Teams - your competitive advantage

 “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare. The fact remains that teams, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfunctional. Success comes only for those groups that overcome the all-too-human behavioural tendencies that corrupt teams and breed dysfunctional politics within them.”

So says Patrick Lencioni in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. Essentially, he’s saying that teamwork is the basis of all productivity. Does a team ever just work accidentally? Yes! But that’s rare. Teams work well if there’s a lot of good will and much individual skill.

The good news: skills can be learnt. I have worked with some doozies of teams this year, walking into rooms where people couldn’t look each other in the eye. Luckily, I personally believe in harmony and that these situations can be turned around.

One of my major practices is setting up protocols for teamwork. 

So how are your teams going? I help groups form into teams, perform well and troubleshoot when things go wrong.