High Performance Teams, Inspired By F1 Teams
Performance is easiest to grasp in sports. We grew up watching it on TV or, some of us, practicing it “with the team”. As a kid I was mesmerized by Formula 1, not by the drivers, but by their teams in the garage. During my coaching with Rodica Obancea, we came up with the idea of creating a side-by-side analysis of F1 teams and my activity as ING Chapter Lead. Let’s take a closer look on some case studies, and see what ideas you can apply hands-on, in your business team. Originally posted in my native language on managerexpress.ro
If I had to describe you a high performant F1 team in 10 seconds, I would show you the double-stack pit-stop pulled out by Mercedes F1 in 2019 Chinese GP.
My team is a Frontend Chapter, a gathering of nine software developers dedicated to building the front end of mobile and web applications, each of them working in a separate fully-fledged squad; each squad capable of delivering a piece of software end-to-end. In a way, every member of the chapter works in a different team for a different race car, but under the same team colors. Despite working so spread, we counted up to 12 procedures that we share: starting with the way we design, implement and deliver changes, to the way we take our days off.
I’m inspired by Formula 1 because it is so similar to the competitive environment of organizations. It’s one of the few sports where, on the podium, there’s a forth trophy, awarded to the winning team.
“For me, there is 1600 superstars in Mercedes. I can not drive the car. I am unable to design an aerodynamic surface. But I try to understand everything around the guy who can. And I try to provide a framework for these individuals to perform at their best” — Toto Wolff, CEO Mercedes AMG F1, in Netflix series “Drive to Survive”
A Formula 1 team is a fully-fledged organization, with many various departments and roles, working for one year with the only goal of delivering the best results on the track, in the 21 races of the calendar. You will probably be surprised to find out they even have their own catering, logistics, videoconferencing (not much different than our videocalls at work), retrospectives, iteration sprints. F1 works “Agile” way before we even defined this terminology.
Do you know how pitstops worked in the 50s, at the beginning of F1? They lasted over a minute: only one mechanic was changing one wheel at a time, by hitting the stud with a hammer, to unscrew it. Today, a decent pitstop takes 2.5 seconds, with the world record of 1.82. How did they get here? Well, the tools are created with performance in mind: dedicated stand, with hanging cables for the pneumatic guns, hydraulic jack with turning handle, designed to save physical movement and increase operating speed. The crew is organized in established roles: one mechanic is in charge with fitting the new tire, one handles the used one, one is in charge with unscrewing and screwing the stud with the pneumatic gun, one operates the front jack, another one the rear end jack and one is operating the stop-go lights.
In the first race of 2018, in Australia, the young Haas F1 Team was on the verge of scoring impressive points (half the points they got in the whole 2017 season), a reward of their efforts for building a solid, competitive 2018 car. With an undertrained pit stop crew, they managed to retire both of their cars, each with an improperly fitted wheel, in two carbon-copy disastrous pit stops.
“It’s unbelievable to have the same problem in two stops, one on the front wheel, one on the rear wheel. Even if it’s not believable, it’s real. It happened. [..] It’s easy in my position to blame somebody, but in the end the buck stops with me” — Guenther Steiner, manager Haas F1 Team, in Netflix series “Drive to Survive”
What did the manager do to correct it? He asked for roles to shift from one racing session to another; not as a punishment, but as a method to bring back confidence for the ones who made mistakes. He established a new role, the auditor, a mechanic who can override the automatic stop-go lights. In both of the troublesome pitstops, the mechanics knew the wheels were not fitted, but once the go-lights were green, they couldn’t switch them back to red anymore.
How do teams make mistakes? The tools may fail (the pneumatic gun did not work as expected, it gave the impression the stud was screwed), one of the roles may not deliver the required quality, or one of the roles may be missing altogether. All roles and tools are equally important for performance. Eddie Irvine jokes he missed the 1999 world title by two championship points and one wheel: in Nürburgring, his team failed to find his forth wheel in timely manner, as a result of changing his mind last minute, from wet to dry tires.
A high performance team is capable to work in extreme conditions, in a fast-changing environment, and exploit opportunities; for example, when there’s a hazard on the racing track, a pit stop is less penalizing because the contenders are anyway driving slowly on the track. Most teams have to pick one of their drivers for the “discounted” pit stop, but as you saw at the beginning of the article, some teams have the necessary confidence to double stack their cars without ruining the race for either of them.
When I listed the 12 procedures in my team, I realized we had 12 spots to work on performance, 12 places where we were having 1-minute pitstops. Where we hit the stud with the hammer, where tools, strategies and roles could have been adjusted in order to gain performance.
- Look around in your own team, in the team in which you perform or in the team that you manage: what procedures can be re-designed, having performance in mind?
- Invite your colleagues to inspect, to provide feedback and come up with solutions. Don’t skip 1:1s, they’re your first candidate for this feedback to show up.
- Insist on being guided and guiding for performance. Be that Toto Wolff that may not know how to fit tires, but understands what it takes and creates the framework for the team to get there.
- Ask for retrospectives wherever suited, don’t limit yourself to Agile retros. Always make a step back and think in terms of roles and tools. What’s working, what’s not? Don’t lose yourself in details or context. Every human being makes mistakes, but is the framework helping to avoid and to overcome mistakes?
- Constantly challenge your procedures, even the ones that look time-proof. All procedures are subject to becoming obsolete one day. In my chapter, an outdated procedure had us waiting 50 minutes for the software to get packaged, while now it only takes 3 minutes. We can now afford double stacking ;) Together with my other colleagues in ING, we cut down the new-hire onboarding time from a few days to a few hours.
Enzo Ferrari once said “Aerodynamics are for people who can’t build engines.”. Enzo was born a century ago. How can one make a difference today, when engines and chassis can be bought, or copied? High performance teams are defined by the amount of small innovations in roles and tools, and their constant focus to improve, and not by a new fancy engine. It may mean a role that’s missing or a new way of setting up retrospectives. Tiny innovations in the way of working are also much more difficult for competitors to copy.
If you enjoyed my pit stops comparison, you may want to take a look at how the Red Bull F1 Team is performing, as a team: how they smashed three times the pitstop world record , how they replaced a broken sparkplug in 8 minutes during a 15 minutes quali session, or how they replaced an entire front suspension in 20 minutes, only 28 seconds before the start of the race. What. A. Team.
