Speeding up team learning

cardiac surgery is one of medicine's modem miracles. In an operating room n o larger than many household kitchens, a patient is rendered functionally d ead while a surgical team repairs or replaces damaged arteries or valves. E ach operation requires incredible teamwork-a single error can have disastro us consequences. in other words, surgical teams are not all that different from the cross-functional teams that have become crucial to business succes s. The challenge of team management these days is not simply to execute existi ng processes efficiently. lt's to implement new processes-as quickly as pos sible. But adopting new technologies or new business processes is highly di sruptive, regardless of industry The authors studied how surgical teams at 16 major medical centers implemented a difficult new procedure for performi ng cardiac surgery. The setting was ideal for rigorously focusing on how te ams learn and why some learn faster than others. The authors found that the most successful teams had leaders who actively m anaged the groups' learning efforts. Teams that most successfully implement ed the new technology shared three essential characteristics. They were des igned for learning; their leaders framed the challenge so that team members were highly motivated to learn; and an environment of psychological safety fostered communication and innovation. The finding that teams learn more quickly if they are explicitly managed fo r learning poses a challenge in many areas of business. Team leaders in bus iness tend to be chosen more for their technical expertise than for their m anagement skills. Team leaders need to become adept at creating learning en vironments, and senior managers need to look beyond technical competence an d identify leaders who can motivate and manage teams of disparate specialis ts.