Executive Interviews: Interview with Bill Fischer on Building High Performance Teams
May 2009 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Bill Fischer
Professor of Technology, IMD

• How important is it to sustain high performance teams? How do you think these teams have to be kept focused? What do you think companies should be doing to keep their tempo and temperaments going in these tough times?
  Let me speak specifically about Virtuoso Teams: VTs are not, and should not, be permanent assignments. They are explicitly temporary in nature, and probably cannot sustain the energy/passion that is an inherent part of a VT experience. What this means is that we should assemble VTs with the realization that when they accomplish their ambitious goals, we should let them go. They were chosen for a specific purpose, and when that purpose has been met, it is unreasonable to assume that they are the team we would choose for a future objective.Miles Davis achieved successful revolutions in contemporary music, at least four different times (which is no small achievement!), but he did it with four entirely different teams.

• Professor, one of your focused research areas is innovation. What kind of innovation do you suggest in these recessionary times?
  Frankly speaking, I think that our times call out for more innovation of all types – product, process, and business model innovation; this is not the time for cost-cutting only; we need change, and we need ambitious change, if we are to pull ourselves out of this crisis that we are now in, and that is true across all industries, and all sectors of a modern economy.

• What is the role of business schools in equipping the students with the necessary skills and attitudes to be part of either virtuoso teams or high performance teams?
  This is a great question. I think that business schools should encourage managers to think about what the prerequisites for “big change” are, and how they challenge much of what we take for granted in the traditional approaches to teamwork (harmonious teams, hiring for attitudes, less attention to the conversational environments, a hesitancy to endorse a strong, central leader, etc.). In fact, Iwould argue that we should not only teach such approaches, but live them as well. Why not experiment with Virtuoso Team approaches in the actual delivery of business school educations or programs? Our belief is that we’ve moved too far away from the individual in celebrating the importance of the team, and that when “big change” is being pursued, great teams need to be assembled from great individual performers, who are allowed to continue to be individually great, within a team context.