'Fnorming': A Shortcut To Accelerate Team Performance
- Michael Houben
- Mar 12
- 5 min read
Whenever a new team is formed, something predictable happens: performance is rarely optimal from the start.
This happens when a project team is assembled, when a department is reorganized, or when an organization reshuffles roles and responsibilities.
In the early phase, people are still finding their way. Expectations are not yet fully aligned, communication patterns are still developing, and assumptions about responsibilities may differ between team members.
As a result, the team’s full potential is not immediately reached.
Understanding this phenomenon, and more importantly learning how to accelerate it, requires a closer look at how team performance develops over time 🔎
The Natural Stages Of Team Performance
When teams are formed, they move through several phases before reaching high performance. Bruce Tuckman famously described these as forming, storming, norming and performing. Most teams passively - and often even unknowingly - move through them, slowing down results.
During the forming stage, people become familiar with the team’s purpose and with each other. Interaction is somewhat cautious, as individuals try to understand the context and their role within it.
The storming stage follows when differences in expectations, priorities or working styles begin to surface. This phase involves tension and causes a performance drop.
Gradually, the team enters the norming stage, where alignment happens and shared ways of working start to emerge. Communication becomes more structured, expectations become clearer, and cooperation becomes easier. Performance starts to increase.
Finally, in the performing stage, the team functions effectively with relatively little internal friction. Most of the team’s energy is directed toward achieving its objectives.
While this progression is natural, it can take considerable time. And in fast-moving engineering environments, teams simply cannot afford a long period of gradual alignment.
Accelerating The Path To Effective Collaboration
Modern organizations frequently create or restructure teams in response to changing priorities. Project teams are assembled quickly, departments are reorganized, and cross-functional collaboration becomes more common.
In such situations, it is important to accelerate the transition from initial orientation (the forming phase) toward effective cooperation (the performing phase).
In my work with engineering organizations, I sometimes refer to this deliberate acceleration as 'fnorming'. Fnorming describes the process of pro-actively establishing the foundations of collaboration early on, instead of waiting for them to emerge gradually over time.
By introducing elements of norming already during the forming phase, teams align expectations and working agreements from the very start. This significantly reduces or even eliminates the storming phase 💪
For example, during the kickoff of a project team, spending one hour defining the decision making process and how risks are mitigated can prevent weeks of misalignment later.
Creating Clarity Early: The Team Charter
One practical way to support this process is the early co-creation of a Team Charter.
A Team Charter is a short document that captures the team’s shared understanding of how it will work together. It typically contains two chapters:
The first chapter concerns values and behaviours that guide interaction within the team. These may be inspired by organizational values or by established frameworks such as Scrum. Examples include commitment to shared goals, openness about challenges, respect for each other’s expertise and the willingness to address difficult issues constructively.
The second chapter concerns agreements and operating guidelines. Typical topics include how decisions are taken, how feedback is given, how conflicts are addressed and how risks are managed.
By discussing and documenting these elements early on, teams can avoid many misunderstandings that would otherwise emerge later in the collaboration process and slow down performance.
Additional Tools That Support Early Alignment
Several practical tools can help teams align more quickly during their initial phase.
A Force Field Analysis helps teams identify their shared objective, and the forces that support or hinder progress to that objective from the current state. The outcome provides valuable input for risk management and planning.
Other tools focus more on understanding differences between team members. Cultural frameworks like the Erin Meyer's Culture Map and personality assessments like Big5 help teams recognize variations in communication styles, decision-making preferences and coping with conflict.
Why This Matters
Whether a team is responsible for a project, a product line or an operational function, its ability to collaborate effectively has a direct impact on performance.
If the early phase of team development takes too long, valuable time and energy can be lost in misalignment, unclear expectations and unnecessary friction.
By deliberately creating clarity about how a team will work together, organizations can significantly shorten the path from initial formation to effective cooperation.
This is the essence of fnorming: helping teams reach the stage where they can focus fully on the work that matters, fast! 👍
How I Can Help Accelerate Your Team's Performance
Helping engineering teams reach effective collaboration faster is a recurring theme in my work. If this topic resonates with you, there are several ways I can support your organization:
The Project Acceleration Quest – keynote or workshop
This session explores how newly formed teams evolve and how organizations can shorten the path to effective collaboration and high performance. The keynote introduces practical insights on accelerating team dynamics and is also available as a workshop format in which teams translate these ideas into concrete actions for their own environment.
The Culture Quest – keynote or workshop
When teams become more international and diverse, differences in communication styles and expectations can easily lead to misunderstandings. This session helps teams better understand cultural differences and develop practical ways to collaborate smoothly across cultures.
The Scale-Up Quest – keynote or workshop
As organizations grow, maintaining strong collaboration and a healthy team culture becomes increasingly challenging. This session explores how companies can navigate business growth while preserving the cooperation, clarity and alignment that make teams effective.
Project Management for Engineers – practical training
This training takes a pragmatic approach to project management in engineering environments. In addition to techniques such as fnorming to accelerate team dynamics, it addresses fundamental topics such as hybrid development cycles, realistic timelines and lean risk management. The program also covers the softer side of project leadership, including decision-making, coaching and recognition.
1:1 sparring
Some challenges benefit from focused discussion. In individual sparring sessions, I act as a sounding board for project leaders and managers who want to strengthen their approach to project structure, decision-making and team leadership.
If you would like to explore which of these approaches can help your team reach effective collaboration sooner, feel free to get in touch!
