Why teams
This is about the essence of why businesses employ people.
One way is that someone wants to achieve something. They
may want to make and sell a widget or provide a service or
any of a million and one other goals. Once they get started
they find that if they got more people involved then they
would be better placed to achieve the goal that they have
set them self. So now that goal that one person was working
towards has two people working towards it, there is a team
involved. And as more people are wanted or needed then so
the team becomes bigger.
That is why teams exists. So far we haven't said anything
about how that team is structured or why the people choose
to be part of that team or for that matter whether they consider
themselves as part of the team. All we have done is established
that one of the reason why there is a team in place is because
in this instance a person is better placed to achieve a goal
if the have a team in place.
If we look more closely at the moment of deciding that two
people would be better than one then this is what we may,
or may not, find.
There are a few reasons for getting more people involved:
Volume - There is nothing clever about this one, it is just
a case that one person has more than they can do so they get
more hands involved. When I am working with teams I often
get one person to put a childs simple building block system
together. It takes them about 40 seconds. Then I ask them
to do it in 20 seconds. It has never been done by one person
in 20 seconds and so they ask if they can get someone to help
and they get the job done. Then I ask them to put four puzzles
together in 15 seconds. Now they have a team of 16 on the
job and once again they achieve the goal. In this case the
reason they got a team involved was just about volume.
Skill range - This takes it on a level. At times the jobs
we are doing are a bit technical for example we have to write
the text for a web site and design the way it looks. When
I do this I know I am ok with the words but graphic design
just isn't me, so I get someone else to do that bit for me.
There we go, we have a team of two people, not because of
the volume, I have time to do both, but instead because we
want some special skills.
Synergy - If you have ever got a piano up a flight of stairs
you probably know all about synergy. By yourself you couldn't
do it, but if there are 6 of you, you can. Parallel processing
would be another explanation of the same thing.
Momentum - On Gosforth High Street the other day there was
a team of six repairing the railings all along the street,
a lot of railings. The railings were getting repaired and
they were chatting away as they did it having fun. Working
alone one preson would have possibly become quite despondent
by a boring and seemingly endless job however as a team they
made light work of it. In a similar way, when I work alone,
if I come across a problem then I sometimes can be stuck on
it for ages, if I work amongst others, then I seem to cruise
through them. Momentum.
There is of course a down side to having a team, the obvious
one is the cost however there are more. See the article called
the downside of teams.
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