Eight Considerations for Three Types of Teams

Website design By BotEap.comThere are three common types of business equipment that are used in high-performance organizations. Although different experts may call teams by various names, teams are obvious workgroups, for temporary projects, or belong to a process that is cross-functional. Although the formation and team building criteria for all types of teams may be somewhat similar in some respects, the scope of teamwork will be very different. Here are eight things to consider when deciding which of these three types of equipment to implement for a particular business need.

Website design By BotEap.comWork teams (also known as Cell or Natural Team)

1. Permanent teams where members are in the same department and usually do the same type of work or have interdependent jobs.
2. The team is given goals and objectives to achieve along with the decision-making power they have and when they should consult management.
3. A greater understanding of working together promotes new suggestions and the exchange of ideas.
4. Efficiency and productivity improvements can easily be made.
5. Quick process changes, efficient troubleshooting, and rapid updating of procedures are possible.
6. Easy to implement as the group does similar work and they may already know each other.
7. Greater employee participation and high levels of horizontal communication to better solve problems and serve customers.
8. Each team member increases their skills, knowledge, and capabilities through joint problem solving, team decision-making, and the potential for flexibility with cross-training and role rotation.

Website design By BotEap.com Project teams (also known as task force or problem solving team)

1. The temporary team met to perform a particular task, to solve a specific problem, or to discuss potential business ideas or opportunities within a specified time frame.
2. The team’s purpose, budget, milestones, and boundaries can be determined before forming the team, but team members determine how to divide and schedule work assignments.
3. There may be conflicts of interest as members may be from different work areas and will have both the project leader and their regular manager to report and receive assignments.
4. Although each vote is considered equal, the membership will be a combination of people from different levels in the organization and who have different skills, knowledge and perspectives of the project goal to be achieved.
5. Each team member will be required to carry out certain work assignments according to their experience, skill level, desire to learn, or area of ​​influence.
6. It requires high levels of trust, participation, respect, and communication between members to perform tasks and solve problems.
7. The team should work internally for group decision making, but can work with those outside the team to get suggestions or ideas for the team to consider.
8. If necessary, the core project team can form sub-teams or groups with members within or outside of the core team to more efficiently accomplish the necessary project work.

Website design By BotEap.com Multifunctional teams (also known as Process or Focus Team)

1. The team can be permanent or temporary depending on the design and required activity, which generally focuses on implementing an organizational change effort or improving a common process or system.
2. The team should have a measure of performance and should be required to have open communication and information exchange both within the team and with their functional groups outside of the team.
3. Members come from various departments, where each department has a part of an overall process.
4. Significant process improvements and increased customer satisfaction can result from joint working efforts.
5. Cross-training potential to increase staff flexibility and improve knowledge of all process-related work.
6. It can take a while to become productive as there may be problems with communication and trust as departments may have blamed each other for problems in the past or not understanding the work of other team members.
7. The team looks inward for problem solving and decision making and looks out for potential problems or new ideas for the team to consider.
8. Acceptance of improvements by the team may be better by others outside the team, as they received information about the process through their representative on the team.

Website design By BotEap.comConsider all eight things when determining which of the three types of equipment to implement to meet business needs. Is a task force, a temporary project team, a cross-functional team, or some combination of teams necessary to meet the need? Also consider what team building and training needs to be available for the type of teams chosen to be most effective when defining team scope and deciding on membership.