MANAGING TEAMS EFFECTIVELY

Managing Teams Effectively

Managing Teams Effectively

Introduction

A paternalistic organization where mediocrity is condoned, where personnel policy is very similar to civil service (with a rigid hierarchy and people of similar rank paid about equal regardless of results), where there is no incentive to be innovative, where there is a big emphasis on short-term profits at the expense of longer-term investment, where there is limited understanding of the difference between sales and marketing, and where the emphasis is on the tactical rather than strategic thinking.

Sound familiar? Most readers are likely to have experienced that disappearing industrial-age work environment. What is remarkable is that this quotation is by James Weisler, vice-chairman of the Bank of America, describing the situation at his institution which cries out for organizational change. Having been exposed as a consultant to that creaking financial elephant, this writer can confirm the accuracy of the analysis. The bank's culture, as publicly reported above, is counter to almost every one of the eight strategies previously discussed as a means for ensuring high performance.

Discussion

For our purposes, a team is a work group or unit with a common purpose through which members develop mutual relationships for the achievement of goals/tasks. Teamwork, then, implies co-operative and co-ordinated effort by individuals working together in the interests of their common cause. It requires the sharing of talent and leadership, the playing of multiple roles. The ideal number of persons engaged in such joint action is usually no more than eight, although that figure can be expanded to include a natural grouping. Team performance is highest when the dynamics of group process can occur; this is more likely to happen when the number of participants is limited for maximum interchange. Teams are developed through training and experience; the skills to be acquired for improving its management are a combination of the technical, organizational and interpersonal. For the team leader, the new learnings include allocation of expert time and talent, as well as the dynamics of small groups and their meetings.

Team process

There is a new form of playing golf in groups which is called “scramble”. It can be an excellent form of team building. Individual scores are replaced by team scores obtained by combining the best performance of each member for each shot on every hole. The total score represents the top performance of every participant in the foursome. This writer was introduced to it while a speaker at The Diebold Group's plenary conference in Orlando, Florida, and found it to be a profound learning experience. It turned out to be a most enjoyable game, especially because this very mediocre golfer won a prize through the team approach. The peer pressure was for everyone to do his/her best for the good of the team. Perhaps this explains why team handball is becoming so popular - instead of four guys in a room hitting a ball, there is a seven-person team rampaging up and down the court. Would that such approaches in sports could be converted to ...