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2005 ã weLEAD, Inc.
Creating A Teamwork Culture –
Part 1
By Debbie Garrison
Success factors in
business can be divided into two major categories: those that deal with things and those that
deal with people. Although many
organizations spend millions of dollars on capital equipment, human capital has
the highest potential of value for the organization. Teamwork and the role it plays in dealing
with people within an organization is a top priority for many leaders. This thesis will explore the positive and
negative effects of teams, the value of teams in various venues, and both
positive and negative issues that can influence adaptation of teamwork culture.
Understanding
what a team is and how it works is the first step to implementing teamwork
culture into your organization.
According to Modern Management website (2003),
A team is two or more employees who
are organizationally empowered to establish their objectives, to make decisions
about how to achieve those objectives, to undertake the tasks required to meet
them, and to be individually and mutually accountable for their results. (n.p.)
Teams
are organized so that appropriate talents and skills are pooled together to
accomplish a specific goal. This pooling
of human resources requires team members to have an array of skills that
individual or routine jobs do not demand.
The benefits of pooling these resources include increased productivity,
improved customer service, more flexible systems, and employee empowerment. The
goal is that the sum total of the team is greater than the individuals
themselves.
Building
a team begins at an even more basic level than just choosing team members. The team environment is best served when the persons
selected for the team have some similar and some diverse characteristics. Some similar characteristics to look for when
forming a team are an ability to communicate with various people, share
knowledge, collaborate, generate ideas, respect other persons, productivity,
flexibility, commitment, and be enthusiastic.
People must be able to think on their own before they can think as a
team. Also, a level of self-confidence must
exist for the team members to feel safe in the team environment to express
ideas that may be discarded by the team.
A type of safe zone must exist within the team to avoid stifling
creativity and ideas. Treatment of team
members as internal customers should be the norm. The diversity is best displayed in skills,
critical thinking, and a “thinking outside the box” innovative focus. Members having a variety of job titles and
seniority, and white-collar and blue-collar employees can also be a diversity
factor. Diversity can also involve the
technical and human needs of the team.
The
best business strategy requires the best people strategy. For an organization to be successful, the
skills needed by the employees are the behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge
needed to be successful both on the job and as an individual. These personal management skills are the
building blocks for good morale, a focused worklife,
and greater organizational productivity.
The employees drive an organization’s success. Employee’s skills must be aligned with the
organization’s goals in an increasingly competitive market. As each organization is unique, customization
of the specific requirements (hard skills) is needed, but the generalities
remain the same. Soft skills are
important to the success of the team and organization itself. This skill set involves proper communication,
team building, conflict management, good supervision, internal and external
alliances, relationship building with stakeholders, working with others to
generate creative ideas and solutions, participatory management, and performance
evaluation.
The
individual employee may need some additional education and training to perform
well in the workplace. Continual
technological advances cause training to be an ongoing function in business. The ability to apply more efficiently new
knowledge and skills will aid the organization in meeting and exceeding its
strategic goals and competitive challenges.
Seminars and corporate training sessions are convenient, relatively
inexpensive ways to update needed skills.
The education and training are important factors for increasing
organizational performance.
Opportunities
for lifelong learning should be provided to all levels of employees that will
promote and increase organizational performance directly. Learning should become a habitual activity
rather than an occasional event.
Training must be tied to the organization’s strategic business
requirements and maintain the organization’s core competencies in every field
at every level. Workers should be held
accountable for learning new skills.
Many organizations are building the accountability into performance
evaluations as a method of emphasizing its importance.
Some
employees will shy away from or staunchly refuse training and learning. Reasons can be varied. According to
Enhancing
the competency of the project managers and team members gives the organization
more opportunity for success.
Organizations need to leverage and build on the knowledge, skills, and
competencies available within the organization.
Competent people must be assigned to the team. The term competent means that the team leader
or member is operating at acceptable levels of performance in his or her areas
of training and experience. It does not
mean that each member has perfect knowledge of all areas. Competence also involves acknowledging what
you do not know and having the courage to express these concerns. The key is to know when to obtain assistance
and expertise.
Communication
skills are imperative in today’s workforce environment. Many business leaders estimate that
deficiencies of communication skills cost employers millions of dollars of lost
productivity and errors. The
communication skills include interpersonal, teamwork, and negotiation
skills. An employee interacts with other
people to perform his/her work emphasizing the need for skills such as the
ability to handle stress, interact easily with others, listen to others, and
cope with undesirable behavior in others.
Anyone who has been in the workforce for any period of time can attest
to the fact that there is almost always at least one employee that is difficult
to deal with and work around. Effective teams find that when positive talk
exceeds negative talk, there’s a quality of connection among team members. This leads to the accomplishment of
collective work that none of the individual team members thought was possible.
According
to Zolgio (2003), a cohesive work team can add value
to the organization if it pays attention to the ongoing development of three
important connections: to the larger
work organization, to team members, and to other work teams. (n.p.) Building the right team is as important as the teamwork
culture itself. The culture must support
and encourage teamwork for it to be successful.
According to
Before
a group of co-workers can develop into a team, it must first be a team. Teams are a reasonably stable unit with a
shared responsibility for a defined piece of work. Members develop familiarity with one another and with the
task, so they can get to work more quickly.
They learn who is skilled or knowledgeable in different aspects of the
project. According to Hackman (2002), the National Transportation Safety Board
found that 73% of all mishaps occurred on the flight team’s first day of flying
together, before they’ve had the chance to learn through experience how to best
work together. (n.p.)
Stability of the membership allows for growth of commitment to the team
and to each other. Competent teams learn
fairly rapidly how to work together.
Another
key element to the team’s success is the team members. According to Mason (2003):
The team leader seeks to attract all
the people who really know something about the issue and bring their ideas
together as a way to structure discussion.
At their best, these leaders make scenarios a way for people to work new
ideas into the planning and decision making system with out-of-the-box ideas
and inputs. (n.p.)
Teamwork
culture can be defined as a network of skilled employees who support each other
in the achievement of corporate goals, and the delivery of exceptional products
or services. According to
Teambuildinginc.com (2003):
Whether we realize it or not, a
workplace is a community. A team is also
a community. The town has a culture, a
common language, a process of operation, rules for order, and a purpose for
being, i.e., safety, security, and efficiency in living. In the same way, a workplace is a
community. (n.p.)
As I have worked in
Accounting for 20 years for several companies, I have experienced first-hand
the workplace community. Accounting has
its own common language such as P&L or 2290. Only a few outside the department know the
vernacular used within each department.
I have also personally noticed a culture among staff members. Culture can include similar hobbies or
sports, such as golf, or similar taste in clothing or choice of
restaurants. The rules for order and a
purpose for being have also been identified.
Accounting rules of order and purpose for being include producing
monthly financials and tasks accomplished in a specific method. Personally, I would conclude that not only
does the business itself become a community, but also the departments within
the business are a segment of the community.
It
is hard to find work places that exemplify teamwork. A teamwork environment tends to flatten the
traditional pyramid-style hierarchy.
This step can foster a more collaborative staff. It can also be a threat to managers that tend
to place their personal value in their job title. The isolation of the
hierarchy and its power is being replaced with partnering, team relationships,
common goals and visions, and a large change in the organization’s
dynamics. Teambuilding is a work culture
that values collaboration. In a teamwork
environment, people understand and believe that thinking, planning,
decision-making, and actions are better done collectively. This is an exception to the way most business
has been done in the past. According to
Mason (2003), rank-and-file employees expect management to set the direction
the organization is taking, but resent detailed task planning. If given some direction, they expect to be
trusted to get it done. (n.p.) This is the very root
of teambuilding. According to Chien (2004):
Performance is one of the key terms
of modern organization. Performance
means the transformation of inputs into outputs for achieving certain
outcomes. Performance is the equivalent
to the famous 3 E’s of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. Some elements of successful organizations
doing total development work include selection of cohesive teams based on
sentiments of mutual liking and respect for each other’s expertise, controlled
convergence to solutions that everyone understands and everyone accepts,
organize vigilant information processing and encourage actively open-minded
thinking, avoid the facile, premature consensus, maintain the best balance
between individual and group work, and initiate generation of new concepts. (n.p.)
According
to Plato (427-347 B.C.), “The excessive increase of anything often causes a
reaction in the opposite direction.”
Polarity between employers and employees can occur without proper
presentation of the goals and rewards of supporting a teamwork culture. Opposition to the teamwork culture surfaces
in a variety of ways through various stages of life.
One
of the negative points to consider when teambuilding or promoting teamwork
culture begins in childhood. According
to Grazier (2003):
Most of us in the workforce today
were taught that teamwork is associated with play, while achievement and work
were associated with individual performance.
Overcoming ideas gained in childhood can be a challenge. Old paradigms die hard. Another negative point is that changing the
work group structure without changing the organization’s culture to support
this, it will not work. (n.p.)
Individual
achievement is almost an American ideal.
We are taught that ideal from early childhood. Much of our educational processes are based
on individual learning and achievement.
In school settings, teamwork is considered cheating. After 12 years or more of this type of conditioning,
buying into a teamwork setting will probably take change management and
transitional thinking. In order for this
change to succeed, we must first understand the dynamics of change. Three basic elements in creating successful
change are both personal and organizational.
The elements are: the desire to change (personal), the ability to change
(personal), and the permission to change (organizational). Many organizations consider their people as
expenses, rather than assets with intellectual property. This idea must be among the first to
change. According to Grazier
(2003), the reasons we resist change are very personal and unique, so changing
the thinking of many people in an organization will probably require a variety
of approaches. The three elements
involve motivation (desire), ability (skills), and authorization (permission)
by the organization. (n.p.) According to Bateman (1999), management must
enlist the cooperation of its people to implement a change….with education,
communication, participation, and involvement. (pp. 613-614) With successful change management,
teambuilding can begin.
So
just what is teambuilding? Teambuilding is a process of awareness
building. It’s helping people become
aware that they are greater collectively than individually. People become aware that our decisions and
their results can be better with collaboration and an honest appreciation of
each other’s interaction. The simplistic
definition of teambuilding is helping people understand this. We must shift our thinking and perception of
others to an honest value of other’s skills, knowledge, and abilities.
Some
advantages of teamwork culture are promotion of talents, skills, and creativity
of diverse people. It also utilizes
skills, time, and resources for benefit of the employee and employer. According to McGraw (2004), “without
creativity we are nothing.” (p. 30) A trait common to creative thinkers is their
perseverance in solving a problem.
Teamwork encourages collaboration, which, at its core is co-labor or
working together toward a common, meaningful goal. It combines collective knowledge so that the
sum total of the collaboration is greater than what could have been achieved
individually. People who understand the
power of collaboration seldom make a unilateral decision willingly. These people know that any decision they make
will be improved in some way by the thoughts of another. According to McGraw (2004), the need to work
in teams seems to be an essential part of the creative process. (p. 30) According to Chien
(2004), teams, which are increasingly being used, are organized in the
workplace so that appropriate talents and skills can be pooled to accomplish
vital tasks and goals. (p. 289)
According
to Dyer (2002), another advantage is with the increasing pressure to be
“first-to-market” with a new product.
First-to-market organizations with dedicated team structures were
quantifiably faster while maintaining a measurably higher percentage of quality
in their products. (p. 16) Competitive arenas require quick decisions by
knowledgeable employees who work close to the source of problems. Teams enable
knowledge-based and innovative decision making in a much shorter time
period. This reduces product cycle
times.
Some of the
negative impact of teamwork culture remains that asking people to work together
while simultaneously placing them in a competitive system often results in
inaction rather than action. If it is a
team in name only, it will not be successful.
According to Grazier (1999), in that
situation, inaction occurs rather than action.
There will be little energy to move forward. (n.p.)
References:
3M
(2004). Home page. Retrieved
Ariss, S. S. (2003, Fall). Employee involvement to improve safety in the
workplace: An ethical imperative. Mid-American
Journal of Business, 18, 9. Retrieved
Bateman, T. S., & Snell, S. A. (1999). Management: Building competitive advantage (4th
ed.).
Cherney, J. K.PhD. (2002). Appreciative teambuilding: Creating a climate for great collaboration. Retrieved
Chien, M. (2004, Mar). A study to
improve organizational performance: A view from SHRM. Journal of
Dyer, B. Gupta, A. K., & Wilemon, D. (1999,
Mar/Apr). What first-to-market companies do differently. Research Technology Management, 42, 16. Retrieved
Grazier, P. (1999, March). What is teambuilding, really?. Retrieved
Grazier, P. (2003). Teams finding it tough? Maybe the culture is wrong. Retrieved
Grazier, P. B. (1997). Overcoming
resistance to employee involvement. Retrieved
Hackman, J. R. (2002, July). New rules for team building. Optimize, , 50. Retrieved August 3, 2004,
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Levine, S.
(2002). Creating team agreements
for results. Retrieved
Mason, D.
(2004). Tailoring scenario planning to the company culture. Strategy & Leadership, 31, 25-26.
Retrieved
McGraw, D.
(2004, Summer). Expanding the mind. ASEE
Prism, 13, 30. Retrieved
Modern Management (2003). Teambuilding. Retrieved
Parviz, F. R., & Levin, G. (2003).
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Zoglio,
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About
the author:
Debbie Garrison is the Controller for Lesco,
Inc., a regional truck leasing firm in Chattanooga,