Teams, The Lowest Business Priority?

"The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals." --Rensis Likert

I asked an employee of a Fortune 50 company about how that company used teams. I was shocked, frankly, by his answer. “Oh,” he said, “the entire company is built on a team structure, but no one here knows what to do with teams.” This company is one of the new big stars and in the news almost every day. They are doing many things right in the areas of customer service and innovation. Their employees enjoy their work and the work environment. The big question is –can they continue to grow and evolve without understanding how teams work?

Are teams important enough that they can make or break a company? Today, despite the type of business, production or service, most work is performed in a team environment. Add the complexity of global locations, unique collaborations, and the diverse nature of teams needed to achieve results and the importance of teams should be obvious. Yet, according to Gibb and Jeff Dyer’s research, only one third of the companies they surveyed were engaged in a serious effort to initiate team-building practices.

Companies are spending millions of dollars on help with strategy, innovation, and IT projects. Another Fortune 100 company is putting great effort into flattening its global organization structure. Why isn’t the same effort put towards understanding and strengthening its basic work unit – the team?

The reason comes down to five common obstacles, according to Gibb Dyer.

1. How do I build a more effective team?

Starting in secondary education, teachers are tasked to do more with teams in the classroom, yet this effort is often met with resistance from the students. Continuing on to higher education, team assignments again meet with the same resistance. Student teams are often carried on the backs of a few high achievers who want the grade. The rest of the team contributes as little as possible. This scenario makes it possible for a few to be engaged and rewarded, with the rest being just rewarded. The students then enter the workforce with this pattern in place.

Another contributing factor may be that much of the literature today talks about high performance team requirements, but little of the literature actually describes how to achieve it. For example, an article might point out the need for all team members to be aligned with the same goal. But how does one go about doing this? What are the actual steps to create such alignment?

2. A concern that the possible negative effects will outweigh the positive effects.

During the 1990s, there was a great deal of time and money spent on experiential learning. Often groups went on a retreat at a ropes course, climbing, jumping, and dangling from heights to learn about trust. The feedback expressed by those involved was that the experience was tremendous fun and built great morale, but they didn’t see any practical application in the workplace. There was very little emphasis on how to actually implement what was learned.

Many managers and leaders realize that team building might improve morale, but worry that it will not improve team performance. Being practical, they opt to spend time and money on that which they see to be directly related to generating better business results rather than on an activity that may prove to be a “waste of time.”

3. The perception that developing an effective team is not rewarded.

This obstacle is subtly apparent in the amount of time, money, and public recognition given to developing a team.

If the leaders never verbally talk about team efforts, and instead recognize and reward individual efforts, it gives a strong signal that individual effort is more important than team effort. If money or time is never available for further learning about teams, another strong signal is sent that team development is not as important as technical development. No wonder companies say, “We don’t do anything with our teams.”

4. It is felt that we do not need team development and it takes too much time.

As Gibb Dyer has found, “because many people have never experienced working on an effective work team, they have no standard against which to compare their current team.”

There are fewer and fewer opportunities for youth to learn team-building skills from the old fashioned “after school work experiences.” These jobs are slowly disappearing and are often replaced with solo work experiences such as working on the computer. Team sports are, for one reason or another, not a part of all student life. Where do the team experiences exist today for those who will be entering the workforce? The opportunities are much more limited than 50 years ago. Today kids understand the finer art of all things electronics and have developed a great talent in communicating electronically. Sadly, this frame of reference is the exact opposite needed to learn team-building skills.

5. Not getting the needed support from the boss to spend time in team development.

The Dyers found bosses giving the following reasons for not supporting team development, even when the team leader knew it was important:

• It would take too much time from the heavy workload. Everyone is doing more with less and often each employee is doing the work of two, these days.
• Team development is not supported by upper management. The support does not come from the top and this signal swiftly trickles down the organizational ranks.
• Team development is not a part of the company goals, strategy, or performance review. If "team" is not talked about, given a priority, or is part of goals and strategy, then in practical terms “it just is not important.”
• It is a waste of time.
• It might require an outside consultant and there is no budget for one. We just cannot afford it.

These are serious concerns. Real life deals with time and budget constraints and with the strategy and goals of upper management. Some of your competitors, however, might be actually working on their teams, and that puts you in the catch-up mode.

If your very job depended on the single point of how well your team functioned, what would you do?

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