Why use teams?

Why should organisations use team-working?

Team-working is not the great panacea. It's not the latest management fad. It's not the easy way of reducing costs. Team-working is a means to an end. It enables organisations to employ a range of other techniques for improving quality and reducing unit costs. Teams provide the platform on which to build continuous improvement, just-in-time production systems, an empowered, motivated and self-managed workforce committed to common goals. Teams don't make these things happen - they enable them. One definition of a team (which was referred to in the ILM video Teams that work) is:

"A small number of people (normally eight to fifteen) with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose and set of performance goals for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."

There are other definitions available, but they all tend to include the same themes about purpose, complementarity and shared responsibility for performance. But defining teams does not explain why team working is seen by so many organisations as being important. The most important question is, what does working in teams add to the performance of individuals?

What are the benefits of team working?

One of the most common metaphors for team working is the sports team. It is the ability of the team to perform collectively which enables them to succeed where others fail, not because they have the best individual performers, but because of their synergy.

Synergy is the property whereby the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Thus a team of individuals who are of average ability but who work well together may be better than a team which is made up of stars who lack the team ethos or ability to work together. R Meredith Belbin (Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail 1981: Heinemann) claims that a well-balanced management team, using his team roles to define such a team, would out-perform a team of Apollos - who possess high IQs but are ill-matched as team. This added something is what effective team working is claimed to add. This is synergy.

However, a team can only possess synergy when the team members are themselves capable of playing the game. This means that they must possess the skills necessary for their particular role, and they must understand the purpose of the game and the rules which govern it. Not only do team members need skills, but they may also need to be specialists, since each position on the field will require particular qualities.

In the ILM video Teams that work it's apparent that a high level of skills is critical for many of the teams, and that the organisations featured have developed systematic approaches to skill development. This includes the use of a skills matrix to match individual team members to particular tasks - both work tasks and team tasks. (A work task is one which is necessary for the work process, such as operating a welder or driving a truck; a team task is one which enables the team to operate as a team, such as team leadership or health and safety.)

Specialisation helps effective skills development - few goal-keepers make good forwards, and vice versa - but the team made up wholly of specialists unable to stand in for others is weakened. Teams need players who can move positions, deputise or stand-in for others, and provide team flexibility. This is what in work teams is meant by multi-skilling, but the extent to which team members should be completely interchangeable or simply able to stand in at short notice for emergencies will depend on the type of process and level of skill required. Again, the video gives some interesting examples of multi-skilling at work.

However, in watching the case studies on the video, you must always be prepared to ask the question:
'Could the organisations achieve the same outcomes by other methods?'

What about the disadvantages?

Team-working isn't easy. It requires an investment in skills, in the development of those people who lead and manage teams, and in the systems and procedures which are used to enable teams to fulfil their potential. Simply taking a group of people who work together and calling them a team is waste of time and effort. Similarly, developing systems and procedures which depend on effective team-working without investing in the basic infrastructure - the teams - is largely wasted effort, a house built on sand.

How do we make teams work for us?

There are no easy answers. But the first step is to consider what team-working actually involves. The video Teams that work, produced for ILM and featuring case studies of seven very different organisations which use teams can help you understand what's involved.

You also need to look at the skills development of all your people. The people who will operate in teams need to technical and team-working skills to perform effectively. You also need to ensure that the team leaders and their supervisors and managers are properly trained to perform their new role. ILM offers a range of qualifications for team leaders and managers at all levels, available through a network of 2,000 approved centres in the UK and Ireland, as well as in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Far East. ILM also published materials to support the development of team leaders and managers, including:

Bringing about the organisational change needed to introduce team-working requires leadership and vision. How do you ensure that your senior management team have those qualities? The ILM  video A Vision for change provides you with the examples and the resources to develop your management to enable the complex changes needed to make teams work for you.