Simon Buckingham in LO15244 is sure to generate some dialog when he said,
in replying to LO15209 --
>I wanted to contribute to the thread on teams by saying that I am a deep
>skeptic of the effectiveness of teams. Teams are too formal, structured
>and slow for today's unorganized world. (snip)
And I agree with much of what he says. Teams can add too much structure
and inertia to an organization.
But Teams also operate like a well-functioning work group. A good
supervisor is often like a facilitator, engaging and enlisting the workers
in a change effort. Jack Gordon wrote a most excellent article in
Training Magazine a couple of years back - The Trouble With Teams.
So there is some meat to Simon's thinking.
But I will play counter-sorter. Let's assume that teams will naturally
form around work processes, common location and shared objectives. My
experience in our simulation is that teams will bond so well that they
will exclude others from the group. They will, if they perceive the
situation with a "scarcity" model, often suboptimize or even sabotage
anothers work so that they can be the "Winners" in the competition.
My Team, My Team, My Team. To the exclusion of others.
One ilustration generally gets a laugh. It shows one team reaching the
Top of the Hill. Yay! But that team is now squirting water on the same
hill to create mud on the slope and making it harder for the other team.
Great Fun! And many Smiley Faces on the winners.
Thus the natural name for the illustration: Interdepartmental
Collaboration.
So, I think that there is a lot more to team building than just assembling
a group of people to (eventually) get something done. Team Building can
do a lot to actively break down the interdepartmental stuff that acts to
complicate performance and bog things down, suboptimizing results and
impacting productivity and competitiveness (with the outside
organizations).
And how about the inter-organizational, supplier-type partnerships?
(And did Ben make it here to South Carolina yet? Ben?)
-- For the FUN of It!Scott Simmerman Performance Management Company 3 Old Oak Drive, Taylors, SC 29687 (USA) 864-292-8700 fax 292-6222 SquareWheels@compuserve.com
visit The Lost Dutchman at http://www.clicknow.com/stagedright/dutchman/
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>