The Rocket Model
Article

The Rocket Model

A Roadmap for Building High Performing Teams

Gordy Curphy and Dianne Nilsen
CLS, 2024
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Editorial Rating

8

getAbstract Rating

  • Comprehensive
  • Applicable
  • Well Structured

Recommendation

The “Rocket Model” approach to team-building takes into account the team’s context, mission, talent, norms, resources, courage, and results. The context in which a team performs, which includes customers, competitors, and government regulators, has a profound impact on the way it functions – and whether it’s dynamic and ultimately successful. As Gordy Curphy and Dianne Nilsen explain, the Rocket Model team-building approach is “diagnostic” and is designed to help you identify your team’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s also meant to help team leaders develop strategies that will improve their team’s performance without micromanagement.

Summary

Context has a significant influence on the way a team functions.

The Rocket Model is one way to understand the crucial factors that shape a team’s development. These factors include mission, talent, resources, member buy-in, norms, and courage. Norms are accepted guidelines for running meetings, making decisions, and maintaining communication, while courage is defined as the ability to trust and challenge one another, which requires psychological safety.

A team’s context also meaningfully affects its performance. Context or circumstances depend on the team’s business and industry and can involve multiple elements, including its customers, competitors, stakeholders, regulatory and political environment, suppliers, technology, workforce, talent availability, and high-level management.

The importance of context may seem self-evident, but teams often neglect factors like the regulatory environment or customer...

About the Authors

Gordy J. Curphy, PhD, heads Curphy Leadership Solutions, where Dianne Nilson, PhD, is managing partner. Curphy has written 19 books and numerous academic articles on leadership and teams, including Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience, co-authored by Richard L. Hughes and Robert  C. Ginnett. Nilson is the lead author of the Center for Creative Leadership’s Executive Dimension.

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