During
the late 19th century and for most of the 20th century, management
of enterprises was based on planning and prediction. At the time, the majority
of people subscribed to the scientific management model whereby if you knew the
rules and inputs, you could predict the output and even manipulate it. The
emphasis was on efficiency and specialisation whereby individuals just needed
to know and perfect their bit of the process, with next to no clue of what
happens before or after the product moves past them. Managers planned and made
decisions while workers simply executed as commanded. Information flow was
bottom up and decisions flowed from the top downwards.
In the latter half of
the 20th century, with advances in technology leading to greater
connectivity and information transfer happening at faster speeds, it soon
became obvious that this form of management was quickly becoming obsolete. The
emerging interconnectivity of the world made collaboration not just necessary
but essential for survival. In order to remain relevant and make discoveries
useful for the times in which they found themselves, people, organisations and
enterprises had to work together with others far removed from themselves, not
only in terms of location, but also in trade and expertise. This was usually
challenging because different teams were being asked to work together towards a
desired outcome.
Within
a team, the elements that bind the team together and ensure success include
trust among team members, common purpose, shared awareness as well as
individuals being empowered to act. When different teams are asked to work
together, there is the risk of each distinct team regarding its role in isolation.
The blanks between teams cause the breakdown of a collaboration and
communication. Just like in scientific management whereby each worker did not
know what happened before or after him, the teams only know their piece of the whole.
This results in information or produce from one team that is late, not very
useful or out of context for the next.
Between teams, there is usually an attitude of “The other guys suck”,
such that there arises competition between the different teams as each works to
outshine the other teams. This is ultimately counterproductive as the goal of
each team is to place themselves in a favourable light, and achieve their
team’s goal, not the overall goal. Bringing it home, I oversee a team of health
personnel that include nurses, doctors, midwives as well as data technicians.
They usually gang up based on their educational qualification and information
flow remains within these arbitrary teams, yet we are all working towards a
common project goal.
The
only way to successfully get different teams working towards the same goal is
through building a team of teams. As I work to build a cohesive team out of my
different teams, I need to master two fundamental processes: shared
consciousness and empowered execution.
If
a team of individuals is to succeed while working towards a common goal, each
team member should know their role, but also that of each of the different team
members. In that way they each execute their part with the overall picture in
mind, at all times aware of how their actions affect the actions and output of other
members of the team. This commonality of purpose in a team needs to be scaled
up while one attempts to build a team of teams. For functionality to be
maintained in an environment that is increasingly more interdependent, every
team must be allowed to see the big picture ie the interaction between all
moving parts of the machine. Each distinct team, while carrying out their
specific role needs to know how that role affects the ability of the other
teams to carry out their roles and its impact on the overall goal. This is
shared consciousness. The teams cannot do this without knowing what the other
teams are about.
One
way in which I can foster this commonality of purpose across my teams is by removing
the blinders on each team, ensuring information flow between teams. This can best
be achieved through regularly scheduled meetings involving members of each of
the different teams where all can hear what is happening in each team and as
such get an idea of how the other teams tie in with their own. We currently do
this through daily morning meetings with out-going and incoming shift staff, as
well as monthly full team meetings.
In
some instances, a leader can also make use of embedding members from one team
in another for a period of time. This gives the host team the opportunity to
interact with and put a face to the other team, fostering relationship and
building trust. Lateral bonds between teams are thus strengthened, enhancing
the collaboration between teams that is required to increase chances of
success. Given the widely varied duties members of my different teams are
permitted to perform, this might not be very possible, but in the meantime the
use of common space and regular meetings fosters the inter-team interaction and
collaboration.
...To be continued...
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