High performing teams are a function of:
- The clarity in the purpose of teams in relation to business purpose
- The clarity in work that needs to be done, and what the definition of success is
- Alignment of individual capabilities to purpose
- Alignment of work processes, tooling and systems of work that balances teams to be creatively effective within their scope of work while meeting the interface requirements to deliver the inputs and outputs needed.
- The openness of communication and the ability to deal with the hard truth about hard things.
These are not accidental and when executed in a particular sequence enable great results to flow.
The mechanisms to make this work differ between highly distributed teams v.s. localised teams, however, are equally doable. You also have the variable of the speed of growth relative to new blood v.s. experienced blood that is in-house in the context of culture and values.
I touch on this in an article around digital leadership:
Happy to converse more about this.