Think of the team you manage as a NASCAR pit crew and their projects as races.
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“Faster Together – Accelerating Your Team’s Productivity” by Laura Stack (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $18.95).
Think of the team you manage as a NASCAR pit crew and their projects as races. While you’re in the driver’s seat, you rely on your pit crew to prepare the car for the race, ensure pit stops are timely and fast and make during-the-race adjustments based upon what you’re experiencing as the driver. Even the most-skilled NASCAR driver stands no chance of winning a race unless the pit crew does its job.
With the NASCAR analogy at the forefront, Stack introduces the FAST team model. The starting line: Using her FAST team test (pages 12-28), assess team continuity and performance relative to the four elements of FAST:
Fairness deals with building working relationships, handling and resolving conflict and collaborative effort.
Accountability maximizes performance through trust and respect for team members — and accepting responsibility for execution.
Systems focus on increasing efficiency through time management and an effective decision-making process.
Technology involves communicating effectively through email, voicemail, conference calls — and ensuring meetings are productive, particularly if team members are off-site.
A score of five in a category indicates the team is doing well. Lower scores indicate “speed bumps” that need to be addressed. (I’d consider a score of one a pothole that needs to be filled quickly.) Chapters on each element provide spot-on advice for dealing with speed bumps.
The finish line: Let your team take the test, too. Tally results and discuss them at a team action-plan meeting. Close attention should be paid to areas where there are discrepancies in ratings. To measure progress, all should retake the assessment in 45 days after the action-plan meeting.
