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Executive Interviews: Interview with Howard M Guttman on Building High Performance Teams
May 2009
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By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
What is the role and importance of
leadership for great business teams to
achieve standout performance?
Leaders must provide the vision and
the passion if the effort is going to
succeed. But another responsibility of
leadership is to role-model the
desired behaviors. Leaders who ask
for honesty must prove that they
really want it – even if it is directed at
them. They do this most
convincingly by listening to critique
of their own performance and acting
on it, by changing the behavior that
the team tells them is unacceptable,
by not cutting off dissenters or
denigrating their opinions, by not
pulling rank when it’s time to make a decision. As Chuck Nesbit, executive
vice president and COO of Chico’s
FAS, Inc., puts it, “If a lieutenant in
Iraq doesn’t have the courage to ride
the Humvee down the road, he can’t
expect his troops to do it.” The world is in the midst of an
unprecedented crisis created by a few
greedy investment bankers. The
effects of this crisis are quite
pronouncing.What is the importance
of team work and high performance
in such troubled times?
In these challenging times, great teams
are more important than ever before.
One international beauty products
company we work with experienced
a dip in sales during 2008. All seven
brands in its Professional Products
Division suffered, but one declined a
lot less than the other six. The general
manager in charge of that particular
brand attributes its relative success to
the fact that it moved to the
horizontal, high-performance model
more than a decade ago. As he
explains it, “If you have an
organization where strategy, business
priorities, and roles and
responsibilities are clear, and people
are held accountable, you will have a
relatively stronger business. In a
downturn, you probably won’t be
able to avoid losing some business,
but you will have smaller losses than
the competition.” What happens to all such highperformance
teams in these economic
crisis times?
Leadership teams that were operating
horizontally enjoyed a distinct
advantage when the tide turned last
year.Having transferred a great deal of
tactical responsibility to their direct
reports, they were free to focus on the
unfolding changes in the
marketplace, think through the
strategic implications, and then
prepare their organizations to move
smartly into “first-responder” mode
to deal with the situation. What, according to you, are high performance teams? What are their
unique characteristics? Can you give
examples of a few companies that
have created and nurtured high
performance teams?
A high performance teamworks like a
miniature managing board of
directors. Every team member
operates as though the team’s salary
were coming out of his or her pocket.
The team brings issues to closure
quickly, openly, and effectively
because every minute that an issue is
unresolved they are losing money.
Each individual accepts
responsibility for the overall
performance of the team and,
therefore, feels that he or she has
license to speak on any matter
concerning how the group functions.
What is truly unique about such a
team is that members don’t just hold
one another accountable: they also
hold the leader accountable. Mars Incorporated is an example of a
large, global corporation that has
developed great teams in several
areas. The company’s current
president, Paul Michaels, started the
ball rolling when he was head of its
American team; he has now extended
it to the international operation. And
the head ofMars Latin America, Brian
Camastral, has been using the model
with great success in his region.
Some others that have had great
success with it are Colgate-Palmolive;
John Hancock; Johnson & Johnson;
L'Oréal USA; Novartis; PepsiCo; and
Schering-Plough.
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