Making TeamWork Work!

• Organizational productivity starts to crawl and competitive advantage goes out of the window if organizations fail to accomplish 'Teamwork' or more appropriately 'Cross-functional Teamwork'. Building effective teams is hardly a walk in the park for most business leaders and operational managers!
• The way around is to determine the kind of team-work methodology the organization currently practices that does not measure up, seek alternate methodologies & models needed to perform optimally, then re-start the process.
• Be aware of some basic guidelines though …Get the team mentally prepared to work together – different people need different levels of preparation to do this. Some even need specific handholding and assurances to be able to work with others
• Teams and teamwork go through several stages of evolution before beginning to function cohesively. Guidance, counseling and open communication is key in these stages
• Next, do ensure that the team has a ‘What’ and a ‘Why’ of their goals clearly defined – people (especially individual achievers) do not necessarily enjoy being in a group situation of compromise and consensus unless there is a clear understanding of the goals and the reasoning (read individual benefits) behind the goal
• Right after laying down the broad objectives, do ensure a precise team objective with quantifiable and measurable outcomes. Ideally, its best to set milestones along the path of the ‘What’ so that the team can measure progress and success as granularly as possible and make changes as appropriate along the way
• That said, leaders should not rush to assess team performance too early in the cycle – it generally preferable to let the unit mature before any assessment on the productivity of the team is done
• It is natural for teams to experience ‘teething problems’ as they come together – I begin to worry if all team members continually put on their game face and pretend that all is well and overtly anxious to demonstrate how well things are working
• Different teams need different levels of hand-holding and guidance depending on the team’s composition and the complexity of the task
• Leaders need to be able to determine which teams need guidance and which ones need to be left alone.
• Quantifiable goals and metrics that I mentioned earlier facilitate the process and serve as tools for teams to determine if they need guidance or need to modify and adjust their strategy
• Successful teams leverage individual strengths and competencies while merging these competencies across a broader ‘team fabric’ that lends a larger value to the combined competencies than the sum of individual parts.
• Finally, do not forget to encourage the team to celebrate success when the mission is accomplished! Celebrating leaves pleasant memories for the team members to feed on even when they have disbanded! It also creates a strong foundation of future engagement amongst two or more members should a suitable opportunity present itself!
  
  Ten ways to drive a successful Teambuilding Exercise
  
  1. The nature of the initiative determines the character of the team that is being built.
  2. The event should include variety in content.
  3. Watch the agenda. Link the activities in the exercise as close to the work life circumstances
  and instances as possible. People are smart & seek personal wins – they tune off if the task
  is irrelevant to their actual roles and responsibilities
  4. Planned milestones should be preset, quantifiable and measureable. They should be
  reviewed with diligence on pre set dates
  5. Stay clear of conflicts – maximum alignment is key! Conflicts though healthy (if managed
  appropriately) still delay the processes and prevent alignment
  6. Frequent team meals are welcome – a team that eats together; stays together!
  7. Build in ‘recall’ – humorous conversations, quips & actions with funny tasks and
  challenging, innovative outcomes make the session memorable and impactful
  8. Introduce multiple instructors – beside livening up content, they bring a more balanced and
  varied perspective.
  9. Relate the exercise that you are conducting with the big bad world outside – make sure that
  the team understands the relevance
  10. Don’t expect the event to fix everything! Treat this as a good start for better things to come