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Keywords
Teams, Teamwork, Development
Abstract
The concept of teamwork in the workplace as defined in the literature requires a planned development to reach its maturity and a reasonably stable environment in which it can operate, but today there is no assurance that either condition can be met. Development time has been truncated and stability is uncertain. Furthermore, teams as such have no identity and recognition and reward remain focused on the individual. Yet the value and the power of the synergy of teamwork are unchallenged and perceptive managers constantly seek to capture its benefits. Teams have the collective strength that will achieve targets and influence motivation and morale - but the ideas which stimulate their actions come from individuals, not necessarily their leaders. A team can incubate but it cannot initiate. Innovation begins when an idea and an individual meet, and much will depend on how the organisation then handles it. Acceptance of the significance of this should challenge managers to look more closely into the untapped potential of the individuals they now regard as team members. Otherwise they may lose them.
Team: A group of people with either mixed or complementary skills working together for an agreed purpose.
A different setting
Performance can be enhanced and obstacles can be overcome by the synergy of teamwork.
This tenet has become the launching-pad for innumerable training programmes and is a focal point in the literature of leadership development.
But changes which have emerged in today's workplace, while in no way diminishing the substance of this, suggest that some rethinking of its application may be needed.
When the concept of teamwork became a major factor in planning the activities of people at work, the prevailing conditions showed:
workplace stability - work groups generally had low turnover and work procedures followed established patterns;
little change in organisation structures; and
the availability of traditional promotional paths.
Today we are faced with:
no organisation being able to offer any assurances of sustained long-term employment;
jobs geared to short-term contracts;
the development of limited term project teams;
the globalisation of manufacturing;
the outsourcing of non-core activities;
new technology making drastic changes in both the design and the processes of work;
war-room decision making replacing the deliberative processes...