is the journey inward.

Judy (35:33)
That book is on my shelf too.

Rick (35:38)
If I’m the CEO, entry into the room requires ongoing inner work.

If you’re not doing that work, you lose your ticket.

David (36:12)
That’s a great place to land.

Are you doing the inner work? Are you designing roundabouts? Are you ensuring adults are in the room? Are boundary and reward systems aligned with the greater good?

Judy (37:24)
Amen.

Rick (37:26)
Fabulous.

David (37:28)
If you want support with that inner work, Humanergy would love to help.

We host First Friday sessions every month at noon Eastern. You can find details at humanergy.com.

Rick, Judy, thank you both. Have a wonderful holiday, and we’ll see you in the new year.