Are Your Teams Working? - Keys to Team Effectiveness

Developing Great Teams!

“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

"Are Your Teams Working? - Keys to Team Effectiveness"

Summary of Key Team Effectiveness Myths and Questions

Myth	Current State	Desired State
We know how many teams we have action	How many teams do you currently have in place?	How many teams are needed to meet the organization's improvement needs?
Teams are the best way to get a lot projects completed	How many projects are currently being worked on by teams?	What projects of the many that are needed should be assigned to teams?
We form teams to solve all of our problems	What types of projects do you currently assign to teams?	How will you determine whether a project goes to a team or an individual?
We know how effective all of our teams are	What types of results do you currently expect from teams?	What criteria should your team effectiveness scorecard contain?
Our teams do almost all of their project work in meetings	What do you expect your teams do get done in their meetings?	How much 'between meeting' time do each of your teams need?
We train all of our teams up front before putting them to work	How do you provide training for your team members and leaders?	To what degree is the training being effectively learned and applied?
Our teams select projects that benefit our organization the most	What criteria do your teams base their project selection on?	What can we do to teach our teams about the costs of doing business?
Our team leaders are determined by the positions they hold	How do you select people for team leadership positions?	What skills should each of your team leaders and facilitators have?

The above eight myths were discovered the hard way - through my direct experience with team success and failure in seven different organizations. Unfortunately, I am seeing many organizations today struggle with team effectiveness for the same reasons that I began to discover more than 20 years ago. In general, we have (1) too many teams, (2) too many leaders with poor project leadership and team facilitation skills, and (3) too little time built into our jobs for project work of a team or an individual type. Combined, these realities are resulting in a LOT of wasted time, and too little improvement progress, in most organizations. How effective are your teams?

Answering the 'Current State' questions will help you identify those areas of relative strength and weakness that your team process has. By answering the 'Desired State' questions, and in particular, reaching consensus on their answers as a group, you can begin to define team support system changes that can be made to help drive your teams towards higher levels of performance.

Would you like to learn more about this 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:

	Team Effectiveness Workbook overview
	Team Effectiveness Workbook table of contents
	Summary of workbook exercises
	Characteristics of work, project, and focus teams
	Summary of team types
	Example team infrastructure
	Great Systems! home page

“The only thing I know is that I do not know it all.” -- Socrates

For more information, pricing, or to place an order, contact me at: kevin@greatsystems.com