What The Warriors Taught Me About High Performance Agile Teams

What is one of the most amazing teams you’ve been a part of? And what made that experience stand out?

Growing up as a kid, my father used to take me to basketball games in the Oakland Coliseum to watch the Golden State Warriors play. Back then, the Warriors were good. That was before they were mediocre, and before they were good again. It was one of my fondest early memories of teamwork on display.

Regardless of where your heart lies, it is hard to argue, the Golden State Warriors are one of the most dominant teams in sports today.

So what makes a team great? What’s that “secret sauce” that sets them apart from others? If you’re curious, read on.

High performance Agile teams exhibit teamwork

More and more today, organizations are incorporating team-based structures as the standard for getting work done.

Science shows the significant benefits of organizing as teams, including the improved ability to solve highly-complex problems, better morale, productivity, higher quality and ROI. However, the reality is that many so-called teams are really operating as groups.

So what is the difference between a group and a team?

A group is a collection of individuals who share individual goals, but the ownership of goals resides on each individual.

A Toastmaster’s club, for example, is a group. Each person has an individual goal of advancing their own public speaking skills and they join the organization as means to support their ends.

A group might be a Community of Practice, where individuals come together to share resources for the benefit of learning. Each individual is responsible for growing their professional skills.

In a sports analogy, this might equate to a group of talented players who are assembled but generally are more focused on their individual stats. They optimize for more time with the ball in hopes of landing a big contract with the next high paying team in the future.

Conversely, a team is a group of people who own, and are collectively responsible for achieving a goal.

As such, the outcome falls squarely on the team, as opposed to the individual. The game is won or lost for the team. In many cases with high performing teams, there is a willingness to trade individual heroics for the betterment of the overall goal.

In basketball, we might refer to the collective goal as winning a championship. In team behavior, we see things like assists. That is a stat that represents passes to other team members resulting in a basket.

In Scrum, we have the concept of a sprint goal. The sprint goal is an increment of useful product functionality that is planned out by the team. It results in something valuable that is delivered to the customer in four weeks or less.

And so teams are looked at as collectively contributing to a worthy goal which is often too difficult to be accomplished by an individual alone.

In the best case scenario, groups may create a mutually beneficial structure to achieve their individual goals but teams will often fail to produce strong results if they operate as a group.

In a team, the model breaks down when:

There is a lack of urgency or compelling vision behind the team goal
The team goal is not clear or well understood by the team
There is disproportionate incentivization on individual contributions vs. team contributions. Conflicts of interest arise and the team will fail to collaborate sufficiently to meet their goals.
There is a lack of trust or safety.

While this may seem straightforward, it is not uncommon to see group dynamics play out in organizational teams and cross-departmentally. The culture of “Business vs. Technology”, or “Us versus them” is generally an indicative symptom of the problem.

High performance Agile teams focus on developing their capability over achieving specific results

High performance Agile teams see themselves as a capability to be developed. They favor this paradigm over short term result seeking. And they invest their time and energy accordingly.

If you had the option of picking one of the following, which would you choose?

Creating a playbook that can solve a specific problem
Creating a playbook that allows you to create any number of playbooks

In number one, we are more focused on planning for and winning individual games with the key individuals and their roles.

In number two, we are more focused on instilling a mindset and developing the capabilities of the team so that they are better positioned to handle anything that comes their way.

It is not uncommon for the Warriors to play younger, less experienced players, even in higher stake game situations. They are willing to risk losing a single game because they know that they are developing and deepening their bench. The hope is that by developing the capability of the team, it will create more favorable circumstances for winning in the long run.

By internalizing and embodying the values and principles, or the “being” side of Agile, teams are in effect taking on the “playbook of playbooks” model. Moreover, teams that understand the line of thinking, or the “why” behind the Agile practices will produce far greater outcomes. However, internalizing the agile mindset takes time, energy and practice and teams can benefit from the help of an agile coach.

High performance Agile teams show humility

Make no mistake, the Golden State Warriors have a certain swagger about them. Are they confident? Yes. Are they proud? Most definitely. But they put humility on display, especially when it comes to highlighting their teammates’ contributions.

When you look at the players during the press conferences and in half time interviews, you often hear players deflecting questions about their individual contributions to those of their peers or their teams.

Here is one example (paraphrasing):

Interviewer: Steph, you did a great job scoring to close the gap at the end of the second half to win the game. What was going on in your mind to do that?

Stephen Curry: ‘Actually, I thought we could have done better offensively overall. Our defense really shined there. Green was able to convert most of the opponents shots into rebounds and pass the ball around to create the right opportunities to allow me to take those shots’.

High performance Agile teams exhibit a strong internal mindset

There are points during the game where the team looks like the deck is stacked against them. For the Warriors, it’s not uncommon to see them going into second half with a deficit of 10 points or more before coming back. Everything seems to be going badly and fear sets in.

In that moment, it is easy for anyone to lose presence, to give way to the downward pull of defeat. Where it would be game over for most teams, the Warriors somehow draw from a reserve of internal strength and recover.

The Warriors return to a place of poise and presence. They don’t let setbacks get the best of them. Yes, the team has a collection of skilled and capable people. And they do show a high degree of emotion and intensity at times. But what we are looking at here is how they choose to act in the face of adversity. What we are talking about is a strong mental attitude.

However, this is not just about shared attitudes. With a firm team structure in place, many fear-based behavioral risks are dispelled. This largely has to do with the sense of shared responsibility and psychological safety that true teamwork facilitates.

Tony Robbins talks about the importance of not assuming the victim mindset. When a team member is down, team members pull each other up. They have developed the ability to quickly reset and recover despite whatever challenges are being thrown in their direction.

The Scrum values

Some of the highest performing Scrum teams I’ve worked with exhibit a strong mindset by embodying the following values:

Courage – they draw on the collective strength of the team to overcome obstacles and challenges that would not otherwise be possible by any one individual
Commitment – they commit to doing everything possible to achieve their goals, supporting one another as necessary
Focus – they are clear on what it is they must do, they keep each other present, and focus on doing few things at a time
Respect – they treat everyone as an important part of the team regardless of experience or background, they aim to build leadership at all levels of the team. In fact, there are no titles within a development team in Scrum. Everyone is a “team member”.
Openness – they are not afraid to say the things that must be said, they show vulnerability and acknowledge their mistakes openly, they make their work highly visible, they are clear on their roles and will also step outside of their role as necessary to meet the goal of the team

High Performance Agile teams share leadership

Servant leadership is a philosophy whereby the main goal of the leader is to serve the people who work for them. This is in contrast to the traditional leadership model where leaders primarily serve those above. It might feel more akin to being under the wing of a life coach than a benevolent patriarch or matriarch. Some additional characteristics of this type of leader include vision, encouragement, empathy, influence (selling vs telling). Since they are always seeking to grow and improve themselves, servant leaders are generally higher on the Emotional Quotient. That is, they are highly present, are active listeners, and they are keenly aware of their own internal states and how it plays out in social relationships.

Among the very best teams, leadership is a shared practice. In fact, while watching the Warriors play for the first time, it might be hard to tell who is exactly in charge in any given moment. Steve Kerr, the Warriors’ head coach, established a strong leadership foundation. It allowed him to take a long leave of absence in order to recover from painful complications related to back surgery. The team sustained in the playoffs and went on to win the championship that year.

Some of the most effective Scrum teams that I have been a part of exhibit behaviors where someone steps in as a leader, then yields, and another steps in and takes their place.

In the book “Mastering Leadership”, Anderson describes the creative leader type as a developer of people. What we are talking about here is taking responsibility for helping others to grow and self actualize, both on a personal and professional level.

Steve Kerr is a fine example of a servant leader. As a former player himself, he has over eight championship rings. Yet he acts with poise, respect and humility toward others including opponent teams.

He shares a compelling vision for success, but gives the team room to make their own decisions which often comes with mistakes and failures. He models patience, trust and wisdom through his actions.

One of the twelve principles behind the Agile manifesto is to “build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done”. Two of the four modern Agile principles simply state, “Make people awesome” and “Make safety a prerequisite”.

This relates to creating the environment where people are given training and latitude do the their jobs. It also means ensuring that team members feel completely safe to speak up and make mistakes without fear of retribution, and an environment where they are encouraged to share learnings and take those lessons forward.

In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, it is critical that we strive to bring out the very best in our teams.

Michael Nassif