Elizabeth Doty, MBA
In
the last post on Team Synergy, we explored the fact that teams often waver in
deciding whether to invest in real teamwork. We often fail to recognize the ways our work is already interdependent
and how we can disrupt each other if we do not actively manage those
connections.
What
do I mean by interdependence?
Basically,
I mean the way my actions add to or detract from your ability to
create value – unconsciously or not.
To
be more specific there are multiple ways we each affect our colleagues’ work
quality, routinely.
· Common task or goal (obvious, but we think
we can go it alone even on these!)
· Shared customers and “brand” for our group
· Shared resources (budget, facilities,
technical infrastructure)
· Shared employees (or responsibility for
developing, recruiting, advancing them)
· Information-sharing (re downstream problems,
upstream changes, opportunities, etc.)
· Shared processes and
routines for
the group’s work
· Knowledge-sharing &
innovation
(pushing the envelope, staying at the leading edge)
The
point is if we inventory these, it is not too hard to make the case for
investing in teamwork.
For
example, the HR team of a high tech firm, who mostly did not view themselves as
team, found themselves embroiled in routine and heated conflicts between field
staff and home office specialists. When the costs got too high, they convened a
task force to look into the causes. Amazingly, after an exercise in which they
“walked in the others’ shoes” they discovered that it was actually their attempts
to add value individually that were causing the problem. Each HR person, in
an attempt to be proactive and support the company’s line leaders, was showing
up as if they were the only resource to that line leader. The result was that
they undermined each others’ good standing – which of course led them into increasingly
heroic and desperate attempts to add value.
It
was a great relief for them to realize that if they conveyed a coordinated
message about roles and value added to their customer, they could actually reinforce
each others’ good standing – because an endorsement from a peer is so much
more credible than saying it yourself. Now remember, they had not been
bad-mouthing each other before – but by recognizing this place where their work
naturally overlapped, they could stop inadvertently undermining each other and
actually leverage their shared customer relationships.
In
light of these connections, then, teamwork is not something we “should” do, but
a no-brainer to avoid inadvertent erosion of value and hopefully create even
more. There may in fact be challenges with individuals’ skills, but it is very
hard to distinguish those from the disabling effects of poor coordination – and
the team-building process itself is a good way to test and validate your
perceptions about capability.
This
is ultimately why it is worth investing in the foundations of teamwork – the
clarity of shared purpose and values, healthy norms, constructive ways to deal
with conflict, accountability for results etc. These are what enable us to get
to the gold of positive interdependencies, or synergy.
But
this can be hard to remember when it looks as though it’s all about the
so-called “soft stuff”.
So,
if you are struggling to get your team to invest in the work of laying that
foundation, you might start by inventorying the ways your work is already
interdependent, and the costs of doing it poorly.
I
have a hunch that if we did this, we might discover then that there are new
levels of synergy we have only barely explored yet.
What do you think?
Article by Elizabeth Doty
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