The POD based organisation
For a few years, organisations have been reinventing themselves to operate as networks of teams, enabling them to keep up with the challenges of a rapid changing world.
Whilst different team typologies – traditional intact teams, project teams, permanent functional units with evolving memberships, etc. – will continue to form the “fabric” of organisations, greater attention will reside on “PODs”: small, virtual or distributed teams, able to solve complex challenges, regardless the physical distance between members.
PODs stands for “Performance Orchestrated (at a) Distance”, underlying the need for virtual teams to work effectively together if they are to achieve their objectives. PODs thrive on autonomy, effective collaboration and a prejudice for quick decisions. Whilst team leaders set goals and overall deadlines for a project, PODs have a loose form of self-organisation determined by the desired business outcomes and agreements made by the team members themselves.
PODs may be long or short-lived, formal or informal, dynamic or static, characterized by deep subject matter expertise or cross-functional, whichever best serves the team in reaching its objectives. Individuals may belong to more than one POD, and a POD may even include external members, e.g. client, supplier or partner.
Team members identify strongly with their POD(s); their POD experience drives how productive, satisfied and resilient they are and ultimately, how long they choose to stay in the broader organisation. Given that the POD experience is a key driver of performance, what can team leaders do to liberate the talent available within the team?
Leadership in a POD-based organisation
We believe that people are continually learning and growing, and that they grow the most in an environment characterized by positive human attention. Positive human attention is an active and intentional leadership approach based upon trust-based intent (trust), the recognition of individual strengths (strengths), and a clear sense of meaning or purpose (meaning).
Experiencing a ‘trust-strengths-meaning’ environment fosters positive emotions in individual team members as well as across the team. Energy previously invested in dealing with uncertainties or office politics can now be devoted to problem-solving, alternatives generation, and the task at hand.
As a result, leadership is less defined by the team leader’s personal attributes and more by the team dynamics that the leader enables as experienced by the team itself. A successful leader is one who creates deep trust, who recognizes and endorses the distinctive capabilities of each team member, and who ensures that the team’s work holds meaning. This truth holds for virtual teams as well as for traditional intact teams still able to work in face-to-face environments.
