No matter what you call your team-based improvement
effort: continuous improvement, total quality, lean manufacturing or
self-directed work teams, you are striving to improve results for
customers. Few organizations, however, are totally pleased with the
results their team improvement efforts produce. If your team improvement
efforts are not living up to your expectations, this self-diagnosing
checklist may tell you why. Successful team building, that creates
effective, focused work teams, requires attention to each of the
following:
Clear Expectations: Has executive leadership
clearly communicated its expectations for the team’s performance and
expected outcomes?
Context: Do team members understand why they
are participating on the team?
Commitment: Do team members want to
participate on the team? Do team members feel the team mission is
important?
Competence: Does the team feel that it has
the appropriate people participating? (As an example, in a process
improvement, is each step of the process represented on the team?)
Charter: Has the team taken its assigned area
of responsibility and designed its own mission, vision and
strategies to accomplish the mission? Has executive leadership
empowered the team with a signed charter?
Control: Does the team have enough freedom
and empowerment to feel the ownership necessary to accomplish its
charter?
Collaboration: Does the team understand team
and group processes? Do members understand the stages of group
development?
Communication: Are team members clear about
the priority of their tasks? Is there an established method for the
teams to give feedback and receive honest performance feedback?
Creative Innovation: Is the organization
really interested in change? Does it value creative thinking, unique
solutions, and new ideas?
Consequences: Do team members feel
responsible and accountable for team achievements? Are rewards and
recognition supplied when teams are successful?
Coordination: Are teams coordinated by a
central leadership team that assists the groups to obtain what they
need for success? Have priorities and resource allocation been
planned across departments?
Cultural Change: Does the organization
recognize that the team-based, collaborative, empowering, enabling
organizational culture of the future is different than the
traditional, hierarchical organization it may currently be?
