While reflecting on recent lessons learned, I could not help but focus this blog on the important of teamwork, specifically related to teamwork within International businesses and corporations. Recently I had a chance to join an organization represented in multiple countries and across many different business market segments. Prior to this experience, I was part of a local company, located in a small town in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. Today I frequently visit parts of the world I would otherwise never see to focus on company integration, communication, and teamwork meetings to share ideas and processes to improve our company’s overall performance and profitability.
Earlier in my professional career, my former boss instilled in me fundamental basics including the importance of teamwork and diversity in the workplace. Fostering a positive environment allows all employees to have a voice and share ideas throughout the company. “Team participation is an intensive learning experience. When members voluntarily involve themselves and fully participate, personal and professional growth is fostered” (Moran, Abramson & Moran, 2014, p271) Creating an environment with everyone having a voice brings the best ideas, process improvements, and talent recruitment to organizations looking to succeed in todays world.
Reflecting on the learnings recently related to Synergy made me question if companies could have a favorable synergy without teamwork. “Synergy is a cooperative or combined action, and occurs when diverse or disparate individuals or groups collaborate for a common cause. The objective is to increase effectiveness by sharing perceptions and experiences, insights, and knowledge”. (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014, p. 266) Without a solid teamwork environment, I do not believe it is possible to establish a clear favorable synergy in business.
Earlier in my professional career our operation was acquired by a private equity firm, management changed, along with the company direction. As this change took place, it was clear that teamwork would not exist, instead it would be an environment of everyone for themselves. A cutthroat management style would move away from teamwork and more towards a hostile environment. This climate set into place extremely high amounts of employee turnover and a significant decay in company performance. Many key employees departed the company due to the dishonest hostile environment created by new management. While this took place for about 4 years, I and others remained true to ourselves, our values, and our employees that built us into a profitable company. As the company results and attitude declined, ownership realized the direction was causing devastating results. Employees lost trust in management and the company was forced to sell to new ownership, realizing the only other alternative was to accept bankruptcy. It was bought by an International company and we have brought back teamwork to our company. It is a company again focused on all our employees, education, and our team working together towards a common goal. “There is no greater weapon in a company’s arsenal than a great team. When firing on all cylinders, effective teams have the ability to increase efficiency by taking on more complex tasks (think “two heads are better than one”), improve communication by facilitating open discussion and cooperation among team members, maximize output by leveraging each team member’s strengths, provide opportunities for personal growth, and act as a support mechanism for staff” (Zimmer, 2019). I found this interesting as it describes real life outcomes, if it goes well results are great, and if implemented poorly the results can hold back productivity improvement.
Companies that show they value employees and create a team environment improve company performance culture. These teams should have share goals and objectives with clear paths to succeed, as well as a clear improvement plan if they struggle. “The foundation of every great team is a direction that energizes, orients, and engages its members. Teams cannot be inspired if they don’t know what they’re working toward and don’t have explicit goals. Those goals should be challenging (modest ones don’t motivate) but not so difficult that the team becomes dispirited. They also must be consequential: People have to care about achieving a goal, whether because they stand to gain extrinsic rewards, like recognition, pay, and promotions; or intrinsic rewards, such as satisfaction and a sense of meaning” (Haas, Mortensen, 2016).
Prateek Saxena. How Cross-functional Teams Help In Building Better Digital Products?. Image retrieved from https://appinventiv.com/blog/cross-functional-teams-in-digital-product-development/
References
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.). Oxford: Routledge. ISBN: 9780415717359
Mortensen, M. (2019, March 18). The Secrets of Great Teamwork. Retrieved October 17, 2020, from https://hbr.org/2016/06/the-secrets-of-great-teamwork
Zimmer, T. (2019, February 04). Importance of Teamwork at Work. Retrieved October 17, 2020, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-teamwork-work-11196.html
djj5263 says
@ ejm187
I agree with your discussion post related to team members playing devil’s advocate. I have done this in my past for really two reasons. One was to challenge the team as you mention above to think about all options available to team. The other was too evaluate the teams conviction to the outcome of the decision.
@Brian Hardy
Influencing change in a toxic management culture is extremely difficult. Fortunately ownership removed the toxic employees and sold the company before I was forced to change organizations. A time in the past that organizational change didn’t work well for the company that previously had above standard performance and results. Changing people doesn’t always work out in real life, like it looks on paper.
Thanks for the great comments
ejm187 says
Teamwork can make or break an organization. Teams are interdependent, and “like the different pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, diverse group identity’s can be compiled to create a picture or group that is not apparent from one piece or individual” (Kozlowski & Chao, 2012, as cited in Muchinsky & Culbertson, 2016, p. 276). To maintain the beautiful picture that team diversity creates, teams should be mindful of groupthink. Groupthink can occur in “cohesive groups whose members are committed to the group and have a strong desire to maintain group members” (Treviño & Nelson, 2107, p. 283). To guard against groupthink in a synergistic team, it’s wise to assign an individual to play the role of devil’s advocate. This person should challenge the group to consider different possibilities or outcomes, allowing alternative perspectives to be heard in a way that maintains synergy and protects the devil’s advocate from feelings of “going against the group.”
The absolute best take-away from this post is that there is no greater weapon in a company’s arsenal than a great team (Zimmer, 2019). Thank you for the great reminder; that’s so very true!
References:
Muchinsky, P.M. & Culbertson, S.S. (2016). Psychology applied to work: An introduction to industrial and organizational psychology (11th ed.). Summerfield, NC: Hypergraphic Press.
Treviño, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2107). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right (7th ed.). Hoboken: Wiley.
Zimmer, T. (2019). Importance of teamwork at work. Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-teamwork-work-11196.html
Brian Hardy says
This is a great blog post.
It causes me to take a step back in time and spend a moment with introspection. There have been times in my career, in which that I have not demonstrated this same level of resilience. I have spent time changing organizations in a effort to change myself. In retrospect I should have spent more time changing myself to influence change in a organization.
The value of team, cannot be understated. Glad that you have a great team in place now.
Brian –