Every Service Director and Service Vice President wants a high-performing team—one that executes reliably, collaborates across functions, and continuously improves, even under pressure. Yet in industrial markets, where service organisations sit at the intersection of engineering, commercial, and operational realities, high performance rarely emerges by chance.
Many leaders claim to have built high-performing teams. Far fewer truly understand the underlying mechanics that make sustained performance possible over time.
I have been fortunate to spend time with one of those rare leaders who not only understands these mechanics but has applied them successfully for decades.
A Lesson in Organisational Power
Des Evans, former CEO of MAN Truck & Bus UK, led the growth of the UK business over a 20-year period—from approximately £50 million to £550 million—by leveraging a transformational, service-led business model. MAN UK moved from selling trucks as discrete transactions to providing customers with guaranteed vehicle availability at a fixed price per kilometre. In effect, the business shifted from a product company to a service and risk-management organisation.
This was not a pilot. It was a fundamental transformation, carried through to successful implementation—and sustained over twenty plus years. Very few senior leaders can speak credibly about this type of journey from strategy to execution to institutionalisation.
When I asked Des what the key to success had been, his answer was immediate:
“Organisational power.”
He sketched a simple diagram showing three overlapping elements: strategy, structure, and culture. Organisational power, he explained, comes from the degree of alignment between these three. When overlap is limited, organisational power is weak. When all three are aligned, power is maximised—and something exceptional becomes possible.
In 2016, Des was awarded an OBE, one of the highest honours in the UK. I assumed this recognition was for delivering sustained business growth over such a long period.
“Not quite,” he replied.
“Yes we were successful, but a big element was for creating an in-house education programme and development of skills in local communities”
MAN UK developed its own applied MBA-style programme to give employees a deep understanding of the business and commercial logic behind their roles. This was essential because MAN was no longer simply selling trucks—it was operating more like a financial services institution, underwriting uptime, performance, and lifecycle risk.
As is often the case when speaking with exceptional leaders, it all sounded deceptively simple. Only afterwards does the real complexity become clear.
This article attempts to break that simple logic into practical components that service leaders can understand, apply, and replicate.
1. What Makes a Team Truly High Performing?
A high-performing team is commonly defined as a cohesive group with complementary skills, clear goals, strong accountability, open communication, constructive challenge, and deep trust with psychological safety.
The real question is not what these qualities are—but how they are engineered.
This is where the work of Hackman and Wageman is particularly valuable. Their research demonstrated that high-performing teams do not emerge spontaneously. They arise when six specific conditions are intentionally designed into the organisation. You can see the parallels if you read Des Evan’s article written from the CEO’s perspective “Management of Change vs Change of Management”
Let’s translate these six conditions into the context of industrial service organisations.
2. The Six Conditions for High-Performing Service Teams
Condition 1: A Real Team with Clear Boundaries
High performance begins with clarity about who is in the team, what the team is for, and how members work together.
In many service organisations, ambiguity kills performance:
- Field engineers partially assigned to multiple priorities
- Service operations pulled into sales escalations
- Cross-functional teams created informally without roles defined
A “real team” means:
- Clear membership
- Stable enough to develop shared practices
- Joint accountability for outcomes
Without this foundation, no amount of leadership effort can compensate. In every conversation with Des, the importance of clarity—of roles, responsibilities, and metrics—was unmistakable. He gave the team a remarkably clear vision of what they were to deliver to the customer.
Condition 2: A Compelling Direction (or strategy)
Teams perform best when they clearly understand:
- What success looks like
- Why their work matters
- How their performance creates customer and business value
For service teams, a compelling direction often includes:
- A clear service growth strategy
- Tangible customer outcomes (uptime, reliability, lifecycle cost reduction)
- Long-term objectives that move beyond reactive firefighting
At MAN UK, this direction came from starting with customer value. A key customer “Hoyer” stated to that their key business challenge was not the purchase price of the truck, but fuel efficiency and driver costs. As a key supplier, this was the question they wanted MAN UK to address. The result was that MAN UK aligned its growth strategy to this profit pool—leading to a service-led business model enabled by digital technologies.
This alignment unified engineering, field service, technical support, and commercial service teams around a shared purpose. It also led to the industry OEM’s redefining the role of the service in their business, and how their competitive position in the market.
Condition 3: The Right People with the Right Mix of Skills (Culture)
Skill diversity is a competitive advantage—but only when it is intentional.
High-performing service teams combine:
- Technical expertise
- Diagnostic and problem-solving capability
- Customer communication skills
- Commercial understanding
- Data and digital competence
Misalignment is common:
- Highly technical teams lacking customer skills
- Field teams without analytical capability
- Service managers who lack coaching skills
MAN UK invested heavily in this condition—not only through education programmes but through deliberate organisational development. They invested in created a series of accredited business qualifications. Not only did this impact the business itself, but also a enabled upskilling and professional within the broader communities in which it operated.
Condition 4: A Strong Team Structure
Moving to a service-led model required fundamental structural change. Regional partners had to shift from product-centric organisations to service-centric ones—investing in facilities, maintenance capability, and service management.
Structure is often the missing ingredient in service performance. MAN focused on:
- Clear roles and responsibilities
- Decision rights and escalation paths
- Standard ways of working
- Operating rhythms and governance
- Explicit team norms
Without structure, service organisations drift into:
- Hero-based performance
- Chronic reactivity
- Repeated escalations
- Unclear ownership
Strong structure provides the scaffolding that allows teams to perform consistently under pressure.
Condition 5: A Supportive Organisational Context
Even the best teams fail when the surrounding organisation works against them.
Service teams depend on:
- Effective IT and data systems
- Access to tools, spares, and technical support
- Incentives aligned with service outcomes
- Cross-functional collaboration with engineering, quality, and sales
- Ongoing training and development
When these systems fail, leaders compensate through personal heroics. Over time, heroes burn out—and performance declines.
A supportive organisational context allows teams to perform without relying on unsustainable effort.
Condition 6: Expert Coaching
Although Des rarely spoke explicitly about coaching, it was clear that he viewed leadership as both setting direction and enabling others to succeed.
Coaching enables teams to:
- Maintain focus
- Improve collaboration
- Challenge assumptions
- Build trust
- Learn from setbacks
In complex, high-pressure service environments, coaching is the glue that brings the other five conditions to life.
3. The Human Side of Performance: The Thrive–Struggle–Renew Cycle
High performance is not only structural. It is also physiological and psychological.
In The Power of Full Engagement, Loehr and Schwartz remind us that human beings do not perform like machines. We perform in cycles.
Sustained performance requires:
- Periods of challenge
- Phases of consolidation
- Moments of renewal
Without renewal, performance degrades into burnout. Burnout and anxiety are far more often indicators of poor leadership systems than of weak individuals.
Let’s explore the cycle below as it applies to service teams:
Thrive: The Zone of Optimal Performance – Green
This is where people feel energised, capable, and engaged:
- Clear goals
- Manageable pressure
- Strong collaboration
- Momentum and confidence
It is when your people are in the flow, giving themselves their own direction and motivation.
In service organisations, Thrive might look like:
- Preventative maintenance programmes running smoothly
- Engineers solving complex problems with strong support
- Cross-functional teams aligned on customer outcomes
Thrive is the goal—but it is not permanent.
Struggle: The Growth Zone – Amber
Struggle is where learning occurs:
- Developing new capabilities
- Navigating ambiguity
- Adapting to new technologies or contracts
In service teams, Struggle may involve:
- Implementing digital tools
- Transitioning to outcome-based contracts
- Redesigning field processes
Unstructured struggle creates overwhelm.
Structured struggle creates growth.
Many managers confuse “high standards” with constant pressure. They do not comprenend the difference between managed ‘safe’ struggle and bullying abusive behaviour. If you hear phrases such as, “I hold my staff to high standards…..I push them to perform”, they are probably managers who cross this line too frequently.
When struggle is unmanaged, burnout and high staff turnover follow.
Renew: The Recovery Zone – Blue
Renewal is often misunderstood. It is not inactivity—it is intentional recovery.
Renewal includes:
- Reflection and learning
- Coaching conversations
- Skill consolidation
- Emotional reset
- Recognition and celebration
In service organisations, renewal might mean:
- Lessons-learned reviews after major outages
- Strategic alignment after demanding quarters
- Coaching to help leaders decompress and refocus
- Creating space for thinking, not just reacting
It is difficult because as part of the “Art of Leadership”, it requires an understanding what each individual needs at any point in time, in order to perform. There are guidelines, but not a clear set of rules.
Without renewal, performance declines—even when competence remains high.
4. Architecture and Rhythm: Why Both Matter
The six team conditions provide the architecture for performance.
The Thrive–Struggle–Renew cycle provides the rhythm.
Exceptional leaders understand both.
When leaders leave, these rhythms are often disrupted as new philosophies are introduced. With awareness, this performance dip can be minimised.
High performance exists when:
- Teams have clarity, structure, capability, and support
- Individuals have energy, resilience, and space to reflect
- Leaders balance challenge with renewal
Coaching is the mechanism that keeps architecture and rhythm aligned.
5. What This Means for Service Leaders
For Service Directors and VPs, the implications are clear:
- High performance can be designed—it is not luck.
- You must lead the rhythm of performance, not just the tasks.
- Coaching is not optional—it is structural.
- Sustainable performance requires both architecture and rhythm.
For a business leader like Des Evans where Service Excellence is a strategic differentiator, this combination is not optional—it is foundational.
Final reflection: This article is what we try to do at Si2, which is to apply the lesson learned from real people, so as to help leaders with the HOW of Service Business Growth. Read more about our Leadership programmes here.
