Moving work teams to the next level

In order to become and remain competitive, organizations across America are moving away from traditional hierarchical management toward a network of small work teams. Recent surveys suggest that as many as 80% of American businesses now have one or more work teams in place. Such teams, dedicated to the continuous improvement of their piece of the business, have the potential of becoming the primary unit of performance in these new corporate systems. Many self-directed, problem solving and cross-functional teams are producing dramatic results in quality, productivity and speed. Far too many, however, are failing to realize their potential. Some never seem to get off the ground while others plateau or even drop off in performance after a promising start. For many organizations, keeping the momentum going is even more of a challenge than getting them started in the first place. Based on the author´s experience in training and developing high performance teams, this paper identifies the three major factors that contribute to team performance. Additionally, it describes fifteen characteristics that must be addressed in order for work teams to reach their performance potential. Using these characteristics as a checklist can be helpful when establishing new work teams. But they may be even more useful when attempting to determine why existing work teams have leveled off or even decreased in performance