They are not teams with hidden individual agendas.
The business literature on high-performing teams (HPTs) is enormous; add the videos, tutorials, interviews… and the material becomes practically infinite, as with almost every business-related topic today.
I’m not an expert on the subject—in the sense that I haven’t written about it yet 😇. Those who know me are aware that I focus on innovation, strategy, business models, and entrepreneurship, particularly its corporate version: intrapreneurship. But I’ve been fortunate to work in some teams that we could call high-performing, and for a large part of my career, I worked in teams that weren’t—and in some cases, eventually became high-performing.
So, without claiming completeness and based only on my limited experience, I’ll approach this topic from a negative angle: what high-performing teams aren’t, in my view, and what they don’t do.
And since non-HPTs are the majority—otherwise we wouldn’t talk about HPTs so much—there’s also a reassuring message here: it’s not necessary to be one. If the business is solid and the industry isn’t (yet) exposed to disruption, a team can be normal—or even just a group of individuals tied by hierarchy, possibly with strong financial incentives—without negative impacts on results.
Sometimes, leadership even inverts cause and effect: because financial results are excellent, the team must be high-performing. In reality, an HPT shows itself during challenging times, systemic changes, or “black swan” events. And if you’ve never experienced it, all the talk about it may seem abstract—but if you have, it leaves a kind of nostalgia, coupled with impatience toward non-HPTs.
So, what high-performing teams are not:
They are not teams with hidden.
Or misaligned agendas. One unresolved issue in modern organizations is the contradiction between encouraging collective effort and promoting individual advancement. Most competent people naturally want to advance their careers—but when this tension is hidden, when jealousy, antipathy, or maneuvers to undermine the “strongest competitor” hide behind proclamations of unity, results are always suboptimal. Anyone who has worked with “old-school FIAT men” knows exactly what I mean.
They are not teams where people feel alone.
Where “my work and my performance come first.”
I’ve seen very capable people fail to understand that their individual performance wasn’t enough—that slowing down to help a colleague in difficulty was more important and beneficial than being the team’s star. Often, when I arrived at a new non-HPT company, I experienced loneliness because the mutual support that acts as a multiplier was absent.
They are not teams driven solely by financial performance or KPIs.
Are we really all here only for economic gain? Or is this an ideological position (the child of hyperliberalism, still prevalent in many corporate settings) that ends up harming both individuals and organizations—while conveniently shifting responsibility across fragmented tasks? Today’s world demands a holistic approach and a broader perspective. Sure, what isn’t measured can’t be controlled—but I’ve witnessed decisions damaging to the company, its members, and society, all in the name of “making the bonus.” I still remember, with horror, a CFO who, after a restructuring that caused layoffs, nudged me and said, “With a little luck, we’ll hit the bonus.” I’ve also seen employees rejoice over achieving a KPI that no longer made sense because the plan was flawed or the context had changed—like at IBM Italy in the ’90s, where I worked, celebrating 30% growth in a market where PCs, which we had helped establish as business tools rather than toys, were growing triple digits.
They are not teams where people keep important things to themselves.
Especially reservations about taking action. How often have we faced a failed initiative, plan, or project and thought, “I knew it,” when at the critical moment we stayed silent—or worse, whispered “I told you so” to a colleague afterward, having withheld our support? This yesmanship—always aligning, what Americans call CMA (cover my ass)—in non-HPTs is mistaken for discipline and even praised by leaders who constantly second-guess instead of empowering those with expertise. Often, leaders feel authoritative precisely by replacing their judgment for that of the responsible team member.
They are not teams where making mistakes is wrong.
Two examples come to mind:
A mid-to-high-tech company undergoing a technological transition handed me a brand-new, never-before-attempted innovation process labeled “version 17.”
A company acquired a startup that had brought essential software expertise—yet 80% of its team left within six months.
To conclude, I’d quote the poet Montale: “What we are not, what we don’t want.”
