Teams and teamwork is still an important concept for successful organisations
Is teamwork important or essential for your business organisation?
Most of the people I deal with regard teamwork as an essential aspect of their operations. Business survival depends upon it.
The nature of teams may be changing, but the underlying nature and benefits of teams are not. Teams are becoming more numerous and complex, with one person often being a member of a number of teams in an organisation. Recent discussions have highlighted:
- In one medium sized organisation, formal management responsibilities being assigned to teams of people from different parts of the organisation. Instead of having formal positions for specific functions (human resources, health and safety, etc), a committee structure has been created and successfully implemented. This helps ensure that the responsibility and accountability for these important functions is shared between a number of people.
- In one technology based company, product and system implementations for different clients require different parts of the organisation to provide services. Consequently, the project team can be very different for each client, depending on the expertise required. Team members may be based locally, inAustraliaor other parts of the world.
- In another services company, staff find themselves working in multiple teams at the same time. At any given part of the year, the number of projects can range from two to six, depending on the current client assignments.
These team structures are in addition to the formal organisational unit structure where team members reside. They are expected to use teamwork to complete the functional aspects of their positions along with their colleagues in the same organisational unit.
In these environments, the demands on team members are heavy. Communication is often difficult, but these situations add to communication complexity. These structures demand good teamwork. Important projects depend on it.
49 Comments