When I worked in office teams, there was always an annual team-building session. At each session, a facilitator would use one (at least and often more) sports stories to tell us how to 'play as a team'.
What gripping stories! What dramatic examples! All made sense at the time. All forgotten soon afterwards. Well, not forgotten, so much as failing to change team behaviour.
I am not against sports analogies. They can be a powerful, if hackneyed, way to tell the people in teams how to achieve the team's goals.
I believe one of the major reasons the sports 'story' didn't translate to my teams was 'cycle time'.
By this, I mean that a sports team plays a match each week during the season. Each match is followed by the coach's debrief. Performance is reviewed. The coach outlines what needs to stay the same and what needs to change. The impetus for change and renewal is a weekly cycle.
Some of the teams in which I was involved had an annual cycle time. Performance was measured annually. The bonus was paid annually.
A short cycle doesn't mean the changes are always effective, however, it does mean that the impetus for change and renewal occurs more frequently. There are more opportunities to improve because 'by next Saturday we will' is more compelling than 'by this time next year we will'.
A classic example is when an employee postpones his resignation by several months in order to be paid the previous year's bonus.
So, if your team has a long cycle, shorten it. I believe it's an important factor underlying the performance of sports teams. Failing to grasp this point renders many sports analogies ineffective in changing team behaviour.
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