Learning More About Focus Teams!
 
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“Together everyone achieves more.”

-- Who knows, but it makes sense!

“Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to produce uncommon results.”

-- Successories poster

“Effective teams are a necessary part of any high performance organization.”

-- Kevin McManus, the Systems Guy

What is a Focus Team?

All organizations have at least one focus team. Focus teams meet regularly to address key organizational focus areas. Examples of focus teams include safety committes, training committees, recognition committes, customer satisfaction teams, waste reduction teams, planning teams, and leadership teams.

Focus Team Characteristics

A focus team is a cross-functional group of employees that meets regularly to:

  • Support through action one of the key organizational performance areas
  • Monitor the effectiveness of the systems that support this focus area
  • Evaluate action success to-date and make adjustments that are needed
  • Proactively identify and make system changes that improve systems effectiveness for the given performance area

The group's makeup (size, membership, and stability) is primarily influenced by:

  • The nature of the key performance area being supported
  • The degree of cross functional representation required
  • The ability of each individual to actively participate in the group's work
  • Limiting the group's size to ten or less people for meeting effectiveness
  • The type of objective work required -- info sharing versus problem solving
  • Providing departmental representation without departmental overload
  • The urgency for performance area improvement

Meeting frequency, location, and timing options include:

  • Meeting regularly throughout the operating year
  • Meeting lengths being around one hour or less
  • Getting together every one or two weeks, depending on the urgency for performance improvement
  • Normally meeting in the standard locations that are available

Skills desired of members would include:

  • A desire for and understanding of continuous improvement and quality
  • A basic awareness of communication, problem solving, decision making, and project development tools
  • Shared responsibility in the content, impact, and success of the measures that serve as key performance indicators
  • An understanding of how the performance area impacts the profitability of the organization
  • The ability to spend time on system enhancement tasks between meetings

Over time, as the team matures, possible changes will include:

  • A shift from management member dominance to more support / hourly representation
  • Cycles of improvement for the systems the group is responsible for
  • A shift in meeting frequency should organizational priorities change
  • Delegation of system improvement efforts to project teams

Possible constraints to team effectiveness and regular meetings include:

  • Requiring a given person to lead or to be on too many teams
  • Failing to have a given department actively represented
  • Not having the necessary performance data or support information for prompt decision making
  • Failing to regularly complete action items away from the meeting
  • Lack of effective team leadership
  • Not developing and following a systematic plan for system improvement over time

Would you like to learn more about other team types?

Select the type of team that you would like to learn more about to go directly to that type. Review the summary matrix that is provided through that link to gain a 'big picture' view of how the three team types compare to each other. Operational definitions for each team types are also provided on that summary webpage.
What are project teams?

Would you like to learn more about the "Team Effectiveness" workbook?

Click on one of the following links to learn even more about how this workbook can help the teams you already have in place, and those that you might be thinking about using, even more effective:

"Myths and Realities of Team Effectiveness" workbook overview
Summary of workbook exercises
Summary of key team myths and questions
Job Design Power System
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Copyright © 2005, Great Systems!
Last Revised - July 1, 2005		 For pricing or to place an order, contact me at: kevin@greatsystems.com