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Top 6 characteristics that bind a team together

Leave a Comment / Careers and Concerns / HR Footprints / 01/05/2014

From our previous discussions, we understand that, when teams fail to become high performing teams, the work environment will be vitiated, focus will be narrowed to one’s own work irrespective of whether the end goal is achieved or not. Members tend to disown accountability and may resort to blame game, throwing allegations at each other. every time a situation like this arises it is common for the team members to look at the leader to fix the situation. Is it only the leader’s responsibility to keep the whole team together? Do teams have no owns towards the team performance? To answer these questions, let us see how each member of the team can make a meaningful contribution for the team to become high performing team. Here are the top 6 characteristics that bind a team together. Unified goal: It is said that a commonly shared goal will act as a binding force and knits the members together. Now, who should spell out the unified goal? Is the onus on the leader alone? Here while the leader needs to help the team understand the overall goals of the organization, each member can have a contributory role in clearly articulating the common goal. Clarity of roles and responsibilities: Here the onus is equally shared between the leader and the member; it is the leader who should fundamentally clarify while the team member should also make necessary efforts to seek clarity. Passively waiting for the leader to communicate is not going to help the team member. Concern for the end goal: Here the onus is greatly on the team member, it is not sufficient to say that “I have done my job” unless the end goal is achieved successfully. Team member needs to perform the specifically assigned responsibility while keeping an eye on how it is going to contribute to the bigger goal. Customer centricity: Once again, each team member needs to make efforts to understand who the end customer and who the immediate customer is. For example, for a procurement executive, production department may be the immediate customer; however, the procurement executive will be able to contribute to high performance of the team if he/she is equally concerned about the end consumer who may not be directly visible. Relationships: It is common sense, though difficult to measure in quantitative terms, the negative impact of poor relationships among the team members. Lack of positive relationships slows down the business process, hinders information sharing and creates unhealthy organizational dynamics. And these go completely against the spirit of high performance. Therefore, team members need to learn to build informal relationships with peers proactively which will create a healthy work environment and contribute to high performance. Communication: This is almost an extension of earlier point; if there are healthy relationships, there will be seamless communication and better knowledge sharing and alignment among the team members. Each member can take initiative on fostering transparent communication rather than restricting oneself to transaction nature of communication. Responsible and professional team members need to therefore understand that they have a very significant role in creating a team culture and in building a high performing team. While one cannot undermine the role of a leader, one should not trivialize the onus that lies on every team member. One must realize that self-management is more sustainable than relying on one single leader. The above characteristics effectively bind a team together. The message to each team member – irrespective of level in the hierarchy is: “You will be the architect in co-creating a high performing team which makes it easy for you to professionally excel and contribute to higher business performance.” This article was published in HR MirrorHans IndiaFollow Dr.Raj on Twitter @drraj29

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Power balance in organization structuring

Before we understand the need for power balance in organization structuring we must understand the factors that influence the organization structure. We must understand why it is important that the structuring is done right. One of the most critical exercises that organizations carry out is “Structuring”. It is always intriguing to understand the best way to organize various businesses or functions or departments. Ideally we all know that structure should follow strategy. For example, a company that is expanding to multiple markets for growth need to reorganize itself accordingly by creating marketing and sales teams in respective geographies. Beyond strategy, there seem to be several others factors that need to play on the structure. What are the factors that must be considered while structuring? Critical Success factors: Understand closely the business model and analyze the critical success factors. For example, in an industry, speed to market determines the success of the company. In another company, a collaborative effort in solving a customer complaint is critical. Your structure should factor in these factors. Customer as a stakeholder: While structuring is an internal matter, it impacts the customer. Particularly if you are in a business that requires close customer interface, taking the customer into confidence is extremely important. Your internal structure should not cause external inconvenience. Cohesive business process: Designing a structure around a cohesive business process helps in defining the accountability. For example, if a planning person operates away from procurement function, then we will have gaps in coordination. It may then make sense to integrate planning and procurement functions under one roof so that it will be a cohesive business process that can work seamlessly. Where does POWER figure? A more important factor however seems to be how the ‘power’ is balanced across the organization. The way different business functions are pitched against each other by design is to balance the power and to introduce a healthy management control. For example, if finance is overseeing the credit limits offered by the sales people, it is meant to safeguard the receivables. If sales team raises a flag against production department for want of output, it is intended to serve the customer better with on time supplies. What happens when ‘power’ gets centralized and does not get distributed? What happens when there is no power balance in the organization? Instead of pitching one function against the other and thereby safeguarding the interest of the business and driving efficiencies, sometimes organizations create ‘concentric power centers’. In other words, they create individuals or positions that will exercise all the power and will not have any controls on them. If leaders in such positions happen to be high on integrity, then they will exercise self-restraint. More often, however, such power corrupts best of the leaders and they end up misusing the power. Why do organizations end up creating such power centers? One expectation is to offer all the power and then expect accountability for results. When you do so, however, one should realize that power gets (mis) used first and then one hopes to have results. What if power gets misused and we do not get results? In such a scenario, the damage to the organization is enormous. To restore the structure with more sensible power distribution and to resurrect the morale of the managers, organizations need to expend significant energy. It is therefore pragmatic to ensure power balance in organization structuring !