I'm not just talking about teamwork as a term for small group dynamics, but as a term that conveys the spirit of an organisation, where people want to make it work better and better, and which causes them to push themselves, and support others, to levels that were hitherto unimaginable.
Teamwork doesn't come from a book, it doesn’t come from a job description and it doesn’t even come from performance related rewards. It comes because those involved want it to happen, and because they are truly committed to the success of the team - and put their own personal agendas as secondary to this aim.
Utopian? Unrealistic? Well perhaps it is, but it is the one thing that explains exceptional performance in Formula 1.
Teamwork is when everyone is looking out for everyone else, stepping into the breach to help when needed, but also recognising the strengths of their colleagues and giving them the space to do what they do best.
Like all good things, it’s very hard to develop and very easy to destroy. So what are the foundations of teamwork that provide the breathtaking levels of performance that can be witnessed in Formula 1? What can managers do to try and emulate these incredible feats in the most competitive of environments?
This was the motivation for undertaking a research study to explore these factors and to consider how they were sustained or destroyed through the actions of organisations.
We conducted 24 in-depth interviews with some of the most influential people in modern-day Formula 1, we visited all the major teams and supported this analysis by developing a detailed database of secondary material sourced from the motor racing press, biographies, other books and a raft of websites. In the end we came up with ten key factors that supported the teamworking culture underpining exceptional performance. I’ll now pick out two of these to discuss in more detail.
No-blame culture
The first factor is a no-blame culture. Sounds simple, but like most simple things in business it’s far from easy to achieve.
Let’s take the example of the Formula 1 pit stop.
Until 2005, a pit stop required the changing of all four wheels and tyres and refuelling the car with up to 90 litres of regular grade fuel. This involved at least 21 individuals all with a specific job to do to complete the entire operation in under eight seconds.
On September 22 1991 at the Portugese Grand Prix at Estoril near Lisbon, driver Nigel Mansell was leading the race for the Williams team and was a strong contender for the 1991 World Drivers’ Championship when he made a routine pitstop.
Everything appeared to go as normal and Mansell was released from the pit in order to resume his lead. As he accelerated into the pit lane his right rear wheel broke away from the car and went rolling down the track. Mansell was stranded in a car with three wheels. He could not go back as this would involve immediate disqualification. The mechanics were also forbidden from replacing the wheel and tyre while the car was in the pit lane. So Mansell retired, not only losing the race, but also ultimately the 1991 World Championship.
So what had happened? Who had screwed up? Who should be fired? It is when things go wrong that you see the real evidence of a no-blame culture, and it is neatly summarised by Dickie Stanford, team manager at Williams.
"We don’t hang anyone out to dry. You don’t just point a finger at someone and say they’re to blame. That doesn’t help, because all you do is create bad feeling. You try to isolate the problem, not the person."
A blame culture rewards individuals for covering up their mistakes and obscuring why things went wrong. This means that the reasons for the problem cannot be fully understood and therefore the organisation is unable to learn and move on.
In this situation it was found that the reason for the problem was a split wheel nut on the right rear wheel. As the mechanic raised his arm to ask for a replacement nut the 'lollipop man’ (the individual at the front who stops and releases the car by means of a circular board on a long pole) thought the raised arm was a signal that the car was ready to go and released Mansell.
In reviewing the problem Williams’ totally revised their entire pit stop procedure. Up to that point every individual would raise a hand to show that their task was complete. This meant that twenty-three hands would go up in a five foot wide area and the lollipop man would make a split decision to release the car.
After the review they revised the signalling to involve only the four individuals who did the last process to secure the wheel, and gave them different coloured gloves to ensure they could be quickly recognised by the lollipop man.
The following year Mansell did take the Drivers’ World Championship, and Williams went on to win five Constructors’ Championships between 1992 and 1997.
Integration
The second factor, is that real gains come at the boundaries. This means that to get the biggest advantage over your competition, you find ways of better integrating the many different teams that create the overall outcome.
For example, it could be the way that your marketing team work with your sales team, or the way they both work with the finance team that makes the difference. It’s not enough to have good sales, marketing and finance teams if they just don’t talk to each other.
This was a key ingredient in the success of Ferrari when they won the constructor’s world championship for a record six consecutive years between 1999 and 2004.
During the 1980s and early 1990s Ferrari endured one of the least successful periods since the first season of Formula 1 in 1950. Before 2000 the last time a Ferrari driver had won a World Championship was South African Jody Scheckter in 1979. This was a severe embarrasment to the oldest, best resourced and proudest Formula 1 team of all.
Like all historic Italian race car manufacturers, Ferrari had placed the greatest emphasis on building high-performance engines and then designing the car around the engine. This approach was entirely logical, as their main rivals were British constructors such as Lotus, McLaren and Williams, all of whom focused on designing the chassis and buying in engines from specialist manufacturers such as Cosworth, Honda, Renault and Porsche.
If Ferrari were to have a competitive advantage, it was natural to believe this to be their unique and distinctive engines.
However within the team this led to a situation where the Ferrari engine was 'untouchable’. There was little compromise between the design of the engine and other aspects of car performance, and it also meant that there was no open discussion of problems across the teams responsible for different parts of the car.
In 1991 the appointment of Luca di Montezemolo as Chairman, followed by Jean Todt as Team Manager in 1993, marked a turning point where a new organisation was built to restore Ferrari to its former glory.
In 1996 driver Michael Schumacher was recruited, quickly followed by key members from his previous team, Benetton - Ross Brawn (Technical Director) and Rory Byrne (Chief Designer).
Brawn saw the move to Ferrari as a big opportunity to create a design process that integrated the various parts of the car.
"I really felt that if we could get into a situation where the engine was completely integrated into the car, then that must be the best situation. So one of the things that was important to myself and Rory was to have someone who understood that, and luckily Paolo (Martinelli, Engine Director) very quickly appreciated our ideas and was completely receptive to the idea of a fully integrated engine as part of the car package."
Paolo Martinelli had worked on engines in Ferrari for many years, and was one in a long line of brilliant Italian engine designers. But he recognised that there was a need for change which was supported at the top of the organisation. Real progress could be made by working closely with the other areas of the car.
“I think it was very important that there was trust and direction from the top management.”
By emphasisng activities that integrated across the different design areas, such as electronics and computational fluid dynamics, they were able to develop a constant open flow of information which enabled the overall design to be optimised.
This approach is even followed through at the post race debrief: “In the debrief Michael starts by discussing the engine and then he finishes by discussing the chassis. The same engineers are all together listening.”
This approach is best summarised by Brawn: “Our efforts have always been not to make everything as good as it can be, but to work together as a complete package.”
From F1 to....
So how do these work in practice? And how can we instill them in other kinds of organisations that do not enjoy the same excitement and passion in their employees as is seen in Formula 1?
Undoubtedly there are prinicipals that have to be reflected in leadership behaviours, such as open communication and effective delegation, in developing strategies and plans that are clear, simple and available to all, and in helping all organisational members understand the linkage between their actions and overall performance.
But perhaps the most important issue in all of this, is building an environment of mutual trust.
This is the common denominator between these factors - if there isn’t trust and confidence in colleagues, both within and across teams, then these levels of enhancement cannot be achieved.
It is only when individuals and groups within the organisation are able to be completely open about mistakes and areas for improvement, that an organisation is able to make real progress towards the highest levels of performance.