Sooner or later, you will be asked to lead a tiger team. In common parlance, a tiger team refers to a small, highly skilled group of specialists assembled to solve a specific, high-stakes problem or to tackle a critical project, often within a short timeframe. These teams are typically composed of cross-functional members who bring diverse skills and expertise, allowing them to address complex challenges that require innovative thinking and rapid decision-making.
The term originally came from military and aerospace contexts, where tiger teams were used for troubleshooting and mission-critical problem-solving (most famously during the Apollo 13 mission). In business and technology settings today, tiger teams are often called upon for tasks like responding to crises or driving rapid innovation initiatives.
If you’re up to the challenge, this will be your time to shine. The distinguishing aspect of leading a special purpose team is that you’re tasked with figuring out how to do something new, so you and your mates are embarking upon a learning journey. As an innovation coach to organizations, I’ve seen plenty of successes and messes. The decisions you make at the outset greatly impact a team’s chances of success. Here are six tips for forming and managing effective tiger teams:
- Follow the Pizza Rule.In Silicon Valley, Jeff Bezos’ “pizza rule” has taken hold: If you can’t feed your team with two pizzas, your team is too big. Lots of research supports this notion. Once a group gets beyond five to seven people, productivity and effectiveness begin to decline. Communication becomes cumbersome. Managing becomes a pain. Players begin to disengage, and introverts tend to withdraw. When it comes to team size, less is more. Think small and you’ll win big.
- Pay attention to group chemistry. Carnegie Mellon’s research points to three factors that make a team highly functioning. 1) Members contribute equally to the team’s discussions, rather than one or two people dominating; 2) Members are good at reading complex emotional states; and 3) Teams with more women outperform teams with more men. Turns out the emotional component – how we feel when we are engaged with a team – truly matters and is critical to success. Pay attention to how the people you’re inviting to your team will relate to each other. Assess human factors like trust, empathy, ability to resolve conflict, and seek and offer forgiveness. Acknowledge people’s selfless behavior and willingness to “take one for the team.” Always give credit to your team rather than take credit yourself, and practice empathy at all times.
- Calculate people’s Teamwork Factor.Will Wright, developer of The Sims, Spore, and other best-selling computer games analyzes what he calls a person’s teamwork factor. “There is the matter of, how good is this person times their teamwork factor,” Wright told interviewer Adam Bryant. “You can have a great person who doesn’t work well on the team, and they’re a net loss. You can have somebody who is not that great but they are very good glue, and [they] could be a net gain.” Team members, Wright considers “glue,” share information effectively, motivate and improve morale, and help out when somebody gets stuck. Be aware of not only the needed skill sets but who works well together and who does not.
- Don’t go overboard with diversity. Cross-functionaltigerteams are de rigueur, but can too much diversity be a detriment to team chemistry? Researchers at Wharton think so. Too much diversity of “mental models” can be a drag on forward progress, say professors Klein and Lim. If members of a team have a “shared, organized understanding and mental representation of knowledge” about the nature of the challenge, it can enhance coordination and effectiveness when the task at hand is complex, unpredictable, urgent, and novel. The researchers concluded that team members who share common models can save time because they share a common body of knowledge.
- Establish a group process.Every team needs a facilitator, and every tiger team needs a process that spells out how we’ll work with each other. Nancy Tennant led an amazingly successful tiger team at Whirlpool Corporation, but when asked to join an ad hoc governmental team tasked with solving a very big problem, she witnessed a floundering.
“They brought a group of people together from all over the world to help them brainstorm,” Tennant told me. “They spent a lot of money, put us in a room, and said ‘Think hard.’ But we didn’t know each other. We didn’t have a group process. And we just couldn’t do it.” A group without a process is like a ship without a rudder. It will have a harder time steering.
My strong suggestion is: to take the time to establish and communicate team rules at the outset. Address how you’ll treat each other, and how you’ll respect each other. Articulate how much time each member is committing to the team. Effective teams establish clear goals and expectations at the outset and hold each other accountable.
- Pay attention to the 3Rs of team effectiveness: Result, Reputation, and Residuals.What motivates teams over the long haul is not money, but intrinsic rewards. Harvard’s Teresa Amabile’s research shows that feelings of accomplishment, that we are making progress, and doing important work are the biggest motivators. As the team leader, keep the three Rs in mind: 1) Result.If you hit your target, you’ll add another accomplishment to your track record; 2) Reputation: your status in the organization rises. Senior management will be delighted. Colleagues will talk you up, praise your contribution, and invite you to join future projects. 3) Residuals: the lasting payout of participating in a successful collaborative team is that you get to see your “product” being used by customers, both internal and external. You know you’ve made a difference, solved a problem, or created an opportunity for the organization, your team, and most of all yourself.