How to build ‘mission-led’ teams
Why a mission-led approach leads to better outcomes and how to implement it.
There are broadly two approaches that you can take to leading a team, once your organisation grows bigger than ~15 people.
1. Focus on output.
Priorities and specific projects are decided by a leadership team and passed over to teams to deliver. The teams’ success is measured on delivering tangible predefined things.
2. Focus on outcomes.
Leadership still decides priorities. But they assign teams problems to solve and provide the context and support to do so. The teams are judged on a measurable outcome of some kind.
I strongly believe that when done well focusing on outcomes is much a more effective way of delivering long term results in the complex environment we work in today.
It is more likely to:
Help you find and keep product-market fit.
Enable you to have a greater impact on your users, customers, learners.
Get the most out of your team and make work rewarding for them.
However, this approach is often misunderstood. Both by supporters and detractors.
When not done well, it can be chaotic. Getting it right is tough because it is about empowering people and teams. This is harder to achieve than simply telling them what to do.
So, let’s begin by defining what I mean by a ‘mission-led’ team and exploring why a focus on outcomes rather than output is more effective.
Then we’ll look at the common pitfalls and the things you need to do to avoid them.
What is a ‘mission-led’ team?
Over the last two decades, there has been a growing movement to build and run organisations differently.
This has got hand-in-hand with the adoption of new practices and methodologies such as adopting a product-mindset, design thinking and agile working.
It has been driven by a shift from a tangible world of industrial manufacturing, towards a knowledge economy powered by technology.
Tech companies have led the way. They have adopted new methods and, aided by network effects, have disrupted many companies born before the internet age.
To tackle the kinds of complex problems and uncertainty organisations now wrestle with, the old way of managing through top down command and control simply doesn’t work. It is impossible for leaders to understand enough about the rapidly evolving needs of customers and the different potential ways to solve their problems.
Instead, leaders need to empower teams to understand those needs and discover the best solutions. And to do so in a coordinated and aligned way.
This requires a fundamentally different mindset for how you go about building and running teams than is the typical starting point for many people. Rather than just creating teams with specific skills and expertise, it means organising around problems and working cross-functionally to tackle them.
It requires an approach to leadership that is more about team design, context sharing and coaching than building hierarchies, departments and structures to enable command and control. It’s about understanding how to work with the grain of humans. And knowing how this requires you to adapt as the scale of organisation changes.
Various people have tried to find a label for this new mindset and way of working. Some have suggested ‘product-led’. Marty Cagan has proposed ‘the product operating model’.
To me, both of these feel too narrow and alienating to those not fully bought into the product methodology or who are working in organisations where engineers aren’t in the majority.
Instead, I am using mission-led.
I think this captures the fundamental difference in mindset and is more inclusive and less silicon valley-centric. The approach has much to offer beyond building software.
Why can a mission-led approach be more effective?
There’s three big reasons why this approach, when implemented well, can deliver better outcomes.
1. More valuable solutions
First it orientates around value. Value for the customers, users and learners. It encourages a customer-centric approach.
Those tasked with developing solutions are often closer to the problem and the potential new ways to solve it.
It also orientates around value for the company. Ultimately, what companies are measured on the outcomes it delivers, not how much it produces.
2. Adaptable, resilient and fast
Teams led by a mission means that everyone is clear on the ‘why’.
This means that small, nimble teams can explore the quickest and best way to get the outcome, rather than getting bogged down by focusing on a specific solution that may not work.
They can experiment, test quickly and iterate or pivot to find more effective approaches. This radically reduces risk. Most people tend to underestimate the amount of craft required to get from a good idea to a working solution.
Teams with ownership over the outcome can also adapt as the market and context shifts and take advantage of new opportunities or technologies to solve the problem as they emerge. This makes them more resilient.
3. A motivated team
Finally, it’s about human motivation.
In his book Drive, Daniel Pink describes how humans have evolved how to motivate others as society has become more complex. From meeting survival and basic needs in early societies; to reward and control in the industrial era; to the intrinsic motivation required in the knowledge economy. ‘Motivation 3.0’.
His meta study boils this down to three things:
Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives
Mastery: the desire to get better at something that matters
Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in service to something bigger than ourselves
If you can provide your humans with an opportunity to do these three things, then they are going to be more motivated to deliver on your desired outcomes and stick with you.
Misconceptions
The idea of empowered teams and giving them autonomy is often misunderstood.
Leaders are concerned about ceding too much control. They worry about if the team understands the problem well enough and will solve it in the way that seems obvious to them. The traditional approach seems much less risky.
Meanwhile, the people in the teams can assume that empowered and autonomy means the freedom to do whatever they believe is the right thing. And that those on the ground have a much better perspective than those above.
Both of these perspectives are very understandable.
However, the answer is about providing greater clarity. The mission-led approach requires more and better leadership, rather than leaders being less hands on as many assume.
Letting different teams get on without the right mechanisms in place to ensure alignment and the support to work effectively towards a common purpose is a recipe for disaster.
How to implement it well
Here’s how to avoid the common pitfalls.
1. Align and inspire
Leaders in the mission-led model need to provide lots of context and help the team understand it.
This means having a clear Vision that isn’t simply a statement that’s open to interpretation. It needs to be made tangible in some way so that everyone is picturing the same thing. Ideally, this should be backed by a simple North Star Metric to ensure everyone is driving in the same direction.
The Strategy can’t simply be a slide deck delivered at an all-hands. It needs a clear diagnosis and argument that can be evangelised, discussed and explained, plus clear actions that can be owned by teams.
Team Objectives and missions should be led by leadership, not reinterpreted by teams. More hard work to find alignment and understanding when setting objectives means less micromanaging later. Targets should be agreed and negotiated, not handed down. Teams encouraged to be ambitious and leaders realistic.
Agreed Principles help teams quickly make good decisions that align with a shared approach and common values.
Teams need to work on a shared cadence and speak the same language.
And you need to surface and manage universal tensions like investor motivations, short term success vs long term goals and when to go after new opportunities and how you will resource them.
2. Design and evolve
You need to be thoughtful about how the organisation is designed, rather than simply building functional teams.
The organisation needs to be designed around the vision and the strategy to deliver on the outcomes. Otherwise, Conway’s Law dictates that the output will mirror the organisational structure, not your goal.
To work quickly and effectively, teams need to be the right size and include the right skills.
This means understanding human behaviour and working with the grain of our social wiring and understanding how Dunbar’s numbers can help inform team design.
It means thinking about the different kinds of work and considering when you need a cross-functional team or when a team of specialists is required. And the role that communities of practice play.
Defining team responsibilities and how different teams communicate with each other to ensure important information is shared and empathy is built whilst minimising the cognitive load.
You also need to consider when and how to grow. When adaptable generalists are a better fit and when to introduce specialists. How to add new people and teams with minimal disruption. And when to change how you organise and communicate to avoid growing pains.
3. Empower and coach
Finally, problems need to be assigned in the right way.
You need to be clear about the trade off between ambition and risk: are we looking for a safe 10% improvement or a high risk 10x bet? How much appetite or not is there to spend a significant amount of time on the problem?
Teams need to be given an appropriate amount of time and space to discover the best solutions as well as deliver it.
They need to be clear about what they are accountable for and what they have autonomy over - and perhaps more importantly, what they don’t and the guard rails. They should be encouraged to build their own identity to develop a sense of belonging and pride in their work.
There needs to be a clear cadence for planning, reviewing and retrospecting that enables support, accountability and continuous improvement.
To be successful, teams and individuals also need effective coaching by people who understand their specialism to help them both understand the bigger picture and get better at their craft.
Summary
Building mission-led teams is likely to lead to better outcomes. This is because it:
Focuses on value for customers and the business
Enables you to be adaptable, resilient and fast
Creates a more motivated team
But it is hard and requires a more sophisticated approach to leadership.
To be successful you need to:
Align and inspire teams by leading with clarity and context
Design and evolve teams in a way that aligns with the strategy and how humans work best
Empower and coach teams by assigning problems effectively and providing support
It’s these three topics that I’ve organised my new programme on Building Mission-Led Teams around in order to support those that want to build teams that deliver transformative outcomes.
This article sets the scene for my new fellowship programme on Building Mission-Led Teams.
The programme provides:
A curated playbook of concepts and methods
Case studies of how EdTech companies have put them into practice
A weekly workshop to work in a safe space with a small cohort to think through how these can be applied to your unique context
If you’re interested in learning more, I’m running a Beta cohort w/c 24 June for a special price and will be launching the programme in the Autumn.