Building a Rapid Response Team Part 1

If you have been following my blogs for the past few years you know that everything we are doing today is based on the research we have been doing on leadership over the past ten years. The basic premise is that we have moved into a different era and the leadership models need today are different than what most organizations are using. That is also true of organizational models. The organizational model we need today is different than the traditional team model that we have been using for decades. It is a more skilled and disciplined team model that we refer to as the Rapid Response Team. Over the next few blogs, we will explore what the Rapid Response Team is, what it looks like, and how to build it. Let’s start with a definition.

Defining a Rapid Response Team

A Rapid Response Team is a skilled, disciplined, and interdisciplinary team who can successfully work independently & collaboratively in a variety of complex situations to create success with minimum supervision on a daily basis.

Each word in this definition is important. In a rapidly changing world, you need skilled disciplined people in every role. Everyone must move beyond “just doing tasks and achieving goals” to becoming “thinkers, adapters, and innovators.” Two words are central is the last sentence – the shift from “doing” to “becoming.” Success today is no longer about just doing tasks & hitting goals. Success is about thinking, adapting, and innovating as an organization as the world, your market, and the workforce change.

A rapid response team is also interdisciplinary. Each person has their own unique skillsets and expertise based on their role, training, and experience. The success of a rapid response team, though, is based on the ability of everyone on the team to apply those skills working with others to achieve the outcomes established for the team (not just the individual) - even when the situation is complex. The final characteristic of the rapid response team is that people are expected to all of this with minimum supervision on a daily basis. In a fast-paced world, leaders can’t control everything. Putting the power in the hands of their team to create success is the only logical option. Without the right organizational model, though, leading are “hoping for success” rather than building for success.  

Here’s the paradox we see in many organizations. We want people to be “thinkers, adapters, and innovators” to drive growth, but we expect that to magically happen on it’s own. In many organizations the unspoken motto has become “hire good people, give them information, and they will develop themselves.” In short, we have shifted development from an organizational

responsibility to an individual responsibility. Expecting people to come into your organization fully assembled or expecting people to develop themselves IS A RECIPE FOR MEDIOCRITY NOT EXCELLENCE.

By the way – THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE WORKFORCE TODAY. The problem is that most leaders  are leading with outdated leadership and organizational models that don’t fit the world, the workplace, and the workforce we have today. As is often the case, the issue is leadership, not the workforce. 

We live in a fast-paced world where the speed of changes continues to accelerate. Just doing tasks is a recipe for mediocrity today, not excellence. Also, expecting people to come into your organization fully assembled is naive at best and self-sabotaging at worst. Everyone comes to your organization with their own life experience, work experience, and set of assumptions about how life works. They will not see what you see, know what you know, want what you want, and believe what you believe unless you develop them to seek, know, want, believe, and by into what your organization is doing.

Why a Rapid Response Team is needed today

We need the Rapid Response Team today for 5 reasons:

• The speed of change is accelerating – and it is not slowing down.
• As the speed of change accelerates the less that leaders can physically control. Leaders are “in effect” putting the power in the hands of their team every day to create success and growth, whether they like it or not.
• The most people you hire the less likely they are to see what you see, believe what you believe, know what you know, and want what you want. This is because everyone comes to your organization with their own life experience and work experience.
• There is always some assembly required. Team members cannot see what you see, know what you know, think like you think, believe what you believe, and want what you want without development. Everyone comes to their role with their own life experience, expectations, and skills.
• In a rapidly changing world, Process is King – not tasks.

In the next blog we will explore the skills & behaviors needed in a Rapid Response Team.