The key to problem-solving is the ability to adapt. In the high-speed modern business landscape, agility means the difference between a competitive organization and an outpaced relic. Occasionally, like when launching a new product, redesigning an organization, or implementing new processes, your company may require a tiger team of experts to see it through. 

In this blog post, we'll explore how tiger teams add value to your organization.

What is a tiger team?

Tiger teams are cross-functional teams of technical specialists and experts who are pulled together to solve a specific challenge. The tiger team approach originated in the military but can be effectively applied across many industries, including IT, product development, and business development.

The value of tiger teams

If you regularly work in team settings, you likely understand the value of leadership and the effect that team size can have on productivity, transparency, and accountability. When solving large problems, often the best solutions come from a small team of highly capable creative thinkers rather than from a crowdsourced consensus.

Enter the tiger team—a highly skilled, handpicked roster of experts tasked with solving high-priority problems. Tiger teams leverage deep technical and methodological expertise to approach problems in novel but effective ways.

Tiger teams help organizations tackle large or complex problems with greater efficiency and expertise than your standard teams, resulting in significant benefits to your organization. Here are a few characteristics of tiger teams: 

• Specialized expertise: Tiger teams are made of subject matter experts (SMEs) picked for their relevant skills for the proposed project.

• Focused problem solving: Tiger teams are tasked with a narrow objective or problem. This enables them to dive in deep to figure out the best solutions without other priorities pulling their focus and energies in other directions.

• Speed: Because tiger teams are focused on one primary challenge, they can more quickly brainstorm and develop solutions. This not only makes the problem solving process more efficient but is particularly useful when the issue is time-sensitive.

• Agility: Tiger teams are small and nimble, enabling them to pivot based on changes in scope or new information. This is a big advantage when working on complex projects with many moving parts. Agile tiger teams ensure the team can still meet their objectives despite changing conditions.

The most famous example of a tiger team, and the originator of the term, is the historic Apollo 13 lunar mission team headed by flight director Gene Kranz. When the Apollo 13 team heard a dull bang, followed by electrical issues threatening the ship's safety, the world came to know the second-most quoted phrase in space exploration history: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” 

NASA assembled a group of highly specialized engineers at the control center on the ground to solve high-stakes challenges and guide the Apollo 13 vessel back home. The media dubbed the cohort the “Tiger Team,” and their success earned them the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

The original Tiger Team highlighted what we already instinctively knew: small teams of varied and experienced contributors are highly effective in strategic problem-solving. 

Why you should adopt a tiger team approach 

Business is built on overlapping systems. Inevitable changes within systems also mean inevitable challenges. For your largest challenges, however, having a dedicated brain trust of talented and tested team members could save you time, capital, energy, and, ultimately, your company. 

Tiger teams help to distribute responsibility for outcomes and incorporate critical insight from multiple developed perspectives. 

Here are some strategies you can employ when building your own tiger team. 

Avoid siloing 

Your team is tasked with forming a new approach, which means being able to fully visualize the outcome. It’s critical that you avoid siloing when building your tiger team and while approaching your project management. 

Ultimately, applying familiar concepts to new contexts is the seed of innovation. Multidisciplinary tiger teams draw from a deeper and wider knowledge bank and have the potential to grow that innovation. 

When managing projects with tiger teams, avoiding silos means having full transparency in all processes—teams need to be aware of the project scope not just laterally but from beginning to end. When team members know how their input affects the other team members as well as the end result, they’re better equipped to know when to step forward and contribute and when to step back and evaluate. 

Zero in on the issue

Throughout the process of managing a tiger team, everyone must be aligned, from leadership to team members. The more clarity you have on the problem you’re trying to solve, the more effective your tiger team recruitment will be. 

You may even want to draft a formal agreement among leadership on the scope of the problem, as well as an agreement with your tiger team on the scope of the solution. Once you’ve clearly identified your problem, begin the work of aligning with your tiger team, starting with questions like these:

• What are our ideal outcomes? 
• What are the challenges? 
• Why is each team member here and where do we anticipate their skill set being needed?
• How will we approach the project? 
• What resources and partners will we use to achieve our outcomes?
• What steps will we take and how will we deal with roadblocks to these steps?

Save time and speed up deployment

In crunch mode, time becomes especially precious. A temptation many teams have is to under-plan and over-execute, costing themselves valuable time that could have been solved with more thoughtful planning. Developing an action plan and anticipating potential obstacles will save you critical time down the road when you need it most.

Tiger teams must regularly put to practice the mantra, “fail fast and fail better.” Your tiger team should have an internal culture of rapid idea adoption and even faster failure recovery.

Your deployment must include a team-wide understanding that failure is informative and not ultimate, like hands molding clay rather than shattering a teapot. A good way to achieve a balance between your planning and implementation is to perform small-scale tests to track results and incorporate them into your planning. 

Prioritize progress transparency

Accountability is central to all teams, and tiger teams are no exception. It’s likely that not every member of your team will have the same level of understanding of the problem. They may choose to focus only on the part or parts that affect their particular contribution. 

To limit this type of disengagement, be explicit in outlining the problem, including identifying existing processes that enabled the problem in the first place. Check in regularly to remind everyone of the end goal and give team members context by showing them how their work is contributing the end result. This will foster a culture of transparency and ownership across your team.

Additionally, you should document each step of your process, including troubleshooting, corrective measures, and complications. Having a record of your work process is critical to building transparency between team members and steering teams toward an end goal. 

Engage employee training in the process

Modern businesses have the unique challenge of maintaining operations while constantly innovating beyond their competition. Similar to the way a computer utilizes random-access memory to assist in processing, tiger teams are the intelligent support solution for modern companies who must innovate while they operate.

Tiger teams not only develop frameworks for dynamic adaptation, but they can also train other teams and disseminate knowledge throughout an organization with minimal interruption. Once a tiger team has proof of concept of a solution or process, they can maximize its impact by connecting their work to the rest of the organization. 

Prioritize cost-saving 

A tiger team may sound like a substantial cost, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, for many organizations, investing in a tiger team might be the only surefire way to avoid higher future costs in the form of lost sales, missed opportunities, or unrecoverable glitches in operations. 

While some organizations build their tiger teams from external experts and consultants, your tiger team can likely be composed of members of your organization. Titles or certifications aren’t the highest priority with tiger teams—what is most important is that each member is a SME. Once your team is assembled, they should focus on finding an effective, low-cost solution to your problem or issue. 

Minimize risk 

Employing a tiger team is in itself a risk minimization measure because it distributes decision-making from the hands of one or two to a few or many. When it comes to forming a solution, tiger team members should always aim at innovating while mitigating the risk involved with their solutions. It’s a fine line to walk, but that’s why you’ve assembled a team of experts that you can trust.