Car Engines, Teams and What Not.

Every four months, we visit our car dealer to get Yuki serviced for engine oil change and preventive maintenance.

My older brother who’s a car enthusiast taught me early on that engine oil serves as the lubricant that ensure minimal friction between thousands of colliding metals at high-speed.

Triple A: Shifting the Team into Peak Performance. (PhotoCredits: www.mazdavacaville.com)

Morever, as fresh oil moves through the engine, the lubrication of the metal parts increases the engine’s performance and helps it run more efficiently. Routine oil and filter changes also help remove particles and sludge, keeping engines at peak condition.

Now, keeping in line with the illustration of machinery, let me change gears into organizational leadership.

These past few months, I’ve stumbled upon something of the kind. When these three are present in a team, peak performance is expected. It’s also easy to remember since they all start with the letter A, hence the term coined “Triple A”:

Alignment
Agreement
Accountability

Let’s do a quick break down.

Alignment: This is being on the same page on the expected results, measurement of progress, process to achieve expected results and team priority to name a few.

Agreement: This is a step higher to alignment since being on the same page on what’s important does not automatically mean being in agreement on what is important. Without Agreement, Alignment doesn’t matter.

Accountability: This is the final step towards high performance. It means being held for what one said they would do, when they said they would do it. Without Accountability, nothing else matters.

Yet once Alignment, Agreement and Accountability are present in a team, watch out; Teamwork begins to accelerate.

It is nothing dissimilar to a car engine: The Triple A serves as the oil that lubricates the engine of the team, minimizing friction between teammates and enabling peak performance.

——————————————————
Florentino Hernando is the Managing Director of FA Hernando Consulting, a managment consulting firm with the mission to build great companies.