Working in Teams

Practically everyone you talk to today is talking about teams. They have become the established way of doing work. Every new problem requires the creation of a cross functional team. 

The problem with this is that the team members are still individual representatives, as opposed to Team players. With a constituency based organizational team you breed conflict and compromise, instead of consensus and action. 

In many organizations teams are set up without a lot of planning or preparation. Team building is overlooked, missions are not clearly identified, people are chosen based on political reasons not on the basis of individual contribution to the team or blending personality types for effective team performance. 

No wonder many teams fail. True teamwork requires careful planning and team building. 

Dealing with Change
Change has become a fact of life, companies are now facing more change in more aspects of the business that ever before. The organizations that can adapt quickly are the ones that will survive in the future. 

Increasingly companies will be selected by customers by their ability to adapt to the changing business environment. Companies that cannot adapt to change are destined to be remembered as former suppliers. 

Setting New Performance Standards
Many organizations still invest signif~cant time and effort in producing useless reports and measurements that mean nothing to the customer. Computer systems are converting trees into scrap paper at an alarming rate. Much of this scrap paper is produced to satisfy some internal accounting measurements such as measuring costs and variance. 

No customer ever made a purchasing decision based on suppliers costs or variances. Companies today need to redefine what information is useful to measure, and then capture the information in data warehouses, making it readily available to all...