Sourcing Innovation summarizes an article by Richard Hackman of Harvard called ‘Why Teams Don’t Work ‘ that speaks about the five secrets of team building.

Richard states:

1. Teams Must Be Real
   People need to know who’s on the team, who’s not, and who has what responsibilities. A virtual team or vague team concept won’t get the job done.
2. Teams Need a Compelling Direction
   Members need to know what they’re supposed to be doing together. Without a clear direction, there is a real risk that different members will pursue different agendas.
3. Teams Need Enabling Structures
   Teams with poorly designed tasks, the wrong mix of members, and un-enforced norms gravitate towards trouble.
4. Teams Need a Supportive Organization
   The organizational context must facilitate teamwork in a manner that is conducive to the team and its members.
5. Teams Need Expert Coaching
   A focus on individual performance does not necessarily improve the team. Teams need to be coached as a group in team processes.

The purpose of a team is to provide a better and faster result that individual contribution. Teamwork is a concept that all organizations say that they value, but as Richard states, their approaches are varied and often flawed. I agree that a clear set of objectives, structure, and support are all important to the success of a team.

While many organizations are not as effective at teamwork as they could be, the effort to improve team collaboration is worthwhile. Having the input from multiple stakeholders will improve your outcome if all the right success factors are in place.

Teams imply collaboration of information and ideas. Let’s address a few questions. What do teams look like? How do they make decisions? How often are teams required?

What do teams look like?  Today the reality is that teams are not always physically together. This represents a whole new risk because you can’t physically gather the team together to focus on making decisions. You need to rely on business processes and tools. You may not even know all of the team members but you require their input.

How do they make decisions?  Collaborative decision making may be synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronous processes require that you capture everyone’s input and allow everyone to view and analyze individual contributions. Many organizations use Excel to capture collaborative input. However, it is very difficult to ensure that everyone is working from the ‘same page’ so to speak, leading to delays, confusion and ineffective teamwork.  Organizations need to look for new ways to solve the ‘Excel dilemma’. Excel was never designed for organizational collaboration. It is a personal productivity tool.

Asynchronous collaboration relies on processes and tools that support sequential decision making steps. One needs to be alerted when others have provided input or others input may have affected their contribution. Collecting input and having the ability to compare your starting point or baseline with new input is also very important. 

How often are teams required? Teamwork and collaboration is an ongoing activity. Daily decisions are made with teams. Very fundamental business processes such as Sales and Operations Planning are team based processes. If organizations are going to embrace teamwork the process cannot impede effective decision making. People need to engage quickly, provide input quickly, solve problems and come to decisions quickly and then disband. As Richard states, the teams need to clearly understand their responsibilities  and the goal of their collective input. Individuals often have conflicting objectives. Therefore visibility to their impact on the team goals is key to success.

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Tags: Collaboration, Globalization, Human judgment
Posted in Supply chain collaboration, Uncategorized
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