Growing Teamwork in Organizations

Why does teamwork in organizations break down?

Anyone who has worked in a team setting knows the ideas and benefits encouraging us to work in teams. . . maximizing people's strengths, minimizing their weaknesses.

Knowing the benefits, ask yourself, why does team work break down so often?

Even knowing how a good team can help you meet your organizational goals and propel you closer to success in your career, teamwork often still fails.

Why? If your work in a corporate setting the answer is clear. Big business, is well, big.

Big business is slow to move, slow to act. Within a sluggish company, individuals must make decisions based on what is best for them individually.

This type of individualistic thought is often detrimental to team chemistry. But you know it happens all the time at the sake other people and of good teamwork in organizations.

So how can you be a good manager and encourage healthy, productive teamwork within your organization?

Friend and fellow webmaster, Jim Snedeker offers some unique insights and advice using the principles of good team building while organizing a worship team for his church.

Here are a few ideas:

Encourage 'Intrapreneurship.'

A term Giford Pinchot came up with in his 1985 book by the same name. Pinchot describes 'Intrapreneurs' as "dreamers who do."

Intrapreneurs follow their good ideas to the end, even through the conflict and doubt they face, in an attempt to facilitate change in order to reach the shared goals of the entire organization.

The great CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch wrote in his book "On War":

Detailed planning necessarily failed due to inevitable frictions encountered, chance events, imperfections in execution, and the independent will of the opposition. . . Strategy was not a lengthy action plan. It was an evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.

Teamwork is going to break down, it's that simple.

When people work closely together for any length of time, conflict is going to arise.

But the truth is, if you can strategically reinforce and evolve the "central idea" that drives your team, you can position your team to win in the end.

As Sun Tzu wrote over 2000 years ago:

"He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks."

People ultimately want to work together, they want to succeed.

Winning is a natural human drive.

In a team setting, people will work together if it's a mutually beneficial partnership where they receive what they need.

Still, pride, poor communication, misunderstanding, and lack of trust continually undermines teamwork in organizations.

Structuring your organizational strategy around a strong "central idea" that your entire team "buys into" is the secret to real cooperation and teamwork that gets results.

Go to the top of this Teamwork in Organizations Page

I want to check out the Workplace Teamwork Page to find out much more about working together with others.

Hey take me back to the Team Building Homepage!