Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success
No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.
Teamwork is the ability to work as a group toward a common vision, even if that vision becomes extremely blurry.
Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.
The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.
Many hands make light work.
Teams and teamwork is still an important concept for successful organizations
Most of the people I deal with regard teamwork as an essential aspect of their operations. Business survival depends upon it.
The nature of teams may be changing, but the underlying nature and benefits of teams are not. Teams are becoming more numerous and complex, with one person often being a member of a number of teams in an organization. Recent discussions have highlighted:
In one medium sized organization, formal management responsibilities being assigned to teams of people from different parts of the organization. Instead of having formal positions for specific functions (human resources, health and safety, etc), a committee structure has been created and successfully implemented. This helps ensure that the responsibility and accountability for these important functions is shared between a numbers of people.
In one technology based company, product and system implementations for different clients require different parts of the organization to provide services. Consequently, the project team can be very different for each client, depending on the expertise required. Team members may be based locally, in Australia or other parts of the world.
Good teamwork starts with a shared understanding of its importance. Many organizations recruit people with an aptitude for and leaning towards teamwork. Their induction process emphasizes it. The way teams work demonstrates it. Although team members have clear and designated responsibilities, they help others when required. Good teamwork behavior is recognized and rewarded. Teamwork is built into the organization culture - it is a part of 'the way we do things around here'.
A team may be subset of a bigger team. In the more formal language of organization structure, a team can be a section which is part of a department which is part of a division and so on. Each organizational unit is a team, where eventually the whole organization is one big team. This fits in with my definition of a team as 'A group of people, contributing their individual knowledge and skills but working together to achieve a common goal/task.'
The nature of our society can create competition between teams. It is a part of our competitive society. If you think of teams in a sporting context, you immediately think of two competing teams.
A management training game used is called 'Win as Much as You Can'. The rules of the game clearly show the benefits of co-operation, but teams playing the game often adopt a competitive approach which has dramatic, negative impacts on the outcome of the exercise.
A building change provided the opportunity to locate employees in different locations. In other words, instead of setting up workstations where team members from the same team were located together, the plan is to mix up employees from different teams in the same area. The idea is to help overcome barriers between teams by physically placing different employees together.