“We had a 2 day session to improve teamwork. It consisted of a cooking class, feedback sessions and an exercise. Huge waste of time”.
There are a few misconceptions about teamwork I want to debunk.
Teamwork is not achieved by rallying around a mission. Mission statements are great products that sell well in the OD/Business consulting domain, and they have strategic value. Yet they are often too vague to mean anything when it comes down to issues of how to deal with team members who come from different disciplines.
Teamwork is not achieved by harmony. Teams are not a choir. Senior teams consist of domineering people with a high need for power, who are building their career, often to the detriment of others. In a senior team, there is no love lost between team members. It’s a battle of egos, clash of careers, a blame game and vying for attention from the boss and board.
Yet teamwork is a critical success factor without which organizations cannot minimize the over optimization of subsystems, which often throw teams off the cliff. Without teamwork, daily corrective actions are impossible because of mud-slinging such as long email threads on nonsense.
Teamwork is achieved by the distribution of power between team members that make cooperation worthwhile. When team members cannot bulldoze over others, and when constant escalation no longer works due to overdosing, team members will cooperate.
The most important derivative of this point is view is: ensure that short term interests between functions are aligned resulting in coalitions, and work with the CEO to ensure that power in distributed in a way that serves the tactical and strategic interests of the firm and minimizes pissing contests and overbearing behavior on the part of individual team players.
To illustrate: Head of Software Architecture presents a long term vision of the products functionality that is far beyond the capabilities of the present team, except for him. The R&D manager sets up a next generation team to counter the architect’s proposal. Finance proposes to reduce the number of $ spent on next generation in order to invest more in support. Head of Sales sells lots of new features, way off product roadmap.
What will drive teamwork? Short term goals, eliminating duplicate effort, chopping finances wings, and more involvement of sales in strategic planning. That is a long of hard work-not lovey dovey or formulation of airy mission statements.
Now here is the paradox. When power is balanced, relationships improve due to the acknowledgment of mutual dependencies, no doubt the ultimate goal of any organizational development effort.
PS. Several people have commented to me that strong relationships and bonding are majors enablers of teamwork. No doubt true. But the sustainability of bonding in a team without the proper allocation of power is limited.
