10.5. A FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAMS

So far we've established the importance of a strong team and the challenges of creating one. But what, exactly, do we mean by a high-performance team? In this section we examine the attributes of such a team and present a model that will help us build one.

High-performance teams are more than merely highly productive. A team composed of experienced, capable people can be very productive until those people hit an obstacle or are confronted with an unexpected challenge. This is the point at which the team either shows its strength or reveals its limitations. Teams that successfully persevere tend to have certain characteristics described by the model in Figure 10.1.