Team Effectiveness & Performance Models | 6 Team Conditions

6 Designable Team Conditions©

The 6 Conditions framework and Team Diagnostic Survey™ (TDS™) offer a distinctive and practical approach to team performance. By targeting the designable, structural conditions that determine team success, the 6 Conditions framework gets to the root causes of team dysfunction and team excellence. It offers teams and team leaders clear action priorities for unlocking team potential. Grounded in Harvard Psychologist J. Richard Hackman’s pioneering 'conditions thinking' and reinforced by decades of empirical research, this framework moves beyond traditional team-building methods that focus solely on interpersonal dynamics. Instead, it identifies 6 Conditions, the essentials and enablers that provide leaders and teams with a proven roadmap for cultivating superb performance and sustainable excellence. By intentionally shaping these factors, effective leaders create an environment where positive team dynamics naturally emerge, empowering teams to consistently deliver outstanding results.

Real team

Members experience themselves as a team, with shared accountabilities and a need to work together to accomplish them.

Compelling purpose

The team’s reason for existence is clear, offers engaging challenges, and has meaningful impact on the lives and work of others.

Right people

The team size is appropriate for the workload but not too large; the team has a range of perspectives and the configuration of skills –including teamwork skills—needed to accomplish the purpose.

Work Design

The team performs motivating work that aligns with the team purpose, and deploys ground rules and learning-based work practices to make the most of team talent.

Organizational Support

The structures and systems in the larger enterprise promote teamwork rather than place obstacles in the way of meaningful collaboration.

Team Coaching

Someone with skill at intervening in teams is readily available to help the team consolidate learning and make increasingly good use of its resources in performing the work.

How it works

Effective teams serve all their stakeholders superbly. More, they get better and better over time, and the team serves as a context for its members to learn and grow.

How do we stack the deck in favor of a team charting a solid course to those three Results?

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First, design a team well: Imagine the three Essentials: Do we need a team; and if so, what is its unique contribution? And who has the skills, the full range of perspectives, the collaborative capabilities to achieve that purpose?

Then breathe life into the team through a team launch. Introduce the three Enablers: team work design, organizational support systems, and well-timed, hands-on team coaching.

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With the 6 Conditions in excellent shape, we see teams fostering each other’s effort and engagement, inventing uniquely-suited approaches to their work, and deploying–and building–the talent in the team.

These three overarching task processes are the short-term signs of a healthy team on a good trajectory toward superb Results.

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Our research indicates that only 21% of leadership teams are highly effective, while 42% under-serve key stakeholders.

An actionable framework

The 6 Team Conditions framework provides a practical roadmap for anyone tasked with enabling team success.

By taking your team through the step-by-step process outlined above, our practitioners ensure that your team has everything they need to succeed.

A science-based model

Our expert team coaches have studied thousands of teams around the world, in a wide range of industries, sectors, and cultures.

Our research, published in top peer-reviewed journals, identified 6 Conditions that can be shaped by teams and team leaders that together predict up to 80% of team effectiveness. Intervention studies of redesigning teams to get the 6 Conditions in great shape affirm real, lasting transformations in team results.

Real-world results

The 6 Conditions team model has guided the transformation of hundreds of C-suite "teams-in-name-only" into superbly aligned and effective leadership teams.

Organizations from a wide range of industries - from technology and pharma, banking and energy, education and healthcare, to professional services and community organizing, have launched great teams using the 6 Team Conditions.

Reimagining teams for: