CASE STUDY 3 Core teams. Satellite teams. Empowerment. Self-managed teams. Much

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CASE STUDY 3 Core teams. Satellite teams. Empowerment. Self-managed teams. Much has been said and written about teams in the work environment. Advice such as keeping teams small (7 to 9 members) and developing specific goals and objectives are widely discussed in the literature. Leaders debate what the essential elements of effective teams are from their own experience. At AOL, Ray Oglethorpe has provided specific guidelines that have made teams highly effective at his firm. In a team-based environment, people who report to you as a manager probably get much of their direction from other people (including their team leaders). People may be on more than one team. The challenge for the manager is to ensure that no individual is stretched too thin and that all workers have the appropriate training for the tasks that have been assigned. He also argues that size is critical to team effectiveness. His advice is to have the smallest number of people possible on each team with no delegates. In other words, the team must have the authority to make decisions. John Katzenbach of Katzenbach Partners LCC has a different take on teams. He cites the Marine Corps as an excellent model of team deployment.He argues that teams are not always the best approach to problems.Teams should be assembled for appropriate problems and situations.He notes that in many organizations there are single-leader units that masquerade as teams. In these situations, group members work alone much of the time, yet there is pressure for the group to be viewed as a team. If a group tries to become a team when the performance challenge actually requires a single-leader approach, performance and morale suffer. The opposite is equally true. In fact, both miscues produce the dreaded "compromise-unit syndrome": weak leadership, low levels of commitment, wasted time, and poor performance results. Michael Leinbach is the Space Shuttle Launch Director at the Kennedy Space Center. His team deals with life and death decisions. For his team, communication that is clear and unfettered between team members and the team leader is essential for effective performance. He notes that it is a human characteristic to be sometimes intimidated by those in leadership positions. He stresses, however, the need for team members to be able to overcome this tendency. "I tell people that being on a team is like getting a huge family ready to go on a picnic. Say you have to get 50 or 60 people ready to go, and then one of the kids gets sick. Picnic scrubbed. You go when the kid is better. It's as simple as that." He emphasizes the importance of team members being at ease with team leaders. Thomas C. Leppert, CEO of Turner Corporation, boils the essential elements of high-performing teams down to two elements: mutual respect among members and a common vision of where the team is going. At Turner they rely exclusively on high performing teams for all of their activity. Teams are not only internal to the organization. Team members consist of outside vendors and contractors as well. "Innovative managers understand that they must do more than manage people. They need to manage the interactions between people. That's not a subtle distinction. The best managers get their people to interact in creative ways." This according to Michael Schrage at MIT Media Labs is the critical element in successful teams. He feels that many people are cynical regarding teams based on their previous experience in organizations that have paid lip service to the concept but have not committed the resources necessary to insure success. Shared culture, leadership, and openness to new members are essential elements of effective teams for Tony DiCicco, former head coach of the U.S. Women's World Cup Champion Soccer Team. He also notes that teams must learn from their successes as well as their failures. Jeanie Duck at BCG argues that many teams do not spend nearly enough time in setting themselves up. She notes that teams are so intent on tackling the work projects that they do not invest adequately in the development of the team. She notes that rules must be established by the team to deal with a whole host of issues, including conflict. To attempt to deal with interpersonal conflict without a framework for doing so leads to serious dysfunction later on.

.(1) There are several different perspectives on team effectiveness subscribed to by the practitioners in this article. What are the similarities and differences of their approaches?

(2) How do these actual experiences with teams compare to the academic literature on teams in organizations?

(3) Do different organizations require differing approaches to team formation? Why or why not? Explain.

Explanation / Answer

Q1) Similarities :

        Differences :

Q2) The academic literature prescribes that when working in a team, you are working towards a common goal or set of objectives. The whole process of your work becomes more efficient, for example if there is a problem faced along the way there are more ‘hands on deck’ to help solve the issue. Similarly, having multiple team members on board allows you to get the work done faster with shared responsibilities. From the literature perspective, encouraging teamwork in the workplace will allow the company or department to take on additional work, and in turn generate extra revenue without having to hire more staff.

However, the actual experiences bring out the real differences between team members such as difference in views; differences in efficiency levels; varied cultural backgrounds, thought process, knowledge and so on. Teamwork is easier said than done. Teamwork is supposed to reduce the time taken for a specific task by collective efforts, but differences amongst team members leads to delay in submission of work and not meeting deadlines, which in turn increases the overhead costs of the organization and reduces efficiency.

Q3) Different organizations do require differing approaches to team formation. Teamwork is a complex phenomenon. Supportive organizational structures and optimal individual contributions set the scene for effective teamwork. Leadership styles and patterns need to be explicit and appropriate to the organization’s developmental stage. The development of team firstly depends upon the size of the organization. The bigger the size of the organization, the more number of teams is required. On the other hand, a startup or a small organization may require a 2-3 member team, or a single-leadership concept. Team development also depends on the type of product/service the organization develops. It differs from industry to industry varying from FMCG, airlines, education, defense services, agro-businesses, Information Technology, etc. The nature of business also plays an important role in team formation in an organization as much as nature of employees such as highly-skilled or semi-skilled and so on. The hierarchy of every organization is different and affects team-formation as well.

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