What Makes for a Great Team?

My colleague Bill Helkamp, who conducts executive communications training, recently posted an article on the long-term strengths of our home-town Minnesota Twins.  Although the Twins are sitting out the playoffs after losing a season-ending squeaker to the White Sox, Bill has some fascinating insights on why the Twins contend more often than a small-market team should.

The Twins commitment to their strong player development system is in the DNA of the team.  It was critically important to Calvin Griffith, the previous owner who brought the Twins to Minnesota in 1961.  Griffith put his farm system in place because he didn’t have much money compared to rich teams in the big media markets of Chicago or New York.  With the exception of Bert Blyleven, who came to the Twins in a trade, the stars of the 1987 and 1991 World Series came from the farm system.  The current owners, the Pohlads, have plenty of money, but use their keen business instincts to avoid overspending.  The Twins have been blessed with capable “baseball men” like Andy MacPhail, Terry Ryan and Bill Smith, and the great players like Joe Mauer who just keep coming.  The Minnesota Twins have been built for the long term – not fancy, but consistent, disciplined and selfless.  We could all take a lesson.

Ready for Prime Time

My daughter has been using Skype to call back to Minnesota during her visit to France.  I finally signed up for an account this morning, and was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the call.  My previous experience with voice over IP, a few years back, was that it was not ready for prime time.  At 2.1 cents per minute, it’s going to become my preferred means of making international calls (although calls to mobile #s are spendier).

The experience with Skype fit nicely with a request from a client to add a web cam and download collaboration software (in his case, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007) to begin doing some live chats over the web.  This particular client is a real pioneer in the management of global virtual teams, and has conducted weekly team audio calls for years.  They have the drawbacks of all teleconferences:  everyone signs in, but not all are present.  When we tested it this afternoon, the addition of video adds a dimension of engagement that should make those calls more interesting.  Of course, the addition of a web cam to a laptop means dealing with a whole host of issues I never thought I’d have to be concerned about, like what you can see behind me, or whether the camera is in focus.  It’s also a wake-up call for people like me that are inconsistent about personal appearance when I’m not face to face with clients!  No webcam calls before 8:00 am, I think.