The Competitive Advantage of X-Teams

Managerial buy-in and support will set the tone for success or failure of a team. The five key success factors of X-Teams are external activity, extensive ties, expandable structures, flexible membership and internal mechanisms, but team “flexibility” is the second most common reason why initiatives fail.

Teams are usually inwardly oriented and need to focus more on the bigger picture because internal and external factors (technology, demand, resources, money) will influence the success or failure. Teams need to ask more questions; work on the short-term and long-term vision; be more flexible to the changes and obtain leadership support. The external activities play a major role in the X-Team’s ability to go above and beyond to obtain resources. Having a strong working relationship with the project sponsor will enable your team to plan your activities better and coordinate the tasks accordingly. However, before you can do that you will have to establish and maintain a good relationship with the sponsor and/or organizational leadership. It is also important to understand when to cross the boundary to obtain additional resources.

Having a strong understanding of how the business is run is another key to success because team member may be asked to leave one group and join another. As a project leader it is important to quickly act and shift your resources or recruit another team player. Access to valuable information and decentralized decision-making approach is needed. Also imagine if everything was going well so far and then all of the sudden you reach a dead-end because you are not able to put the pieces together. Having team members that are able to bring outside resources to support the team is of high importance. Therefore, team flexibility and being able to adapt to rapid changes is very important.

Does employee fear exist in organizations that have X-Teams? I am asking this question because I have the feeling that X-Teams might be viewed as a “treat” to certain individuals within an organization because they are able to accomplish things faster, better and more cost effective. It could create the fear of potential job loss (layoffs).

A few years ago, I held a job as Change Management Consultant helping an organization manage change and implement activities that will enable them to operate more effectively and efficiently. My success was pending on the team I selected to help me plan and implement key projects. For the most parts, I used the same key ideas explored in this article to organize a highly effective team. This team helped me get the buy-in and on-going support from the leadership and we were able to implement two projects that saved the organization a lot of money. Had this team not been able to obtain the leadership support, all this time and effort in planning would have been for nothing and we would have failed miserably. However, at the same time, there was a lot of fear within the organization. Many employees viewed our “Change Management Team” as a team that was in the process of streamlining the business operation to cut positions because new business approach (programs, processes and technology) were introduced and didn’t require nearly as many employees as we had at that time. The end result: a couple of years later the team was demolished.