MYTH #3: “Innovating together is impossible – my team can’t agree on ANYTHING!”
In 2017, under the leadership of Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo adopted the program Performance with Purpose with a target date of 2025 to accomplish their three tier goals of Product, Planet, and People.
Through Product, PepsiCo would promote better health through less fat, sugar, and salt in their drinks to promote better nutrition. Through Planet, PepsiCo projected efforts that would impact climate change, better water, less waste, lower carbon emission, more use of renewable energy. Through People, PepsiCo would advance human rights, diversity, and prosperity.
Their 2017 pdf report is found HERE.
Innovation is very possible and viable when purpose drives performance. Teams function effectively with dynamic leadership and cohesive engagement of its members. This is done through validation of team members that recognizes the worth of employees’ efforts to contribute. The invested leader recognizes the efforts of individual members as well as that of the whole team. Validation engenders engagement.
Disagreements happen when there is competition. In the high performance team, collaboration displaces competition because everyone on the team has the freedom of self-expression in the climate of psychological freedom, the atmosphere of open acceptance of everyone’s contribution without fear of disrespect. This provides the security of trust among its members.
With that firm base of trust, the team assumes its responsibility of being accountable to the purpose of the team. Each member is responsive to this team accountability so that everything offered affirms the efforts of each member along with the work of the team.
What this culture of trust accomplishes is the feature of ownership of the purpose of the team on the part of its members. Trust helps all the members to own their part of the project to take personal responsibility for the success of each aspect of the project that eventually will fulfill the purpose of their performance. This is the deeper meaning of performance with purpose. Ownership enhances the mindset of each member of the team with commitment to the direction and success of the project.
Not all teams have the good fortune of ideal collaboration. This difficult question can be resolved through prudent leadership by personal oversight in the formation of a team. Members should be chosen for their willingness and ability to relate to others. This will mean that the leader will make the purpose of the team clearly transparent with definitive goals and target progress. It is imperative that an attitude of trust and sincerity be established from the beginning and is maintained throughout the process. Employees look for a leader to be inspirational and genuinely involved.
Along with leadership involvement is the importance of providing a team with the tools needed to achieve its goals and reach its targets. This will include the resources the team needs for all its members along with incentives that serve as encouragements and support during the processes of team work. This will give significance and meaning especially for the success that team is striving for.
The bottom line of a team, finally, is not the profit of their success so much as it is the performance with purpose that gives the greatest value to what the team achieves.
