run-team-health-check

Run Team Health Check

Administer a periodic structured assessment of team health across key dimensions — trust, clarity, workload, collaboration, and inclusion — to surface problems early through data rather than waiting for attrition, conflict, or missed goals to reveal them.

Why This Is Best Practice

Adopted by: Spotify's Squad Health Check Model (2014) is the most widely replicated team health assessment in the technology industry, adopted by Zalando, ING, Autodesk, and hundreds of engineering organizations; Google's Project Aristotle (2016) established five team effectiveness dimensions that became the basis for Google's own team health assessment tools; Lencioni's "Five Dysfunctions" assessment has been administered to hundreds of thousands of teams globally and is one of the most widely used team diagnostics in business; the US Army's Command Climate Survey is the military equivalent — mandatory at all echelons above company level Impact: Spotify's internal data on health check adoption found that teams running quarterly health checks identified and resolved team dysfunction 60% faster than teams relying on manager observation alone (Kniberg retrospective, 2015); Google Project Aristotle found that psychological safety — one health dimension — explained more variance in team performance than any other single factor; McKinsey's Organizational Health Index (45,000+ organizations assessed) found that companies in the top quartile of organizational health generate 3× total return to shareholders compared to bottom-quartile companies Why best: Manager observation is a lagging indicator — by the time a manager observes a team health problem, it has usually been present for weeks or months; team members who are experiencing a problem are often reluctant to raise it to their manager (especially if the manager is part of the problem); a structured, anonymous health check creates a direct channel for team health data that bypasses the social dynamics that suppress candid manager feedback