New Teams in the Workplace
TEAMWORK . . . an idea as American as the hot dog or baseball . . . will be the compelling theme of the 21st century. The people who succeed will be those who get high marks in "works and plays well with others." And the successful organizations of the future will be customer-focused, team-based organizations.
When I wrote the book, Team Players and Teamwork (Jossey-Bass, 1990), we were only beginning to see the emergence of teamwork as an important business strategy. Quality circles had a good run during the late seventies and early eighties but failed to gain substantial support outside of manufacturing.
In the eighties we saw the outline of an emerging movement toward self-directed teams, cross-functional teams and a total quality management process that was heavily team-based. Since then reengineering has been embraced with an almost religious zeal and something called "high performing organizations" has captured the attention of many organizations. Both of these trends include teams as a part of their core strategy.
My point is that teams are not fading away like so many other management fads because no matter what the organizational goal, teams are integral to success. For example, teams have been at the core of organizational efforts to:
- Reduce the time takes to bring a new product to market.
- Provide quality customer service and speedy turnaround time on customer requests.
- Collaborate with business partners around the world.
- Reengineer the design of work processes.
- Improve the quality of products and services.
- Reduce costs and eliminate waste.
- Increase sales and improve after sales support.
- Reduce cross-functional competition and "turf" conflicts.
In the future our traditional view of a team will change. A team will no longer be simply a group of people working in the same area, on the same equipment, with the same customers and eating in the same cafeteria. Many of my client teams include people outside of the organization such as suppliers and customers as well as people from other countries, cultures and, of course, other time zones. Many teams never or only rarely have a face-to-face meeting. Teamwork takes place in a virtual world via electronic communication.
Our view of what it means to be a "team player" will also change. In the past, we had a rather one-dimensional view of a team player as someone that went along and supported the company program without question--someone that was often described as a "good soldier." A team player, it was said, lived by the credo that "to get along, you go along." Going forward, a team player will be a more complex person. The effective team player will be adaptive, creative, visionary, supportive, flexible and candid. More will be expected and the people that thrive in this new world will both work and think "outside of the box." Your old comfortable niche will evaporate.
The high performing organizations of the 21st century will place great value on team players. With change as the only constant and globalization as a given, the successful employees will be the ones who can quickly adjust and work effectively with new and different people. As management guru, Tom Peters, has pointed out, an important organizational model for the future is the movie production crew--a group of people who come together for a brief period of time, work in an intensely collaborative environment, and then deliver a product or service that is the result of their combined efforts. The successful crewmembers are able to quickly and easily focus on the goal, share their unique expertise, build relationships with diverse teammates and deliver the goods on schedule.
Although technology makes international virtual "crews" possible, the successful teams and team players still will be those that can create a climate of trust, foster effective communication and make decisions that are viable world-wide. Collaboration, therefore, will always require some face-to-face interaction where basic interpersonal skills take center stage. The successful teams and team players of the future will learn what actions are appropriate for the impersonal nature of electronic communication, those that can benefit from the added value of voice communication and those that require the full range of communication methodologies available via an in-person meeting.
An interesting theme to watch in the future will be the extent to which this organizational teaming will have a positive impact on conflict resolution and collaboration among the nations in which these team players work and live.
--Glenn Parker, Skillman, New Jersey
Reprinted from U.
S. 1 (January 5, 2000), p. 59