MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Establishing High-Performing Teams: Lessons From Health Care

Why is it that teams following the same best practices can achieve different results? We studied new team formation to understand why some teams succeed while others struggle.

Effective teams can be significant drivers of innovations that enable broader quality improvements and efficiency gains across organizations. But despite the wealth of research and managerial expertise describing characteristics of effective teams, people and organizations still struggle to deploy teams that achieve their potential, regardless of individual effort and good intentions. Our research suggests that transitioning to effective teams depends on mutually reinforcing functional and cultural change processes. The way in which organizations combine these two key change processes is critical for success.