Do you even need a team? Pros and Cons of teams in the workplace
Teams are becoming more commonplace in modern organizations. There are teams for practically everything now, but why? The business world is more fast-paced than it once was, and the increased need to develop and release novel products quickly has led many organizations to use more flexible organizational structures, based around teams. However, some organizations are taking this too far and mistakenly assume that creating a team can solve any problem. Teams can function as efficient independent units to push products out quickly and solve a number of organizational problems, but they are not the solution for everything. Sometimes teams actually create problems instead of solving them.
Pros:
1. The average group makes better decisions than the average individual.
Each person on a team has a unique perspective that can inform decisions, as opposed to the single perspective of an individual. An individual can think an idea is very good, but when that individual is on a team his or her teammates can point out flaws in the “good” idea, or elaborate on the idea to make it even better.
2. An individual can’t be an expert in everything
Many problems, decisions, and tasks require knowledge about a wide range of topics. An individual can only be an expert in one or perhaps a few areas. Multidisciplinary teams allow for expert opinions that represent many jobs or departments. Having input from this variety of perspectives early can save time later by addressing potential problems before they happen.
3. Teams are highly committed to decisions
When people decide together, they are more likely to feel like they made the right call. Everyone provided input and agreed upon the best (albeit not perfect) course of action, and they will stick by it.
4. Teams can divide complex problems among members and solve them faster.
Problems that require many steps and a wide variety of knowledge to solve can be addressed more efficiently by a team. Each member can look into one aspect of the problem, then the team can meet and put each part together. This is a lot faster than one person investigating every aspect of a complex problem and making a decision alone.
Cons:
1. Good ideas can be suppressed.
It can be hard for individuals to speak up if they think other people in the group are wrong. Maybe everyone seems excited and they don’t want to disagree and kill the excitement, or maybe they don’t want to disagree with their team leader. Either way, the pressure to just go along with the crowd can keep people from pointing out gaping holes in a plan that everyone else seems to think is fine. This is referred to by psychologists as “groupthink,” which is the tendency for groups to make irrational decisions in order to avoid disagreements. Groupthink actually defeats the entire purpose of having a team in the first place: utilizing multiple perspectives. If team members don’t feel empowered to speak their mind, then a team can hurt more than it will help.
2. Opinions become more extreme
When a group of like-minded people get together to discuss an issue, they can go from all having a very moderate opinion to sliding toward a very extreme view. The technical term for this is “group polarization.” For example, a team in charge of selecting a new CEO can slide from individuals having a slight preference for one of the many qualified candidates to feeling very strongly that they need to do anything necessary to hire that specific person. This could lead them to offer the candidate too much money, taking away resources from the organization.
3. Teams are highly committed to decisions
This is both a pro and a con. Being highly committed to a decision helps in implementation, but it also keeps you from re-evaluating the decision. For example, if new information surfaces after a decision is made, people may ignore that information and blindly stick to the prior decision.
4. Simple tasks take longer
For simple tasks, an individual with the requisite knowledge can work much more efficiently than a team. The individual can make any necessary decisions quickly and not spend time consulting with others when it is unnecessary.
How do you decide?
If you are trying to decide whether an individual or a team would be better suited for a task, consider the type of task (simple vs. complex) and the potential team members (variety of expertise, similarity of opinions, and whether they would be comfortable speaking their mind). Teams can be a great asset, but they have weaknesses that should not be ignored.
Learn more about teams at tilt365.com
