The Business Book

82

E

ffective teams are the key

to great organizations.

This is especially true in

business, where teamwork merges

individual talent into something

greater than the sum of its parts,

enabling “common people to attain

uncommon results” in the words of

US industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

Manufacturing companies in

Europe and the US began to explore

the idea of teamwork in the 1960s

and 1970s, in response to the

success of Japanese team-based

working methods such as kaizen

(staff are responsible for a company’s

continuous improvement) and

“quality circles” (groups of staff

tasked with improving quality). In

the 1980s, as many companies

adopted “total quality management”

(organization-wide quality),

teamwork began to spread beyond

its genesis in manufacturing.

Today, it would be rare to find an

organization, of any type or size,

that did not value teamwork.

The benefits of teamwork

Teamwork has been credited with

bringing about substantial

reductions in absenteeism, lower

staff turnover, significant increases

in profit, and improved job

satisfaction. In Honeywell’s

commercial flight division in

Minneapolis, for example, teamwork

was credited with achieving an

80 percent market share in flight

and navigation systems—and for

generating profits that were

200 percent higher than projections.

Teams succeed because they

provide an environment where

weaknesses can be balanced out

and individual strengths multiplied.

Teams also safeguard against

individual shortcomings, such as

underperformance and personal

agendas. Projects are more likely to

stay on track when peers support

each other and review each other’s

and the team’s work. Teams also

create an environment that most

people enjoy. The security of a group

makes each individual feel less

exposed and, in turn, more likely to

take risks, be more creative, and

therefore be better able to perform.

Storming and norming

Effective teams take time to

develop. It is rare that a group of

people can come together and

begin to perform immediately; most

teams go through a series of stages

before effectiveness is achieved.

Bruce Tuckman, a US professor of

ORGANIZING TEAMS AND TALENT

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Teamwork

KEY DATES

1965 US professor Bruce

Tuckman proposes that teams

go through five stages:

forming, storming, norming,

performing, and adjourning.

1981 British management

theorist Meredith Belbin

writes Management Teams:

Why they succeed or fail,

describing nine distinct

roles that are essential to

team success.

1992 Peter Drucker describes

three kinds of team in “There’s

more than one kind of team,”

published in The Wall

Street Journal.

1993 Jon Katzenbach and

Douglas Smith write The

Wisdom of Teams, claiming

that forming a team leads to

greater success than

individual efforts.

Members of a team seek out

certain roles and they perform

most effectively in the ones

that are most natural to them.

Meredith Belbin

Meredith Belbin

Meredith Belbin was born in

Beckenham, UK, in 1926. He

earned a degree in Classics at

the University of Cambridge, and

then a doctorate in psychology,

during which he did research on

the importance of teamwork. He

then took a research fellowship

at Cranfield—where he studied

the benefits of ergonomics

(designing tools and systems

that fit best with people’s needs)

and improving efficiency in

production lines—before

becoming a management

consultant. Belbin studied

teamwork in the UK, US, and

Australia, and in 1981 wrote

Management Teams: Why they

succeed or fail, which became

one of the world’s best-selling

management books. Belbin has

advised the US government, the

European Union, companies and

public service bodies.

Key works

1981 Management Teams: Why

they succeed or fail

1993 Team Roles At Work

2000 Beyond the Team