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The Team Learning Lab (TLL)

An MRCC program offered by 4results across North America.
(Info provided from MRCC Website)

Over 80% of the teams that experience the 2-day Team Learning Lab will develop and be fully committed to incredibly ambitious goals. See more client results here.

Typical examples are:

• an executive team commits to triple digit growth for 3 consecutive years

• a middle management team commits to reduce delivery of product/service from 6 months to 2 days.

• a corporate team commits to reduce quotes to customers from 40 days to 5 days.

Companies like Ford, Hewlett Packard, Pratt & Whitney, Owens Corning, Seagrams, NASA and many others can attest to this sort of impact.

How has The Lab become such a transformational experience for teams?  The quick answer is: it strikes an emotional chord - it gets under the skin of every individual, and is amplified by the group experience.

A more complete answer is found in three factors:

1) Positioning
2) Process
3) Content

POSITIONING

The work team itself makes the decision whether to invest the two days to experience The Team Learning Lab. A brief presentation to them describes the objectively to become a high performance team and to provide individual and team learning. The presentation also describes the content, process and results from other teams taking The Lab. Invariably the team determines it will be worth the investment to become a “high performance team” (HPT)

PROCESS

Clients tell us that the most powerful factor is the unique Team Learning ™ process where people who work together, learn to learn from each other how to become a high performance team (HPT). There is no expert present to teach or ‘tell’ them - every member of the team will share their expertise on HPT. A road map and a coach will support the team’s deliberations.

After a number of hours of very engaging - yet very serious, substantive discussions on various aspects of their “teamwork” the group dynamic begins to change. The group sheds patterns of defensiveness, such as lip service, being politically correct, saving face, protecting turf, etc.

Undiscussables surface; an openness is manifested; higher levels of trust emerge.  Apart from occasional input from the Coach, all discussions are by members of the team.

CONTENT - Peter Senge`s 5 Disciplines divided into 3 topics

The content focuses on three topics:

1. Communications

a) How we can manage “hidden thoughts” to develop more open yet safe conversations on contentious issues.

b) How we can re-examine some of our preconceptions that color and freeze our thinking about people and things.

c) How we can use all these tools to balance advocacy with inquiry to come to real consensus with others around contentious issues.

2. Systems Thinking

The team starts to recognize that many problems they encounter are affected by factors outside their team. They learn how to resolve these systemic problems by using systems thinking tools. “Quick fixes” are replaced by more fundamental solutions; the team solves some real chronic problems and develops a greater sense of empowerment. It’s a revelation when the team discovers how myopic their thinking has been in the past and how effective systems thinking will be for their future.

3. Shared Aspirations

So far the team has been monitoring their progress to become a high performance team by using our team evaluation format on three separate occasions. They now see and feel their improvement. Their evaluations and discussions about their progress, further reinforces their commitment to their team.

They are finally ready to take very seriously (no lip service) the emotional factors that bind their team - their shared aspirations: “Where are we going? What do we want to achieve together”?

To coalesce around their shared aspirations they discover and openly discuss their personal visions and values including shared values. By this time the typical barriers to complete honesty have disappeared and they begin to build consensus around a shared vision or goal that inspires them.

There is a genuine sense of achievement and celebration among the team when they develop consensus on a business goal that challenges their best efforts. Based on the 2-day experience, they are now confident of meeting that goal. They are beginning to operate as a high performance team!

The team then develops action plans for achieving their shared vision or goal over a specific time frame with specific dates for reaching significant milestones.

What follows, is more detail of significant accomplishments from some of our Clients.

CLIENT RESULTS from the TEAM LEARNING LAB

Pratt & Whitney

Improved collaboration among a diverse group of over 600 engineers, reducing development time for new engines from an average of 30 months to 10 months.

Hewlett Packard

A middle management team from the Microwave Software Division, committed to reducing delivery to customers from 6 weeks to 2 days, and gave themselves 4 years to meet that target.  This ambitious target galvanized the entire Division to support their team.  After only 9 months, their delivery time was down to 2 weeks.

United Technologies Automotive

A team charged with developing quotes for customers reduced the quote time from 40 days to 5 days within 3 months.

Ford: ’95 Lincoln Continental Engineering Team

The engineering team generated a 30% improvement in quality (highest jump in Ford’s history), while at the same time establishing a company record for ‘on time’ achievements.  At the close of the project the team returned $65M of a $95M late change provision as a result of project efficiencies and process effectiveness.

Cigna Property and Casualty

Seven distinct sales divisions determined that there might be value in working collaboratively, even though historically they tended to complete against one another.

They began to meet regularly; appointed a co-coordinator and began joint sales calls.  This resulted in underwriting accounts and business that they had not previously underwritten – greatly increasing their total sales.  (Exact amounts are considered competitive information.)

Seagrams