Adaptive Team Performance

Adaptive Team Performance means creating groups of people that genuinely work together to solve complex problems. Complex product development - whether it’s software, physical product, services, or anything else - is why companies exist: to bring together brains that can achieve more than individuals alone. This usually results in organisations splitting the work among individuals or teams, letting them loose on a part of the product and then integrate the various contributions. And the result is usually problematic: sometimes the integrated product does not work, sometimes it works badly, sometimes it requires a long integration and validation phase. And it gets worse: each contributor feels responsible only for their part. Searching for somebody to blame becomes the rule of the game. And the customers are waiting in pain while nobody cares about themand their needs. Seen this film already?

The solution is simple and elegant - though not easy to implement: create conditions where teams can work as broadly as possible on the product, so that the teams themselves can work focusing on the customers and their needs. The product is the result!

This isn’t about team building exercises or putting clever people in a room together. It’s about understanding group dynamics and creating structures that enable real collaboration. When people and teams truly work together, they solve problems nobody thought were solvable and deliver products that amaze customers.

An Adaptive Team Performance system in an organisation involves several aspects

Understanding how your teams currently work and where the friction points are

• mapping actual collaboration patterns
• identifying knowledge silos and bottlenecks

Creating structures that enable effective collaboration

• cross-functional teams that own outcomes
• scaling collaboration among teams working on large products
• shared understanding of the product vision

Building capabilities for continuous individual and team improvement and learning

• regular retrospectives that actually lead to change
• psychological safety so people can speak honestly

We help organisations through this journey using our experience in team and organisational development, group dynamics coaching, agile and lean practices, and scaled product development structures to create the mix your organisation needs.