Team Formation and Development

"Building Team and Individual Competencies for High Performance"

With pressures from the changing business environment to reduce costs and increase speed, improve quality and responsiveness, organizations have flattened and teams have emerged as a key organizational tool. In addition, problems and issues have become more complex, often crossing traditional functional boundaries requiring a multi-functional perspective for accurate assessments and solutions. Finally, complexity and uncertainty have been introduced to every organization, making horizontal coordination and integration more difficult and expensive. Therefore, teams have become an organizational choice for problem-solving, multi-functional decision-making, and lateral coordination. It has become more imperative that this expensive form of configuration work effectively and efficiently. Integrated product teams, task force teams, management teams, self-directed teams, multi-functional teams, leadership teams, quality improvement teams, coordination teams, and venture start-up teams are just a few examples of how teams are used as an effective response to a range of organizational challenges.

The spectacular successful results from any of these teams have been well documented and cited as examples. Organizations have therefore been led to believe that team formations is the magic bullet to solve any difficult and complex problem. The number of team failures is not as well documented or publicized but are more numerous than one might suspect from the literature. Most of us can recall personal experiences with teams that were frustrating, time wasting, ended in disorganization and disillusionment, and produced less-than-spectacular results. Clearly, teams have their problems and risks. People brought together to perform some task is not a team. Teams evolve their effectiveness through a development process. There is enough experience with teams to understand why they fail and these reasons have been well articulated. What is seldom considered as a cause of team failures is flaws in the initial configuration and structure of the team itself. This said, many teams are designed for failure before they begin, even though they do all the "right" tactical activities later.

While all teams have some common elements, they also have some very critical differences that make a "rubber stamp" approach to team configuration, formation, and development ineffective. The Vantage Resources, Inc. approach considers both the strategic and tactical purposes of the team to "design in" success. The team's purpose and the nature of the work performed greatly influences how a team is configured, formed, and developed. Likewise, an integrated product team has a different purpose than a continuous improvement team, and the nature of their work, member selection and culture will also be different. Through in-depth knowledge and professional experience, Vantage Resources, Inc. applies an approach to team configuration, formation, and development that takes all these complex variables into consideration. Teams are specifically designed to achieve their purpose. Vantage Resources, Inc. has extensive professional experience in the design and development of high-performance teams and can help you apply these technologies. Whether joint union/management teams, employee involvement programs, or new start-up teams.

Contact Vantage Resources, Inc. today at (888) 270-0774.