Teamwork – strengthening the chain

There are numerous idioms in English that refer to the importance of teamwork: ‘A chain is only as strong as its weakest link’ - the phrase that spawned an international TV quiz sensation. How about ‘a whole is the sum of its parts,’ and another famous one: ‘there is no I in team’.

Yet teamwork is one of the most elusive topics in business, and theory divides opinion, ironically, more than any other. It might seem like such an obvious point: surely it’s easy to get a great group of people, get them all to work together, give them all defined roles, make sure they’re well rewarded and then reap the results as the project comes to fruition?

However, like many things, it’s not that simple and there are hundreds of books and countless opinions available on how to get the most from the team; How to create the best team? How to motivate them? How to provide direction? This manifests itself across the spectrum of human experience, not just in business: sport and theatre are two areas that spring to mind.

What is generally agreed is the importance of teamwork to progress business. It seems blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever been involved with sports or even amateur dramatics that successful teams will improve any number of different facets of the task in hand, such as creativity, efficiency and morale. In business terms this translates into increased commercial success; happier staff, happier clients or customers and, ultimately, increased profitability.

This is not to suggest that individual leadership or efforts are not relevant or important, but that even more can be achieved when several individuals are working towards the same goal. Andrea Maietta works in the insurance industry in Milan, Italy: “A good team can be much more than the sum of the individuals forming it; it has a better creative potential and can better tolerate efforts, it is highly motivating for the team members and allows them to achieve results that individuals cannot reach by themselves.”

Russell Boren, a plant manager in Alabama, USA, agrees: "True teamwork means no team member is more or less important than the other; they just have different jobs. It may be an absence, training, illness or lack of understanding of a problem. If any one member of a team is affected, the others will pick up the slack and continue the process.  In my opinion, without teamwork no company will ever reach its potential.”

But what exactly is teamwork? Susan Heathfield in “Trust rules! The most important secret” (available at http://humanresources.about.com/library/weekly/aa041401a.htm), provides five helpful teamwork tips and puts the onus firmly on the manager and not on the team:

1: Form teams to solve real work issues and improve real work processes

2: Hold departmental meetings to review projects and progress

3: Build fun and shared experiences into the organisation's agenda

4: Use icebreakers and time-limited fun team-building exercises

5: Celebrate group successes publicly

The key figure in all of Susan Heathfield’s tips above appears time and again in speaking with executives about teamwork: The leader. In almost all examples, and this will resound very strongly with MBA graduates: the leader of the team is ultimately responsible for that team’s success. The leader must be part of the team; driving it and providing direction, yet retaining a distance from the team in order to evaluate it, identify its problems and steer it towards its goal if it strays off target.

This ambiguous role, as so many have learned, can be extremely difficult and most MBAs spend a great deal of their time picking up those skills. Steven Hall, a senior Supply Chain Manager with a background in the US military, supports this: “It all boils down to executive vision and leadership. The boss who wants to hire people to run the show, but doesn't allow them to make decisions and second guesses every decision when they do allow you to make them, doesn't really want to let go of the reins.  The company will never grow beyond what it is today and it will never get more efficient.  If you hire the right people, give them direction, the tools to do the job and let them go do it [then] you will be amazed at how far they will take you.”

Hall goes on to specify four key areas that business leaders are regularly missing:

1: Lack of clear communication of a business plan to the organisation

2: Lack of understanding of what a good employee is

3: Lack of ability to set an expectation and hold people to it

4: Lack of understanding of where cost is

For MBA graduates who spend so much of their courses in teams and learning to be leaders, this advice is essential. The balance is extremely delicate, yet spending as much time as possible learning how to maintain it could be the most important quality of all.

- Ross Geraghty