Scoring with your very first touch of the season feels great. But the scoreboard only tells a fraction of the story..
New Season, new pitch (a glorious freshly-laid astro) blazing September sunshine – the perfect setting. The perfect stage for the start of our Fleet & Ewshot hockey team’s new campaign last Saturday. New season, but the same rules in play. It was about the team, and the unifying mission that is the beating heart of any successful group.
Our team picked up from where we left off last season, in our first encounter against a formidable Alton side. Cohesive, looking for the gaps, the hidden opportunities and the best routes through a tight opposition defence. I was fortunate to score with my first touch of the match (and therefore of the season) to net our first goal, in a memorable 3-0 win over our local rivals. At the other end of the pitch, our debutant Goalkeeper made an improbable penalty save – something rarely seen in game of hockey. But it’s never just about the team member who applies the final touch. A team wins or loses based on the cumulative effects of everyone who shows up, whether that’s on the hockey pitch or at the product management or portfolio coalface.
> A shared mission – one common overarching goal:
Pulling together as one for compounding effects requires clarity of purpose and shared endeavour behind a unified mission. On the pitch, it’s about how do we score more goals than we concede. In product and portfolio teams, there needs to be a ‘higher purpose’ for a work group to rally behind in pursuit of excellence. Whether that is about creating a secure but frictionless experience for users logging into a platform to start the user journey or about building out a holistic ‘suite of solutions’ all in one convenient place (think Revolut), the defining purpose shapes the way for the ‘how’ teams best come together as one.
> Invisible Teamwork:
The best teams bring a blend of the talents, and a way of working that creates a magical multiplier effect which is much more than the sum of its individual parts. In a game of hockey, the striker applying the final touch for the goal is the cumulation of the building work of the defence and midfield behind them. Great product teams are no different, the amalgamation of well-grounded customer understanding to help shape a clearly defined and balanced solution path combined with the engineering excellence to help deliver the ultimate realisation of that solution. The cohesive collaboration behind the common purpose brings the value.
> Instant interaction:
Just as in hard-fought hockey games, so too in fast-paced B2C retail or fintech markets – often decisions need to be made quickly, but still effectively, in the moment. A hockey team coming back from the summer break for their first game back together doesn’t have the luxury of time to discuss in advance each permutation the game might take. It has to improvise and then iterate. So too with cross functional product teams assembling to address the latest business critical problem to be solved: initial insight > interact > iterate > invigorate is often a well-advised model to either build momentum early, or fail fast in pursuit of other better bets.
The executive takeway:
Whether you’re battling on the hockey pitch for each hard-won goal (or goal prevented) or leading product teams into complex cross functional digital transformation to replace a creaking legacy platform, the same rules ring true. Success isn’t an individual sport within a team construct; it’s about the power of the team to create accelerating multiplier effects in unison that help deliver the final result. As one, cohesive and mission-aligned unit.
