HPTs are not freestanding. They exist in a matrix, a larger social system, and inevitably they must optimize the business processes that are cross-functional, and pay attention to how they interact with multiple functional and business teams. In this conversation, we're still in the domain of Capabilities and Roles, but now we're seeking to manage the key intersection points where roles bump up against each other, inside or outside the team. We're seeking to understand how all the elements fit together, especially our team. Indeed, visualizing the Enterprise Map is a key way of working in this conversation that allows team members to see exactly how they fit within the whole organization. Any one team's ability to be high performing often depends on strategically aligning with other teams in the enterprise. When an HPT finds that it needs to advocate for its priorities up and down the enterprise hierarchy, a robust understanding of the connections and interdependencies across the organization will inform those conversations.

Analyzing the Performance System

HPTs need protocols and processes to begin to track their performance. Are there going to be reviews? What incentives will be put in place? What KPIs (key performance indicators) is the team going to work with? In this crucial conversation, one of the nitty-gritty ways of working involves the development of a performance system. Performance systems are too important to be overlooked in the development of HPTs. I've seen HR departments that had established systems that failed to update when HPTs were developed, and as a result, disincentivized people to participate fully in their teams. That needs to be guarded against, and more importantly, rewards and incentives need to be aligned with where the organization is going, not necessarily where it's been. If HPTs are truly important to your organization, that needs to be reflected in your performance system.

Incentives can be strange and subtle. Years ago, I was working with a major automotive company. The problem they were having involved cars coming off the assembly line every Friday with quality problems. When I examined more deeply what was occurring, an interesting pattern emerged. Managers of the plants were being asked to go to a Friday meeting with senior executives in the company. That pulled the managers of the plants off the production line. No surprise that they were having performance issues! But no one was keeping an eye on the consequences of those Friday meetings. The plant managers were essentially being punished, and losing bonuses, for doing what their senior leaders wanted them to do.

Always pay attention to incentives, explicit and implicit. As companies make the transition to stage 3, performance systems must evolve to support the new organizational structure, and to incentivize and reward the performance of teams, not just individuals. Some resistance may need to be overcome—first from individuals. Some people may resist having their own incentives and rewards partially intertwined with the performance of the team. It makes team members vulnerable, at least partially, to each other and to collective performance. But it also creates a powerful alignment and incentive for collective outperformance. Building those systems and getting them right is something that generally can't be done in the back office of HR. It needs to be worked out transparently and with input from team members. And that can present a second level of resistance—some HR departments are stuck in their ways. They may prefer to hoard the responsibility and be hesitant to innovate in a manner needed to build creative new performance systems. HR may need their own incentives for developing these new ways of working.

Aligning Between Teams

An important breakthrough in this conversation occurs as HPTs reach out beyond their own circles to engage the teams around them. They inevitably start to make compelling requests of those teams and work to establish a shared language around protocols and processes that is essential to streamlining those many points of interdependence. Little by little, instead of siloed workspaces with teams and departments who barely speak the same organizational language and have highly distinct processes and procedures, a grand sync-up starts to occur. It can seem miraculous. But it's not miraculous, it is simply the natural result of healthy HPTs having the right conversations with a shared language, and beginning to demand more of that same type of culture in the waters they swim in. And as they do so, organizational areas that once communicated like Mars and Venus find that they can actually talk to each other and enact the processes and procedures that need to happen to make things work. A level of unhealthy bureaucracy starts to fade away as a higher level of organizational interconnection emerges. This can happen at the level of teams in a business, or it can take place across an entire enterprise. That sync-up can even happen across an entire portfolio of companies, as HPTs start to align and influence the ecosystems they move in. Conversation 5, when it really comes online, is truly one of the most satisfying expressions of the Growth River methodology.