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specialists in enhancement and management of human performance |
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In an older, more rugged-individualist business model, the word 'team' was seldom used. There were departments, managers and staffs, even secretarial pools, but not many teams. However, today 'team' and 'team player' are spread all over corporations like ketchup at a truck stop cafe. Teaming has become the magic bullet of staff productivity. Commentators abound, all promoting staff relationships, open communication, aligning values and, of course, trusting your teammates. Companies large and small throw fortunes at any consultant who claims to reshape organizations into the new team-based paradigms. Or managers are busy renaming their staffs and departments; "My Geewhizgollygreat team," in hopes of gaining easier buy-in from their stubborn subordinates. Stop. Before you cast yourself and your company into countless hours of reorganization name games or 'Blind Walk' employee trust seminars, you might want to scrutinize this frenzy to make every corporate soul a team player. Granted, two heads are often better than one, and I'd rather not launch a new product worldwide by myself. However, most team building pundits are focusing on the personalities of workers, their social skills and values as the keys to teaming. But at its core, social relationship has little to do with effective team building. The US Army drafts and bootcamps complete strangers--many who are unsophisticated workers--and in the course of three months creates viable teams. Does the Army succeed through intensive work on social responsibility and complete, open and honest communication? No. These effective military squads form because the activities, the 'work', lends itself to teaming. The army doesn't demand that recruits focus on their relationship to each other, but rather on their individual relationship to the task. Ultimately, team players do not generate teams; rather the work or 'game' creates team and team players. I know that sounds too obvious to hold any value--just too common sense. But what we dismiss as 'common sense' is very rarely common practice. So, if your company is climbing aboard (or dearly hanging on to) the team builder bandwagon, I suggest you take your seat with eyes wide open and pay attention to what everyone else is ignoring. That's an executive edge. Everyone else is asking, "How open is our communication?" "Are we aligned in our goals?" "Where can we find and hire team players?" You should be asking what work in the company is team-able? You should be asking, "Have we structured our team-able work and projects into games worth playing?" 'Game' can be an incredibly useful metaphor here. A baseball team is not a team because the players like each other. It's a team because each player individually understands and is committed to playing baseball. Otherwise, all you've got is a bunch of folks messing around with mitts and bats. If 'team' required significant amounts of interpersonal relationship, no modern professional sports club (with its numerous midseason trades) would survive. The concept of game applied to your business operations and projects will also help you determine what activities are team-able. Here are four tests to apply to the jobs that you would team. 1) Specific sets of tasks, rules and boundaries. 2) Limited time duration--a beginning, middle and end. 3) Feedback (i.e. scorekeeping) that focuses on winning the game, not on the achievements of individual players. 4) Goals that require more than one person's individual action for successful completion. So if you are swept into the team building reformation, pull up short of the team player frenzy. First, see if you have business activities and projects where teams can be effective. Can those activities and goals be made into 'games' employees recognize as worth playing? That's your high road to creating effective teams. It's your edge. (NOTE: Allies Consulting offers Team Building programs that can meet or exceed your expectations; they are designed to deliver real results. They also leverage our other programs, magnifying your ROI!)
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