Building a world class high performance team around a new market model

(Excerpt from Book “Team Quotient: How to Build High Performance Teams and Win Every Time” by Douglas Gerber)

GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) China was faced with rebuilding its pharmaceutical leadership team (CPLT) from scratch, and completely transforming the team processes while implementing a new market model. They accomplished this in four stages over two years:

St...

One of our clients was a team at a European bank responsible for ‘transaction banking.’ Transaction banking handles the safe and efficient movement of cash and securities around the global financial system. It is in the business of facilitating the transactions that affect money flow, whether it is cash management, trade and supply-chain finance, or correspondence banking.

This bank was a medium-sized player in transaction bank...

This professional services firm is a global leader in its field and a strong player in Greater China. The partners on this team are highly educated and come from strong backgrounds with a plethora of experience. The state of team was characterized by a group of highly competent consultants operating in silos with little transparency and a dearth of office or Greater China team identity.

This was borne out by the Team Quoti...

This Marketing Communications firm is a global leader in its field and a strong player in Asia. It had recently acquired another marketing firm and installed a new Executive Team in Asia. The team was multi-cultural consisting of British, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, and American.  Some were left over from the old firm, but most on the team were new, including the Regional director. Yet the Team Quotient was low and there...

Jack had just been appointed as the new business unit head of a major pharmaceutical company. I was assigned to be Jack’s coach in 2014.  Jack was elated about his new job, but also a bit worried. His predecessor had left quite suddenly, and given his predecessor’s relatively long tenure and strong relationships with his leadership team, Jack was concerned that some of the team members might leave, as well.

Jack’s first priorit...

Here is a story with one of the clients I worked with:

Pierre was the head of the leadership team for a French luxury brand, and a client. He had a great leadership team. They worked hard and played hard. They drank the best French wines together, and after their monthly leadership-team meetings would dine at restaurants that were gastronomic delights. The team enjoyed lots of friendly banter and got along well. Team members ha...

We conducted a High Performance Team development program for the Singapore office of one of the top-five global advertising firms. Their challenges were formidable: the team ranked in the lower quartile in both customer and employee satisfaction. The team was fragmented, and demonstrated palpable conflict.

Interestingly, there were several star players on the team who were very effective at what they did. Unfortunately for them...