Employees who form successful groups can expect to earn rewards for their efforts. While this may take monetary form, workers also value recognition from an organisation, such as personal reward schemes, enhanced standing within the firm, increased promotion prospects, and opportunities for development. This in turn acts as a motivating force for other employees who aspire to equal recognition.
Management can benefit from the feedback process from empowered workers, which provides more recommendations for improvements than may otherwise have been the case. Managers also perceive that properly handled teams could reduce or eliminate conflict between themselves and the workers, as there would be a growing understanding that “both groups profit from the company's success and should work toward their mutual objectives together.”
However, it could also be argued that managers see the greatest benefit in financial gains for the organisation, as increased efforts of teams disproportionaly results in increased profits and cost savings at the top of the organisation.
Team Establishment and Roles
Many writers agree the initial makeup of organisational teams has a profound impact on their results. Issues to consider include: optimal size for the group (3-7 usually preferable), the level of homogeneity within the group (culturally close member will become cohesive quicker, diverse groups may provide more innovation and problem solving abilities), working locations, and permanency of the team. However, the most important issue by far in establishing a new team is for the organisation to correctly convey their expectations, set goals, agree rewards structures and provide an accurate estimation of available resources, particularly technological.
These factors face influences from within the organisation and outside, new teams influenced too greatly by these external pressures may lack crucial components needed to perform. The key to creating teams that build and maintain operational advantage is building the team around the goal, and not vice-versa.
To achieve best performance, teams must assign roles to each individual as befits their expertise. As a team progresses towards its goal, different roles may need to be emphasised. Diplomacy will be required to identify and resolve conflicts, innovation and new ideas will be required in some areas, a more reserved and conservative approach in others. In many cases, strong direction and leadership will also be crucial.
As the team develops there should be a conscious balance between task-performance and the well being of team-members, as one will falter without maintaining the other. In a well developed team it should be possible for all the above roles to be used by more than one member, with each individual leading the group and contributing with their strengths as required.
Team Processes
Throughout any team’s life there are a number of internal stages which it must navigate before reaching optimal performance. These are commonly referred to as forming, storming, norming and performing stages.
The forming stage consists of people initially meeting and creating a framework for interaction. Storming quickly follows, as these interactions are examined in more detail and an agenda is formalised. Norming occurs as the team establishes working practices and patterns of action, and agrees rules amongst members as to acceptable behaviour and expected requirements. The final stage, performing, is reached when all team-members are working towards their goal with optimal efficiency.
Throughout all these stages there is a potential for conflict and inefficiency. This is particularly true in the norming stage, where competing strategies may be advocated, and the team must chose between them.
Conflict may also occur when teams are reliant on either other teams or external sources for their information, which lies outside the control of the team. Many teams will provide outputs to other teams within an organisation, and vice versa. Establishing and maintaining relationships with such team, and contacts external to the firm, will therefore be a critical secondary task for all teams.
Relationships built on trust and co-operation are more likely to yield quicker and fuller communications than those solely based on power and authority. Within each group there should be members responsible for co-ordinating external contacts. Likert referred to these as “linking pins”, although a more common term to emerge is “gatekeeper”.
Gatekeepers are particularly crucial for acquiring expert advice from an outside contact that may have experience or information of interest to the team. Such advice may be given greater weight by a team, acting as a catalyst for the team to focus on achieving their goals. However, there needs to be a checking mechanism within the team to ensure they are not over-reliant on such advice.
Communication
Communication can be identified as the lynchpin behind the success or failure of a team. Information can be viewed as a scarce resource, and those that hold information that could enhance a team’s performance may be unwilling to share it.
The completeness and accuracy of information teams receive from the organisation will, combined with individual experience and expertise of team members, have a profound impact on productivity. If information vital to a project is not received, or is received in an inefficient manner to utilise it correctly, a team is not able to function and a quick resolution is required. Similarly, the potential for culture to intervene as teams try to “fulfil the perceived needs and wants” of organisational leaders is high, if these are incorrectly interpreted this can lead to wasted resources on incorrect strategies.
While organisation-to-team communication is vital to a teams theoretical ability to perform, the communication processes within the team is crucial to their practical performance. One method of qualifying this is examining a team’s decision making methods.
Decision making within a team can vary from very individually controlled (authority rule) to group controlled (unanimous or consensus decisions). Decisions made by a single leader have the potential to be rushed and dismissive of alternatives, but may be required even in the most efficient groups.
In most cases, a consensus of agreement is the preferred method, because this shows that while individuals may not agree with the policy, they have agreed to follow the majority view. Members within groups with a high cohesion will feel they have had some input after all decisions. While decisions by unanimity may be perceived as the ideal, this carries the risk of resulting in groupthink.
Groupthink represents the ultimate danger of allowing a team to contain too much cohesion. Where groups are concentrated on consensus building and building a group plan of action, the focus on the most efficient methods of achieving the team’s goals may be lost. Janis argues that Bay of Pigs incident, where the Kennedy administration invaded Cuba, was a decision borne out of groupthink.
The above example shows how groups can become dysfunctional when there is no external or internal check on the decision making processes. Organisational teams of senior managers are particularly susceptible to such pressure, making the internal checking and other norms of these teams crucial in avoiding incorrect strategies.
Within inner-organisational teams, groupthink may become less common, although the same dangers of allowing one person too much influence or focusing too strongly on a consensus position can lead to an adoption of riskier positions than would be preferred by the team. It is important for all teams to have some conflict as this maintains effective checks against over-consensus.
Conclusion
Teams are only efficient in certain situations, and there may be many situations where alternative strategies offer equal or greater productivity boosts. However, situations that require a wide variety of skills, which are spread across an organisation or lie outside it, teamworking represents an optimal strategy. Such teams face challenges to quickly establish working practices and motivate individuals, which can be provided by members identifying strongly with the tack and having accurate expectancies of eventual rewards.
The creation and development of teams requires above all else the support of organisational leaders. Making way for teams often requires expensive structural changes, both in design and production stages, which can have significant costs in time and money.
It must also be recognised that teams will only have a minor influence over primary decisions within an organisation. Teams who find themselves in conflict with the organisation will face an insurmountable struggle to produce results. Decisions about overall productivity requirements, work locations, available project resources and deadline setting are still the remit of managers, presented to teams as a fait accompli. This is reflected in the financial benefits, usually weighted firmly towards senior managers, with workers rewarded in a more cultural sense than financial.
For managers attempting to get the best out of teams, their primary role must be to secure good communications between the organisation and team, accurately conveying the expectations of the task and resources being made available. Managers also need to observe the team’s development, ensuring standards and structures are maintained and combating problematic situations, e.g. conflict or groupthink.
Managers who create teams to save themselves time may find the tactic backfire; teams will only produce results once their internal processes are managed correctly. Michael Schrage argues “Innovative managers understand that they must do more than manage people. They need to manage the interactions between people”.
Teams which create/maintain the most effective communication networks, within their team, organisation and environment, will be best placed to realise their potential, and generate significant results. Overriding all of this however, is the culture of the organisation. Teams will ultimately only be successful if the organisation is prepared to make the structural changes necessarily to allow teams the freedom to operate, and allow the time and resources required for a team to develop. The most effective teams are those able to transcend the intrinsic barriers to teamwork and begin to influence the culture of the organisation, rather than influenced by it.
Bibliography
- D Wilson & R Rosenfeld, “Managing Organisations”
- D Buchanan & A Huczynski, “Organisational Behaviour: an introductory text”
- Moorhead & Griffin, “Organisational Behaviour: Managing people and organisations”
- Schermerhorn, J, Hunt, J and Osborne, P, “The Basics of Organizational Behaviour”, 1997
Journals
“Training in the 1990's,” The Wall Street Journal, March 1, 1990
Web Pages
Teamwork at the Top - Designing and Leading Effective Executive Teams –
Kerr, D 1995, 'Team building and TQM: an experiential exercise for business communication students', Business Communications Quarterly 58, 47-48.
“Training in the 1990's,” The Wall Street Journal, March 1, 1990.
Marvin E Shaw, “Group Dynamics”, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981).
“Teamwork at the Top: Designing and Leading Effective Executive Teams”, from http://www.deltacg.com/PDFs/insights/Teamwork_top.pdf
Moorhead & Griffin, “Organisational Behaviour: Managing people and organisations”
Frangos, S. and S. Bennett: 1994, 'Turnaround at Kodak Park', Business Quarterly 58, 31-41.
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