No Man is an Island; Entire of Itself, Every Man is a Piece of a Continent
(John Donne, English poet, 1572–1631)
The statement applies to every industry and sector, whether you are managing the small medium size enterprises SMEs or large organizations and multinationals. The fact is that you may need to work as a team at some point of time regardless of any hierarchical level and position. To further strengthen this argument let‘s refer to some of the established views which are practiced globally, emphasizing the need of having teams in the various kinds of organization and business sectors.
When Oreo went to China they did not realize the dynamics of the team made for running a successful campaign. The team comprised of both local Chinese and U.S members but the chain of command came from the U.S. Hence, effectiveness of the team was questionable resulted in poor sales and low penetration in the market. This shows that the dynamics of a team are affected by roles, responsibilities and level of authority given to the team members, having a direct result on the firms operations and productivity. Nabisco (Oreo) then apprehended the significance of involving local team members and empowered them to work independently and also to give their valuable feedback for the best interest of the organization. Moreover, they shifted the chain of command from US to China and the results changed dramatically.
Obviously they came up with new strategies with the help of the feedback coming from local team members. This enabled them to achieve sales target and better brand image all over the world. Currently, Oreo Cookie can be found in more than 100 countries and they have the biggest market in U.S., China, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Central America, Indonesia and the Caribbean, UK and Argentina. In a nut shell, if you understood the significance of team dynamics, who will be your team members then the result will be in your way otherwise the effectiveness of the team you have constituted will remain in doubt.
A particular scenario of a firm having operations worldwide and the necessity to work as a team is crucial because they are now exposed to the whole world and having a virtual team will benefit the entire organization by fulfilling the same objective and common goal despite of territorial boundaries. This can only happen if the managers are proactive and flexible in managing their teams.
Let‘s discuss some of the demerits of having a virtual team. The biggest issue is the technology, team members may not be familiar with the relevant technology for example, may be few of the old age employees equipped with years of related experience find it hard to use the appropriate technology as compare to the fresh workers. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, team members may find it hard to coordinate with each other due to difference in geographical timing. Members from Australia may have different work time than members living in Canada. Similarly, Members within the same region may have different preferences for working hours, some may like to work in the morning others may have diverse penchant.
Since we discussed team incentives/rewards previously, there are various pros and cons of rewarding your team. One advantage of pleasing your team is it reinforces problem solving and team planning. Most of the Asian Companies reward their teams or groups to reduce jealousy-created within the team and making them obliged to each other and to enhance the sense of collaboration among them but on the other hand a lot of free riders may get benefited from such incentives. Let‘s talk about the other way of giving incentives which is more a dilemma these days. An independent research revealed in the Desslers book is that most of the large firms are involved in rewarding only those members who have contributed more to the team‘s work. One argument which we clearly receive in our organizations is that only the few got promoted from the team of many members. To bridge this gap the company should have a sound rewarding system, in order to satisfy all the team members.
Mathis and Jackson talks about structure of the team and how to get results from the team, in short, team performance’.
―Teams can be enhanced through task responsibility, discussion structures, and cooperation efforts. Age and educational diversity can expand task-relevant information and team performance bases. However; some organizations have noted a lack of willingness of team members to share information with those who are different from themselves. To counteract such problems, diversity training for teams and their members could be part of the design when establishing and managing teams‖ (Mathis and Jackson 2010, p 121)
We elaborated much about global teams, let‘s share some light on special purpose teams, how they are constituted and the related to dynamics of a special purpose team or task oriented team. These teams were well used by IBM and Samsung; they related such teams with innovation not only in the product but within the organization. These teams comprise of people from various departments like marketing, technical, finance, research, manufacturing and so on. Because members having marketing background can understand consumer needs better.
Similarly, members with technical expertise can respond well to the technological requirements and changes. On the contrary, team members may have different opinions based on their backgrounds, for example, marketing member will focus on more innovation and better features in a product while member from the finance department will be considering cost cuttings. Therefore to bridge this gap the team leader need address all these issues, give liberty and freedom to team members to get the project done more efficiently and quickly.
There can be many negative consequences of having a team, especially south Asian countries where employees have individual goals are the major barrier against company goals, workers are lazy, tend to avoid burden and pressure of doing tasks on time. One reason of this might be the huge family size and large number of dependents. Lack of empowerment we already discussed earlier might become the reason of lack of motivation among team members.
Another issue is the inappropriate project for a team and this is a dilemma in private owned companies they want to keep their ideal ones in the team not realizing they are not fit for the project. In third world countries, many departmental heads, they don‘t have a proper background of the projects and due to their closeness with the top management they ultimately become part of the corruption and slow project processing. In another scenario, the leader of the team may not have any role in choosing the team members which causes lack of understanding and communication gap between the team leader and other members. Therefore, a good team player must contain these following characteristics:
Works toward the understood goals of the team
Contributes to an informal, comfortable, and tension-free work environment
Is enthusiastic about working with the team
Follows through on commitment
Takes pride in the team‘s work
Shows interest in other team members‘ achievements
Readily accepts feedback on performance
Encourages others to achieve at high levels
Is able to stay focused on team tasks
Openly communicates with others in the group
Is sensitive to the feelings of other group members
Is able to resolve conflict effectively
Is eager to try new approaches‖(Kennedy et al, 2002)
In order to manage teams well, the organization needs to involve them in several training and constructive activities. One interesting activity which I encountered is the competitive team game activity, quite interactive and involving and in a fun environment getting the actual results done is the part and parcel of this activity.
―Competitive team games involve forming small teams from a large group and setting up them in competition with each other. Prizes of small value can be awarded to the winners. One example of the competitive team game is the team quiz. Two teams are sent away to devise say 10 questions on a common subject (like organization policy). They then return and quiz the opposing team in turn while the facilitator keeps score‖ (Garner 2012, p 51)
References:
Briscoe, Denis R. and Schuler, Randall S. (2004) International Human Resource Management. Policy and practice for the global enterprise. 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge.
Dessler, Gary (2013) Human Resource Management.. 13th Edition. USA: Pearson
Detter-Schmelz, D. R., Kennedy, K. N., and Ramsey, R. P. (2002). Enriching our understanding of student team effectiveness. Journal of Marketing Education
Mathis, Robert L. and Jackson, John H. (2010) Human Resource Management. 13th Edition. MASON,USA: South Western Cengage Learning
Garner, Eric (2012). Team Building. How to turn Uncohesive Groups into Productive Teams
