TLDR: Many FM organisations call groups of people “teams”, but labels don’t create team performance. Most FM “teams” are really working groups that meet often but achieve little, a problem made worse by hierarchy, job titles and the halo effect. Effective teams tend to be small, disciplined and focused: they deliver results because they work together to a common purpose. The question FM leaders should ask is not whether they have a team on paper, but whether they have a group of people capable of working effectively together to deliver outcomes that no individual could achieve alone.

The Power of Effective Teams

During an operational review meeting earlier this year, two attending managers were congratulating themselves on forming a “new team” to deal with rising maintenance backlogs. On the surface, the team looked impressive. Senior titles, long experience, a clear mandate. Months later, the backlog was bigger than ever. Why? Because they weren’t a team at all: they were a working group with a familiar label, all seemingly working towards independent outcomes. In the world of facilities management, calling a collective group of individuals a team doesn’t make it perform like one. We hear it all the time. Bid Teams. Asset Teams. Maintenance Teams. But consistently, we see these ‘teams’ underperforming or falling foul of external pressures and politics.

The Discipline That Separates Teams from Groups

In their HBR article “The Discipline of Teams” (July-August 2005), authors Katzenbach and Smith remind us of a simple truth: groups don’t become teams just because someone gives them that name. Committees, task forces, councils - many of these remain collections of individuals striving to performing a function. Their performance is the sum of individual outputs, nothing more. A real team, however, produces something extra: collective work products. That might be a new mobilisation plan, a winning bid, a jointly developed solution for a failing HVAC system, or a zero-defect safety culture. Effective teams rely on mutual accountability, complementary skills, and a shared purpose. In FM, that difference is stark. When critical systems are at risk, individual brilliance won’t save the day - collaborative performance will.

A Story of Transformation

Effective teams can accomplish great things with constrained resources. As an example, in the post-war years, the Japanese motor manufacturer Toyota didn’t have the resources of its American rivals to compete. Instead, it developed tightly disciplined teams focused on continuous improvement (Kaizen) and waste reduction. These small, empowered teams transformed Toyota into one of the world’s most efficient manufacturers. Today, their practices form the foundation of Lean Thinking used well beyond the automotive industry.

FM has its equivalents to Toyota, albeit on a smaller scale. I’ve seen small site-based delivery teams, often under-resourced, pull together to deliver savings and improvements that whole organisations or corporate departments struggled with. It’s also something seen within high performing bid teams where a small group of individuals create compelling, innovative propositions that wow the client. The difference wasn’t boardroom directives, hierarchy or headcount. It was the discipline of behaving as a team.

The Halo Effect and the Trap of Labels

There’s a danger in FM of being blinded by what psychologists call the halo effect. We see a group of managers with impressive job titles and assume their collective presence equals team performance. In reality, many teams never properly establish shared goals or mutual accountability. The result is endless meetings, superficial missions, and mounting cynicism. It’s a bit like watching a group of rowers in the same boat, but each pulling at a different rhythm. To an onlooker, it looks coordinated. But the boat drifts, energy is wasted, and progress stalls.

What Makes an Effective Team in FM?

So how do we apply the discipline of teams to facilities management and to Keyne Group’s work with clients? Here are the essentials:

1. Common Purpose Give the team a purpose they can get behind. This isn’t a blanket directive to just “run the contract” but instead “how do we work together to transform client experience by reducing reactive calls by 40% within 12 months?” The purpose must be specific, measurable, and energising. Translate purpose into numbers: reduce energy use by 25%, improve planned vs reactive ratio to 80/20, achieve 100% compliance on statutory tasks. This embeds purpose and direction for everyone involved.

2. Complementary Skills Bring together technical experts, planners, data analysts, and client-facing staff to deliver against a common purpose. There is often a temptation to limit conflict within group activities by restricting dissenting viewpoints or circumventing known challengers. This can lead to myopic viewpoints or groupthink where group members reinforce a singular narrative to avoid difficult discussions. FM problems rarely fall neatly into one skillset or job function and a capable, facilitated team can accomplish great things in short periods when they apply their objective reasoning to the tasks in hand.

3. Right Sizing Effective teams tend to be fewer than ten people. There’s a temptation to throw large numbers of resources into solving a problem or performance challenge. At times, the perception is that having a large number of members participating in the issues in hand removes problems or obstructions, or else embeds governance into the outcomes. This is often counterproductive or wasteful as individuals often disagree on approaches, revert to what they think is a better way of doing things, or find the easiest pathway to agreement to avoid stress and save time. I’ve seen many bids and projects reduced to mediocrity through enforcing large teams. Trust the individuals you’ve appointed to get the tasks done. If you don’t, consider what has to change. Where big groups are necessary, break them into smaller functional teams with a narrowed remit and clear direction.

4. Mutual Accountability In a hierarchy, there’s typically upwards accountability with a downward cascade of directives. This can often lead to blame, mixed messaging, and imbalanced efforts. Where the whole team assumes joint accountability for the entire outcome, there tends to be more of a collaborative focus on the objectives. This is a fundamental shift away from a culture where “my boss checks my work” towards an environment where “we promised each other we’d deliver this mobilisation plan by Friday”.

5. Collective Work Products Working together on outcomes where joint effort is essential and reinforces team behaviours. Clear outputs require joint, combined effort. Elements such as risk registers, new CAFM workflows, client-facing energy reduction initiatives, and innovative operational solutions all need diverse efforts to provide a comprehensive and effective outcome. This is often disrupted by mavericks ‘or cowboys’ who insist on ploughing on with their singular vision of reality.

Why Keyne Group Cares

At Keyne Group, much of our work involves helping FM organisations build the discipline of teams into their bids and delivery models. We’ve seen too many proposals list “strong governance teams” that are, in reality, a series of reporting lines. That isn’t a team, it’s an org chart. When we coach clients, we push for something different. We encourage them to define small, cross-functional units with ownership of collective outputs that drive contract performance. We know that a “team” with a real purpose - backed by clear goals and accountability - is far more persuasive to evaluators than any number of flowcharts. And more importantly, it delivers better outcomes on the ground.

So, Where Do You See Real Teams in Your World?

The question for FM professionals isn’t whether you’ve got enough people or whether you’ve labelled them correctly. The question is whether those people share a common purpose, hold each other accountable, and produce outputs together that no individual could deliver alone. At Keyne Group, we believe every organisation faces performance challenges where teams are the only real answer. The challenge is recognising when you’ve got a working group and when you need to create a team. So, in your workplace: where do you see real teams at work, and where are you mistaking groups for teams?

AI Disclaimer: Image created using AI tools.