The Magic Behind Winning Teams (And the Discipline Behind the Magic)

Dena Lowery | Chief Operating Officer | Opus Agency
The Magic Behind
Winning Teams
(AND THE DISCIPLINE BEHIND THE MAGIC)

2
I am a member of a team, and I rely on
the team. I defer to it and sacrifice for it,
because the team—not the individual—
is the ultimate champion.
Mia Hamm
OPUS AGENCY

OPUS AGENCY 3
FOCUS ON THE TEAM, NOT THE DREAM
“One mistake I’ve seen people repeatedly make is focusing too much
attention on their dream and too little on their team. But the truth is that
if you build the right team, the dream will almost take care of itself.”
New York Times bestselling author John C. Maxwell
Teamwork 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know
INTRODUCTION: THE OPUS PERSPECTIVE
Team is everything.
IN BUSINESS, and it doesn’t matter what the industry is,
the ability to build and sustain a cohesive team can mean
the difference between success and failure.
Being the best in your field simply isn’t good enough anymore—we live in an era
of innumerable acceptable options, where everyone is good at what they do.
Truly great companies—the ones that sustainably grow and thrive over time—focus
on teamwork as a core competency, bringing talented individuals together, creating
a shared vision for everyone to coalesce around, and empowering the team with
tools and knowledge to make success repeatable.

OPUS AGENCY 4
“Do your business #relationships start with a strong
#team? See @OpusAgency’s #eBook. bit.ly/TeamCS
#EventProfs #TeamCS”
INTRODUCTION: THE OPUS PERSPECTIVE
Create the team
to create success.
THE GOAL OF THIS EBOOK is to share what Opus
has learned about building great teams.
In our case, we’ve built an operational philosophy to foster a culture of team while
creating Customer Success. We call it TeamCS™—more on that later. But suffice
it to say, we’ve cultivated a platinum list of clients, industry awards, and steady
year-over-year growth, and we attribute that success to TeamCS™.
Event marketing, at its core, is a relationship business—at the client, agency, and
partner levels. Relationships are what make the industry go, and those relationships
are sustained through a team’s understanding, focus, follow-through, and delivery
of quality results. When team members understand objectives at the client and
stakeholder levels, they focus their talents on their role as a part of a team,
follow through on responsibilities, and expect exceptional delivery from
one another.
TeamCS™ | People + Values + Methodology = Customer Success

5
The achievements of an organization are the
results of the combined effort of each individual.
Vince Lombardi
Talented People
OPUS AGENCY

OPUS AGENCY 6
TALENTED PEOPLE: THE OPUS PERSPECTIVE
Build a team, not
an all-star roster.
IN RECENT YEARS, the art of “team” has almost become
a lost art, as firms have increasingly focused on recruiting
and retaining the mythical All-Star Employee.
Sourcing the best possible talent is, of course, still hugely important—the old adage that
“a company’s greatest asset is its people” remains true. But it isn’t just about adding high
performers to your team.
Your goal should be to attract, retain, and develop people who are not just talented
and motivated, but who are also mindful about wanting your organization to be
successful on a holistic level. Empathy is an incredibly underrated skill to consider
when structuring an organization. Can your people see each project, client
initiative, annual objective, and overall company vision through others’
eyes, as well as their own? Can they define what success and failure look
like to the leadership team? A project lead? Their colleagues or other
cross-departmental stakeholders? And most importantly, to the customer?

OPUS AGENCY 7
BUILD A TEAM, NOT AN ALL-STAR ROSTER CONTINUED
If you can build a team where each individual contributor is capable of seeing
the work not in terms of their own success, but the success of their teammates
and the customer, you’ve accomplished the first step toward building a team
capable of achieving remarkable heights.
LENDING A HELPING HAND SINCE THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC
“Human beings have thrived for fifty thousand years not because
we are driven to serve ourselves, but because we are inspired to
serve others.”
New York Times bestselling author Simon Sinek
Leaders Eat Last

OPUS AGENCY 8
Structure, assess,
adjust, repeat.
You need to first spend the time to develop a framework and structure. And don’t limit
your thinking to the people you currently have on-hand—build out a structure that best
supports your department and business. Consider:»
» What roles are missing?»
» What roles will you need as you grow?»
» What current roles may need to be redefined?
Once your structure is framed, make an honest assessment of your talent:»
» Who fits in their current role?»
» Who is under-utilized, or may need training or direction?»
» What talent is missing?

OPUS AGENCY 9
STRUCTURE, ASSESS, ADJUST, REPEAT CONTINUED
Teams excel in environments where they understand the structure, their role, and their potential.
So empathy and big-picture thinking are beneficial—but how do you recruit for those traits when
it’s time to start adding new talent? Here’s what we look for at Opus:»
» Have they been part of high-performing teams in the past (work, sports, hobbies)?»
» Do they volunteer in their community?»
» What have they learned about your company prior to interviewing?»
» How well can they articulate how their skills will translate to your
organization’s success?
“10 questions to ask when building a high-performing
#team: bit.ly/TeamCS @OpusAgency #eBook
#CustomerSuccess #EventProfs #TeamCS”

“@Microsoft’s @katiqu on protecting your team
#culture: bit.ly/TeamCS @OpusAgency #eBook
#CustomerSuccess #EventProfs #TeamCS”
OPUS AGENCY 10
Kati Quigley
Sr. Director, Worldwide
Partner Community
Marketing
TALENTED PEOPLE: HEAR FROM THE EXPERTS
Microsoft
MICROSOFT STRIVES TO “empower every person and every
organization on the planet to achieve more.”
In other words, Microsoft is in the “optimizing people” business. Here’s how Kati Quigley—
Microsoft’s Senior Director of Worldwide Partner Community Marketing—does exactly that:
First, we recruit both externally and internally—looking for diversity in age, experience, gender, and
nationality—while seeking skills that are complementary to the manager and the team. You should always
try to hire people that are smarter than you are.
Next, we agree to a set of shared values as a team, talking often and openly about our goals, how we like
to work, different work styles, and how we will function as a team. We do this on both a team level, as well as
manager-to-employee. As team members, we do our best to lead by example and conduct frequent and ongoing
check-ins with one another to ensure cohesion and that potential problems are dealt with early on. The goal?
Constant clarity on team values and objectives.
It’s not easy, and there are always obstacles or challenges to protecting your team culture—outside influences,
timeline pressures, inconsistent engagements outside of your team, volume of work, etc. But there’s no way to
function if we’re all working in silos, and if communication is not open, frustrations and confusion mount until
the team breaks and work could fail. We gain efficiencies, as well as job satisfaction, when we work together.

OPUS AGENCY 11
Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson (Harvard
Business Review; November 2007). Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Publishing.
TALENTED PEOPLE
Roles feed the goals.
CULTIVATING A HEALTHY atmosphere doesn’t happen by accident,
or simply as a byproduct of the personalities involved.
It requires an intentional focus and clearly defined goals. While studying how to “create collaboration”
(they found eight specific ways), Harvard Business Review surveyed 1,500 people on 55 distinct teams,
and their findings often defied expectations:
Which is more important to promoting collaboration: a clearly defined approach toward achieving the goal
or clearly specified roles for individual team members? The common assumption is that carefully spelling
out the approach is essential, but leaving the roles of individuals within the team vague will encourage
people to share ideas and contribute in multiple dimensions.
Our research shows that the opposite is true: collaboration improves when the roles of individual
team members are clearly defined and well understood—when individuals feel that they can
do a significant portion of their work independently. Without such clarity, team members are likely
to waste too much energy negotiating roles or protecting turf, rather than focusing on the task.
In addition, team members are more likely to want to collaborate if the path to achieving the
team’s goal is left somewhat ambiguous. If a team perceives the task as one that requires
creativity, where the approach is not yet well known or predefined, its members are
more likely to invest time and energy in collaboration.

“@HarvardBiz on 8 ways to create #collaboration, in
this @OpusAgency #eBook: bit.ly/TeamCS #Teams
#CustomerSuccess #EventProfs”
OPUS AGENCY 12
TALENTED PEOPLE
… so what are
the eight ways?
1. Investing in signature relationship practices
Executives can encourage collaborative behavior by making highly visible investments—
in facilities with open floor plans to foster communication, for example—that demonstrate
their commitment to collaboration.
2. Modeling collaborative behavior
At companies where the senior executives demonstrate highly collaborative behavior
themselves, teams collaborate well.
3. Creating a “gift culture”
Mentoring and coaching—especially on an informal basis—help people build
the networks they need to work across corporate boundaries.
4. Ensuring the requisite skills
Human resources departments that teach employees how to build
relationships, communicate well, and resolve conflicts creatively
can have a major impact on team collaboration.

OPUS AGENCY 13
TALENTED PEOPLE
… SO WHAT ARE THE EIGHT WAYS? CONTINUED
5. Supporting a strong sense of community
When people feel a sense of community, they are more comfortable reaching out
to others and more likely to share knowledge.
6. Assigning team leaders that are both task- and relationship-oriented
The debate has traditionally focused on whether a task or a relationship orientation
creates better leadership, but in fact both are key to successfully leading a team. Typically,
leaning more heavily on a task orientation at the outset of a project and shifting toward
a relationship orientation once the work is in full swing works best.
7. Building on heritage relationships
When too many team members are strangers, people may be reluctant to share knowledge.
The best practice is to put at least a few people who know one another on the team.
8. Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity
Cooperation increases when the roles of individual team members are sharply
defined, yet the team is given latitude on how to achieve the task.
Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson
(Harvard Business Review; November 2007). Reprinted by permission of Harvard
Business Publishing.
Learn more:
https://hbr.org/2007/11/eight-ways-to-build-collaborative-teams

OPUS AGENCY 14
Elena Cartasegna
Co-Owner
The Starting Point
THE STARTING POINT delivers large-scale change through
executive training and a mobile learning platform for CEOs
and management teams around the world—they know a thing
or two about building high-performing teams.
Opus has a long-standing relationship with co-founders Elena Cartasegna and Henrik
Lannerhjelm; we reached out for their thoughts on team building:
To know how to recruit and lead a great team, you first have to know what you’re competing
about. For most organizations, the answer is talent. You can’t grow your business beyond your
people. People are your business today.
All the global leaders we meet want their people to be more innovative, to do more and take
more ownership. Yet people can only do and take ownership for what they understand. This
means the most essential task for leadership is to build and protect a culture in which your
people—your team—can choose to learn and grow. We call it a habitat for talent. The habitat
is the enabler for change.

Henrik Lannerhjelm
Co-Owner
OPUS AGENCY 15
THE STARTING POINT CONTINUED
We’ve been living in a world that rewards those who know what other people don’t know,
who have information other people don’t have. We’ll soon live in a world where everyone
knows almost everything. With the technological revolution, knowledge has become
a widely available commodity.
If everyone has access to every bit of information, then the ability to compete is not about
knowing things. It’s about having more understanding than your competitors, not more
knowledge. Understanding is figuring out the total picture, while knowing is grasping
the details. Understanding is the competence to do what you don’t know.

16OPUS AGENCY
TALENTED PEOPLE
Self analysis.
ARE YOU FOSTERING a team-focused culture? Ask yourself these five questions:
Am I hiring
for empathy?
Am I fostering
collaboration by
defining roles first
and goals second?
Am I not just competing
for talent, but fostering
a growth habitat after
the hire?
Am I differentiating
with understanding
rather than knowledge?
Am I employing these eight best practices
for building a collaborative team?
1. Investing in signature relationship practices
2. Modeling collaborative behavior
3. Creating a gift culture
4. Ensuring the requisite skills
5. Supporting a strong sense of community
6. Assigning team leaders that are both
task- and relationship-oriented
7. Building on heritage relationships
8. Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity
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Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common
vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments
toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows
common people to attain uncommon results.
Andrew Carnegie
Shared Values
OPUS AGENCY

“What are the shared #values that bind a high-performing
#team together? @OpusAgency #eBook bit.ly/TeamCS
#EventProfs #TeamCS”
OPUS AGENCY
SHARED VALUES: THE OPUS PERSPECTIVE
Turn a crowd of talented
people into a team.
SO YOU’VE EXERCISED due diligence, vetted for empathy and
understanding vs. knowledge, and hired the best talent—good start.
Now comes the hard part.
Once the team is assembled, the trick is to define and defend a set of shared values everyone can coalesce
around. Nailing the logistics—being consistently effective at delivering on your value proposition—
should simply be a given. It’s the ante to play the game. But if you don’t have good values and a universal
understanding of the why behind the what by when, you simply won’t last. No matter how brilliant
your business plan.
That’s why at Opus, our leadership talks openly about our values, which are a significant component
of performance expectations and reviews, and selection criteria for our employee of the month
and year-end employee awards. Integrity. Transparency. Innovation. Shared learning and
experiences. Valuing respectful conflict in the shared search for the best answer. Embracing
pressure with positivity and holding your fellow teammates up when they need it—these
values become the glue that bind your team together when pressure starts ratcheting up.
Here’s how you do it.
18

OPUS AGENCY 19
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some
Teams Pull Together and
Others Don’t by Simon
Sinek (Portfolio, 2014)
SHARED VALUES
Adhere to your vision.
SIMON SINEK’S BESTSELLER Leaders Eat Last
considers highly effective teams.
Including this remarkable story of how a culture of trust, transparency, and collaboration
led to the invention of a product now used at nearly every desk, kitchen refrigerator,
and brainstorming session in the world:
Spencer Silver, the scientist who is partially credited with the creation of the Post-it, was working in his
lab at 3M, actually trying to develop a very strong adhesive. Unfortunately, he wasn’t successful. What he
accidentally made was a very weak adhesive. Based on the job specs given to him, he had failed. But Silver
didn’t throw his “failure” in the trash out of embarrassment. In fact, the unintentional invention was shared
with others at the company, just in case someone else could figure out a way to use it.
And that’s exactly what happened. A few years later, Art Fry, another scientist at 3M, was in church choir practice
getting frustrated because he couldn’t get his bookmark to stay in place. He remembered Silver’s weak adhesive
and realized he could use it to make the perfect bookmark! And that was the birth of what would become one of
the best-recognized brands in history, with four thousand varieties sold in over a hundred countries.
The cross-pollination of ideas—combined with an emphasis on sharing across product lines—has led to an
atmosphere of collaboration that makes 3M a place where employees feel valued. “Innovation from interaction”
is one of the company’s favorite mottos.

OPUS AGENCY 20
Jeanne Robb
Director, Global
Corporate Events
SHARED VALUES: HEAR FROM THE EXPERTS
Cisco
AT OPUS, we do a lot of work with Cisco, a company that has
spent more than 30 years helping prove “that amazing things
can happen when you connect the previously unconnected.”
That connection can be literal, as in networks and servers, but it can also be experiential,
which is why the company focuses on events marketing to support its message. Here’s
Director of Global Corporate Events, Jeanne Robb, on the values which sustain a connected
team culture:
Team-first attitude: It’s all about the team. People can look great on paper, and they might even
do a really good job, but ultimately their success will be determined by how they treat other people.
Peer recognition: At staff meetings, we call out recent programs and have those involved present,
so they have face time in front of their peers. We also celebrate successes by sending kudos emails
from executives, stakeholders, and peers to our Senior Director and team alias email.
Saying “we,” not “I”: We try so hard to foster a really open, caring environment, and push the team
forward, ensuring they have time with executives and top management. I make a conscious effort
to include employees every time stakeholders and executives come to me with questions on their
programs—I want them to have that visibility.

“@cisco’s @JrobbRobb: “Community creates
passion, which creates commitment.”@OpusAgency
#eBook bit.ly/TeamCS #EventProfs #TeamCS”
OPUS AGENCY 21
CISCO CONTINUED
Community building: If the team isn’t your number one focus, it’s hard to motivate
people. I feel so blessed to have such a strong team, but it didn’t come because they’re all
just good people. They are, but we worked really hard to foster that sense of community.
Celebrating successes: That community creates passion, which creates commitment.
I’m constantly trying to motivate my people to embrace all that they’ve achieved—
“Look at what we’ve done. Look what we’ve achieved.” You won’t have a team if you’re
not celebrating those successes.

OPUS AGENCY 22
SHARED VALUES
Teamwork is (actually!)
a science.
AT OPUS, we often talk about how good teams don’t happen
by accident. Turns out, MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory
proved exactly that.
In various industries across multiple countries, researchers equipped employees with
electronic badges that collected communication behavior data—tone of voice, body
language, who they talked to and how much, and more.
The results proved how well we communicate has a direct impact on the bottom line.
Concerned about uneven performance across its branches, a bank in Prague
outfitted customer-facing teams with electronic sensors for six weeks. The first
two maps display data collected from one team of nine people over the course
of different days, and the third illustrates data collected from interactions
between management and all teams.
The New Science of Building Great Teams by Alex “Sandy” Pentland (Harvard Business
Review; April 2012).Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Publishing. COURTESY OF SOCIOMETRIC SOLUTIONS. GRAPHIC RECREATED BY OPUS AGENCY. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HARVARD BUSINESS PUBLISHING.
MANAGEMENT
TEAM2
TEAM3
TEAM4
TEAM5
TEAM6
TEAM7
TEAM8
TEAM9
TEAM10
AMOUNT OF
COMMUNICATION
BETWEEN TEAMS
INTERNAL
TEAM
ENERGY
F E
D
C
B
A
AMOUNT OF
COMMUNICATION
BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS
AMOUNT OF
INFORMAL
ENERGY
G
H
I
F E
D
C
B
A
TOTAL TEAM ENERGY
(DOT’S POSITION
REFLECTS WHO
CONTRIBUTES MOST)
IDEAL
TEAM
ENERGY
AMOUNT OF
INFORMAL
ENERGY
AMOUNT
OF ENERGY
CONTRIBUTED
TO TEAM
G
H
I
Energy
HOW TEAM MEMBERS CONTRIBUTE TO A TEAM AS A WHOLE
Clearly, these data come from a team at a branch with poor customer service.
We can see that A,C, and E give off more informal energy than the rest of the team
does. A, B, and C contribute a lot to the team, while the others contribute nothing.
The pattern illustrated here is often associated with hierarchical teams in which a
boss (C) issues commands while his lieutenants (A and B) reinforce his directions.
The three are a “team within a team,” and it’s unlikely that the others feel they
have no input. Often leadersare shocked and embarassed to see how much they
dominate a team and immediately try to change the pattern. Sharing such a map
with the team can make it easier for less energetic individuals to talk about their
sense of the team’s dysfunction, because data are objective and elevate the
discussion beyond attacks or complaints.
Engagement
HOW TEAM MEMBERS COMMUNICATE WITH ONE ANOTHER
This diagram shows that the same team’s engagement skews heavily to the same
three people (A, B, and C). G is making an effort to reach the decision makers, but
the team withing the team is where the engagement is. Those three people may
be higher up the ladder or simply more extroverted, but that doesn’t matter. This
pattern is associated with lower performance because the team is not getting ideas
or information from many of its members. Leaders can use this map both to assess
“invisible” team members (How can they get them more involved? Are they the
right people for the project?) and to play the role of a “charismatic connector”
by bringing together members who ought to be talking to one another and then
helping those members share their thinking with the entire group.
Exploration
HOW TEAMS COMMUNICATE WITH ONE ANOTHER
This map shows that management is doing a lot of exploring. Although its internal
team energy is relatively low, that is OK. Energy and engagement cannot be high
when exploration is, because when you’re exploring you have less time to engage
with your own team. In a high-functioning organization, however, there would
be more exploration among all the teams, and you’d see an arc between, say,
Teams 3 and 4, or Teams 5 and 9. A time lapse view of all the teams’ exploration
would show whether teams were oscillating between communication within their
own group (shown by the yellow dots) and exploration with other teams (shown
by the green arcs). If they’re not, it could mean silo busting is needed to encourage
proper exploration.

Terry Stotts
Head Coach,
Portland Trail Blazers
OPUS AGENCY 23
Take it from a professional
team-builder.
OPUS IS BASED just outside Portland, Oregon, which means
you see an awful lot of Trail Blazers red and black around our
office during basketball season.
We figured we could learn about building great teams from someone who does just that for a living,
so we reached out to head coach Terry Stotts. And then the darnedest thing happened—he replied!
Stotts’ Blazers squads have been known for achieving success by adopting a we-before-me attitude,
and a collegial team culture that’s increasingly rare in today’s star-driven professional sports
landscape. Here are some of his key philosophies on building a winning team culture:»
» Great team members hold each other accountable to the high standards and excellence their culture
expects and demands.»
» Team chemistry consists of the number of players on a team that make a commitment and priority
to winning—the greater the number, the better the chemistry.

“.@trailblazers Coach Terry Stotts on #leadership &
building a #winning #culture in latest @OpusAgency
#eBook bit.ly/TeamCS #Team”
OPUS AGENCY 24
TAKE IT FROM A PROFESSIONAL TEAM-BUILDER CONTINUED»
» Great teamwork is the only way to reach our ultimate moments, to create the breakthroughs
that define our career.»
» Successful teams have this mantra as part of their everyday existence: ”It can never be about me.”
Teams win through joint efforts, so stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy
the journey.»
» Do not overvalue your role to the team, and do not undervalue your teammates.
Together, you win championships—each must raise the level.»
» Four ways to be a great team member:
1. Lead by example.
2. Share positive, contagious energy.
3. Use your strengths to help the team.
4. Encourage!

25OPUS AGENCY
SHARED VALUES
Self analysis.
ARE YOU DEFINING and defending the shared values that will keep your team aligned?
Ask yourself these five questions:
Am I defining not just
the what by when,
but also the why?
Am I fostering a
culture where it’s
okay to fail along the
path to innovation,
and information is
transparently shared
across the organization?
Am I making a
conscious effort
to say we, not I?
Are we considering not just the
structure of our teams, but also:
1. How team members contribute
to their team as a whole
2. How team members communicate
with one another
3. How teams communicate
with one another
Am I approaching every day with
Coach Stotts’ four ways to be
a great team member in mind?
1. Lead by example.
2. Share positive, contagious energy.
3. Use your strengths to help
the team.
4. Encourage!
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26
Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together
is progress. Working together is success.
Henry Ford
Repeatable Methodology
OPUS AGENCY

REPEATABLE METHODOLOGY: THE OPUS PERSPECTIVE
Plan the work, work the plan.
YOUR PEOPLE ARE IN PLACE. Your shared values are clearly
defined, widely communicated, and modeled by your leaders in
both word and deed. Now, it’s time to put theory into practice:
Defining your methodology.
And while that may not exactly be the most pulse-quickening term, building the right
infrastructure and replicable processes to support your team culture really is the
“secret sauce.” Success is to be found not just in bringing the right people and
values together, but in teaching people how to be a team.
It isn’t enough that teams work well together; The needle is moved when teams solve
together. Taking advantage of strengths and shoring up weaknesses, encouraging
mindful work that anticipates customer needs, sharing best practices across
the entire organization (not just within individual teams), arming people
with processes and tools to do their jobs with ever-increasing efficiency
and the resulting bandwidth—these are the ingredients teams need to win.
OPUS AGENCY 27

PLAN THE WORK, WORK THE PLAN CONTINUED
Successful teams share several defining characteristics:»
» Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions
short and sweet.»
» Members face one another, and their conversations and gestures are energetic.»
» Members connect directly with one another—not just with the team leader.»
» Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.»
» Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back.
*The New Science of Building Great Teams by Alex Pentland (Harvard Business Review; April 2012).
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Publishing.
Learn more:
https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams
OPUS AGENCY 28

Team isn’t just a who,
it’s also a how.
STRUCTURE AND A PROVEN, replicable process enable creativity.
Established methodologies streamline the mundane, repetitive part of your team’s work, freeing
them up to collaborate more effectively, determine innovative solutions, and focus on “polishing”—
the eye-catching differentiation that will set your organization apart from the crowd. Consider:»
» What are the general methods and practices utilized in your organization? Are they honed to true
best practices and shared with the entire team?»
» Do you have a central repository where master templates live as they evolve to meet the team’s needs?»
» Are you strengthening the entire organization by sharing best practices across functional groups?»
» Are you giving your people the tools to reduce repetitive work in order to foster collaboration?»
» Are you providing training and mentorship for career growth that goes beyond simply
skills training?»
» Are you fostering an environment where outreach, relationships, and understanding
are built atop the foundation of proven methodologies?
OPUS AGENCY 29

“@salesforce VP of Strategic Events @eventgaucho
on value of a “first #offer”: @OpusAgency #eBook
bit.ly/TeamCS #EventProfs #Team”
OPUS AGENCY 30
Michele Schneider
Vice President of
Strategic Events
REPEATABLE METHODOLOGY: HEAR FROM THE EXPERTS
Salesforce
OPUS HELPS SALESFORCE bring its brand to life
at events around the world.
We’re proud to partner with a company that Forbes Magazine has named one of the
World’s Most Innovative Companies five years running; FORTUNE has chosen as one of
the World’s Most Admired Software Companies for the last three years; and that was ranked
in the top ten of FORTUNE’S 100 Best Companies to Work For list for the last two years.
Clearly, the leader in Customer Relationship Management places a premium on building
and supporting high-functioning teams. VP of Strategic Events Michele Schneider has honed
her best practices over six years of creating marquee events for the company:
Trust and transparency are huge. The more we share with each other, the faster we can work, the more
productive we can be, and the more we can help each other. It is crucial to be comfortable giving and
receiving feedback—which isn’t always easy for everyone.
We work in events, and there are hundreds of design elements to consider, spread across huge spaces.
There will always be requests for changes during the pre-show walkthrough, so I coined the concept
of a first offer. If you call the initial setup a first offer, no one takes the changes personally—after all,
it was just an offer.

OPUS AGENCY 31
REPEATABLE METHODOLOGY
Make the dialogue ongoing.
REMEMBER THAT HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW piece
on The New Science of Building Great Teams? It has some
fascinating lessons to teach about the value of effective,
ongoing communication, as well.
These maps depict the communication patterns in a German bank’s marketing department
in the days leading up to and immediately following a major new product launch.
The department had teams of four members each in customer service, sales, support,
development, and management. Besides collecting data on in-person interactions
with sociometric badges, we gathered e-mail data to assess the balance between
high-value face-to-face communication and lower-value digital messages.
We did not provide iterative feedback in this project, but if we had, by the end
of week one, we would have pointed out three negative trends the group could
have corrected: The invisibility of customer service, overreliance on e-mail,
and highly uneven communication among groups. If these issues had been
addressed, the problems with the product might have surfaced much
earlier, and the responses to them would probably have improved.
MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT
SALES
SALES
SALES
SALES
SUPPORT
SUPPORT
SUPPORT
SUPPORT
CUSTOMER
SERVICE
CUSTOMER
SERVICE
CUSTOMER
SERVICE
CUSTOMER
SERVICE
DEVELOPMENT
DEVELOPMENT
DEVELOPMENT
DAY 2 MANAGEMENT IS CLEARLY DOING
MOST OF THE COMMUNICATING
DAY 15 AS THE LAUNCH APPROACHES,
COMMUNICATION IS STARTLINGLY LOW.
DAY 6 MANAGEMENT
BY E-MAIL CONTINUES
DAY 23 TWO DAYS AFTER LAUNCH, TEAMS ARE
FINALLY COMMUNICATING IN PERSON, AS THEY
TRIAGE A DISASTROUS CAMPAIGN.
Most communication is via
e-mail, not face-to-face. In
an ideal siuation, the green
arcs would be thicker than
the gray ones, and there
would be strong connections
among all teams.
Sales is now clearly
engaging with development,
probably to learn the final
details of the product
offering and understand
its technical aspects.
Management is
communicating face-to-face
a little bit with every team
except customer service,
and most groups aren’t
talking much to one another.
The big jump in
communication here
might be a result of
sales’ hammering
development about
why the product isn’t
working and how it
can be fixed.
For the first time,
e-mail communication
is lower than face-to-
face communication.
In a crisis people
naturally start talking
more in person.
Customer
service is the
least connected
to other teams.
Customer
service is still
not involved.
Only sale and support
interact with each
other a lot in person—
most likely because
they are prepping for
the launch.
Customer
service and
support are
locked in all-
day meetings
trying to
patch the
problems.
Green indicates
face-to-face
communication
Thickness of
arcs indicates
the amount of
communication
between groups Gray indicates
communication
via e-mail
DEVELOPMENT
GRAPHIC RECREATED BY OPUS AGENCY. REPRINTED
BY PERMISSION OF HARVARD BUSINESS PUBLISHING.

OPUS AGENCY 32
MAKE THE DIALOGUE ONGOING CONTINUED
For one week, we gathered data on a team composed of Japanese and Americans who were
brainstorming a new design together in Japan. Each day, the team was shown maps of its
communication patterns and given simple guidance about what makes good communication
(active but equal participation).
Day 1 (Fig. 1): The two Japanese team members are not engaged, and a team within a team
seems to have formed around the member at the top right.
Day 7 (Fig. 2): The team has improved remarkably. Not only are the Japanese members
contributing more to energy and engagement (with the one at the bottom becoming
a high-energy, highly engaged team member) but some of the Day 1 “dominators”
(on the lower right, for example) have distributed their energy better.
The New Science of Building Great Teams by Alex “Sandy” Pentland (Harvard Business
Review; April 2012).Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Publishing.
GRAPHIC RECREATED BY OPUS AGENCY. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HARVARD BUSINESS PUBLISHING.
FIG.1
FIG.2

REPEATABLE METHODOLOGY: HEAR FROM THE EXPERTS
SPARK Executive Solutions
SPARK EXECUTIVE SOLUTIONS has been helping leaders
and business professionals—including those at Opus—build
high-performing teams with a healthy working culture for 20 years.
Here’s what owner and leadership consultant, Alyssa Gasca, has learned along the way about
instilling shared values in a collaborative team:
The highest performing companies are those that choose to consciously focus on building healthy teams.
The most important thing is to create an atmosphere where team dynamics and culture can be discussed
and addressed in a constructive way—honest talk and healthy conflict cannot be taboo. Organizations that
learn how to do this effectively are the ones that attract and retain the best people over the long run.
The secret to implementing and maintaining team culture is translating it into behaviors and habits that
all of the team’s leaders clearly understand, model, and hold one another accountable to. An organization
can say they value “transparency,” but if someone is not being honest when they speak, or information is
omitted and people are not comfortable asking questions about it, then that culture is not succeeding in
being “transparent.” If a company says that they are “innovative,” but do not allow individuals to take risks
and gracefully recover from making mistakes, then they will not be successful creating a culture of truly
innovative behavior.
“#Leadership pro @GascaAlyssa on the method behind
building workplace culture: @OpusAgency
#eBook bit.ly/TeamCS #EventProfs #TeamCS”
OPUS AGENCY
Alyssa Gasca
Owner
33

By the numbers…
GRATTON AND ERICKSON have found patterns of communication
to be the most important predictor of a team’s success…as significant
as all the other factors—individual intelligence, personality, skill, and
the substance of discussions—combined.
»» The best predictors of productivity are a team’s energy and engagement outside formal meetings. Together
those two factors explained one-third of the variations in dollar productivity among groups.
»» Drawing on that insight, we advised a call center’s manager to revise the employees’ coffee break schedule
so everyone on a team took a break at the same time, allowing people more time to socialize with
their teammates, away from their workstations.
»» It worked: AHT [Average Handling Time] fell by more than 20% among lower-performing
teams and decreased by 8% overall.
»» The manager is changing the break schedule at all 10 of the bank’s call centers…and is
forecasting $15 million a year in productivity increases.
»» He has also seen employee satisfaction at call centers rise, sometimes by more than 10%.
Learn more: https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams
OPUS AGENCY 34
Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson (Harvard
Business Review; November 2007). Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Publishing.

35OPUS AGENCY
Self analysis.
ARE YOU PROVIDING your teams with the tools they need to win?
Ask yourself these six questions:
Am I mentoring the
team to move from
working well together
to solving together,
identifying core
skills and talents that
strengthen the overall
team performance,
resulting in client
success?
Am I providing team
members with an
avenue or forum to
provide feedback? And
are they empowered
to provide and
prepared to receive
feedback? (e.g., the
first offer approach.)
Are we monitoring not
just whether but how
and how often teams
are communicating?
(Successful product
launches may hang
in the balance!)
Are we encouraging
and engaging in
active and equal
participation in our
planning, designing,
brainstorming…
actually, in pretty
much everything
we do?
Are our leaders
modeling our
organization’s values
daily in all they do?
Are honest talk
and healthy conflict
taboo? (Hint: They
shouldn’t be.)
1 2 3 4 5 6

36
TeamCS™
THE OPUS CUSTOMER SUCCESS FORMULA

TeamCS™
What’s your organization’s
North Star?
THE OPUS OPERATIONAL PHILOSOPHY to foster a culture
of team while creating Customer Success is called TeamCS.
It’s grounded in the thinking outlined in this eBook, and enabled by highly
effective, strategic teams.
We spend a lot of time thinking about team—we’ve been doing so since 1993, and
any success we’ve enjoyed is owed to the thoughtfulness with which we’ve nurtured
a culture of teamwork. That doesn’t just make Opus a fun place to work (although
it certainly is), but more importantly, it’s a philosophy that drives Customer Success.
In short, we’re seeking to redefine the concept of what team really means.
OPUS AGENCY 37

TeamCS™
People + Values + Methodology =
Customer Success
IT’S DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE, but nearly impossible to replicate.
PEOPLE: We’ve spent over 20 years perfecting the concept of “team”—not just the who, but the how. In
an industry where team is everything, Opus hires, trains, and mentors people specifically for effective
collaboration. Our environments are created for teamwork and our service lines are totally integrated.
VALUES: Opus employees operate with absolute clarity about how and why we do business—
everything revolves around operating with integrity. We’re immersed in a culture of trust,
transparency, open communication, and respect.
METHODOLOGY: An unrelenting focus on Customer Success is baked into every milestone
of every project we undertake. Our systems and processes are renowned in the industry
for empowering success and enabling collaboration.
“#TeamCS: The secret sauce behind how @OpusAgency
operates. See the #eBook: bit.ly/TeamCS #Team
#CustomerSuccess #EventProfs”
OPUS AGENCY 38

TeamCS™
What does this mean
to our customers?
TeamCS IS HOW OPUS has branded our culture of team, but
the philosophies are applicable for any organization. For us, this
means we become a part of our customers’ teams.
They learn that they can trust us to listen, provide frank assessments, and deliver what we
promise. For each pillar of TeamCS, we hold ourselves accountable to the following credos:
PEOPLE: You can trust that our team will be well-trained experts at our respective
jobs, but more importantly, that we are experts at collaboration.
VALUES: You can expect that we will understand your objectives and provide
relevant ideas and new strategies. We will perform with integrity and give our
very best in every circumstance. We will work with positive attitudes, always
seeking to provide creative solutions and results.
METHODOLOGY: You can trust that our TeamCS methodology will
ensure that proven systems and processes are always in play and
constantly being improved.
OPUS AGENCY 39

40OPUS AGENCY
OPUS AGENCYprovides event marketing, management, and production solutions to
Fortune 1000 companies. Since 1993, we have been a trusted adviser to a diverse group of customers
creating unique, high-quality events. We design, plan, and execute brand experiences that accelerate
results and enable Customer Success.
Our passion for Customer Success drives every aspect of our business—our amazing people, the values
they share, and our best-practice methodology. We would love to show you how TeamCS works!
COO Dena Lowery is responsible for Opus Agency’s operational performance. Leading
a tenured team of executives to individual performance and client success, she excels
at developing teams that run with a foundation of operational excellence along with
a vision and drive toward innovation. A 20-year events marketing veteran, Dena is
active within the industry and formerly served on the board of CEMA (Corporate
Event Marketing Association), as well as local philanthropic boards.
Being the youngest of 10 children (and the only girl!), Dena honed her teamwork
and negotiation skills at an early age. Growing up in a crowd, she learned
to set herself apart, and always brings unique and innovative perspectives
to the projects she consults on and the teams she leads. She graduated
from Portland State University and resides in Portland, Oregon with
her husband.
Dena Lowery | 503.710.0635 | dena.lowery@opusteam.com

The Magic Behind Winning Teams (And the Discipline Behind the Magic)

The Magic Behind Winning Teams (And the Discipline Behind the Magic)

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