Team Management: Creating and Managing Flexible and Resilient Teams

By Massimo Magni and Leonardo Caporarello

Collaboration and teamwork are the keystones of organizational life.Managing a team requires specific competencies, the outcomes of a processof informed learning based on critical analysis not only of organizationalsuccesses, but failures as well. This book provides the tools,the methodology, and the guiding principles to support the people whowork in teams as members and as leaders. The main issues inherentto team management are addressed by following a problem-based approach,with the aim of facilitating the achievement of team objectives.The authors encourage readers to reflect on the daily challenges ofworking on a team, and show how to lay the foundations for buildinga synergetic team: correctly structuring the team, assigning responsibilities,resolving conflicts, and managing decisions and meetings tooptimize negotiation processes. The book also explores the advantagesand obstacles to running geographically dispersed teams. Completingeach chapter is an interview with an expert who offers answers to themyriad questions that team leaders have to ask themselves to be able tomanage their teams with intelligence and common sense.

• Language: English
• Publisher: EGEA Spa - Bocconi University Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9788831322584

Book preview

Introduction

The first idea for this book came from a discussion during a redeye flight back to Italy from a conference in Canada. The people sitting next to us still complain about the moment we pulled out pen and paper and started drawing up charts and diagrams in the middle of the night. This book was born out of a strong belief that coping with the dynamic nature of today’s environment is only possible by sharing ideas, by collaborating, and by effectively integrating individual skills. And the pandemic has made this challenge even more complex. The importance of collaboration and teams is particularly clear from statistics that indicate a continued increase in team-based working methods in organizations. Consider that in 1985, the majority of activities (about 70 percent) were performed individually, whereas now the proportion has reversed: about 80 percent of activities and projects within organizations are performed in a team.

While the team has become a cornerstone of organizational life, it now faces complex challenges given the physical distance between people. Hybrid working models were already around before 2020, but the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has affected how people interact within the organization. Suffice to say that a recent survey highlighted that 65 percent of people will work in hybrid or remote models in the coming years.

Just imagine this situation, which we have personally witnessed (surely you’ve experienced something similar):

Laura oversees two teams, and until a few months ago she was very proud of both of them and her ability to manage them simultaneously. In fact, in a short time, she was able to put them together from scratch and make them very productive. After Covid-19, the company decided to move to new, more flexible working methods that it had used during the pandemic. At that point, the first problems arose in both teams, in two different ways.

Team 1: The first team found a new balance with the configuration of the new work model. But Laura thinks this new balance could threaten long-term productivity. In fact, the team now has a very solid core of 60 percent of members who behave and feel like a team. They are very cohesive, productive, and motivated, and team spirit is very high. Apparently there are no problems: the team keeps its commitments on time and meets high quality standards. However, the remaining 40 percent of members are isolated; they believe their contributions are not taken into account, and they don’t feel involved in team activities. The core members become more cohesive each day, while the rest of the team is more isolated.

Team 2: The second team seems to have reacted very differently. In fact, there are no isolated members; the group is divided into two subgroups. Each subgroup is very cohesive and works as a team. Within each group, members actively collaborate, trust each other, and have the same way of interpreting challenges. But between the two subgroups there is not the same trust or team spirit, and the tension between them is palpable: they almost always seem to have opposite ways of approaching a problem.

What kind of management problem is Laura facing? How might we help her resolve this critical situation?

This book was born from the experience we gained during training activities and research projects aimed at supporting managers and organizations in situations similar to the one experienced by Laura. In particular, the book unfolds as a series of reflections that emerge in light of the research project Leading Teams¹ that we developed with SDA Bocconi School of Management. The project is based on constant interaction between academia and business, with the aim of proposing continuous monitoring of elements that support teams in carrying out their tasks and achieving their goals. We believe, in fact, that the key to managing successful teams lies in a holistic approach that combines the world of research with successful business practices. This approach is able to trigger a process of conscious learning, also thanks to the critical analysis of organizational failures.

As in the first two editions, the book is intended primarily as a practical tool to support those involved in a team as members or as leaders, trying to highlight critical behaviors and related countermeasures that can facilitate the achievement of team goals. The structure of the book is consistent with this perspective. For this reason, it follows a problem-based approach, so that each chapter represents a moment of reflection and support with regard a specific problem that team members are facing. In particular, from our experience with research and our constant collaboration with companies, we have identified the main questions that managers ask themselves on the subject of team management, and around each question we have built a chapter with the intention of supporting teams in achieving their goals. In addition, we have included an interview in each chapter, to bring in the perspective of the corporate world, with suggestions and insights that are useful for concrete application of the concepts we present. Finally, to stimulate reflection on the various themes, each chapter contains a list of five or six questions that we invite our readers to ask themselves, as well as their team members or leaders, with the aim of fostering constructive contemplation to improve teamwork.

We would like to take the opportunity of this new edition to thank all the readers and participants of the SDA Bocconi School of Management courses who encouraged us to enrich the content of the first two editions. In light of the valuable suggestions and discussions we had in the classrooms and via email, we decided to consider two additional challenges that team leaders face: negotiation processes and managing conflicting objectives within the team, and managing geographically dispersed teams. In sum, the book seeks to answer the following questions:

•Chapter 1 : Creating a team . Do I really need a team? What kind of team do I need?

•Chapter 2 : Structuring a team . Which people need to be involved? Does everyone contribute to the team? Who does what?

•Chapter 3 : Decision making in the team . How can I make decisions more effective?

•Chapter 4 : Managing conflict in the team . How can I leverage differences between members?

•Chapter 5 : Negotiating among team members . How can divergent goals be aligned among team members?

•Chapter 6 : Managing geographically dispersed teams. How can I foster team spirit and collaboration when members are in different locations?

We hope that the questions we have posed represent the ones that leaders or team members ask themselves every day (at least in part). If so, we hope you all enjoy the book and we invite you to help us to continuously develop our Leading Teams project by contributing with suggestions, and by telling us your success (or failure) stories.

Notes

¹ The Leading Teams website (http://www.sdabocconi.it/leadingteams), in addition to presenting in detail the research projects we are conducting, also contains practical self-assessment tools, templates, and checklists to complement the guidance and suggestions found in the book.

1Creating a Team

1.1 Team definition

Work like a team. This seems to be the motto of recent years. Traditional organizations, as we are used to conceiving and designing them, with defined roles, responsibilities and communication channels, seem to be losing ground to teamwork. In fact, these organizations themselves are sometimes perceived as barriers to adopting the teamwork method.

But along with this teamwork fever, we realize that, on the one hand, traditional organizational structures are still considered necessary by most companies. Yet on the other hand, talking to the people around us, we can safely say that while half see teamwork as an opportunity, and a stimulating and effective way of working, the other half have had frustrating experiences, and ended up feeling like they were wasting their time. So, what is teamwork? Is it a pioneering organizational solution or a managerial fad? Is it a form of work that is effective only for advertising agencies or can it be effective in established industries as well? What makes teamwork something positive for some and frustrating for others?

In this chapter, we will discuss what teamwork is, what the different types of teams are, and when it is appropriate to use teams to perform a set of tasks. Let’s start by defining what a team is. Often the term is not used in its original sense, but rather to identify any group of people working on the same activities or project. So it is more common to label groups as teams than actually allowing the group to behave like true teams.

Let’s look at some examples. Which of these can be called a team?

1. Passengers on a bus.

2. People sheltering from the rain on a porch.

3. An audience at a theater.

4. An ice hockey team.

Instinctively one would rule out option 3 and tend to take option 4. Why? What characterizes an ice hockey team?

The first step in defining a team is to assign a common objective to all its members. In fact, the objective is the reason why different resources can be put together; a team does not exist until it has an objective, and of course it follows that this objective must be collective, that is, specific and defined. If a company creates teams that are assigned generic or company-wide goals instead of team-specific objectives, they are bound to fall short of expected performance levels. So the lack of a shared objective is why it is instinctive to realize that option 3 is not a team.

But why don’t options 1 and 2 represent true teams? Aren’t they groups of individuals with common goals?

For example, consider a company that designs and builds residential plumbing systems. In the company there are two categories of professionals: designers and installers. The designers are in charge of drawing up the system diagrams, sizing the various components and finding suppliers for all the equipment. The installers, once they receive the input from the designers, proceed to order the material and organize the work in the field to get the system up and running. Let’s say that this company’s first project, commissioned by a regional authority, involves an installation for Olympic Hall, a high-rise building. Management decides to entrust the task to a team made up of resources with different specialties (designers and installers). How might the team objective be formulated?

a. Develop skills to expand the company’s areas of operation and in particular to open up the market for complex plumbing systems.

b. Develop the design and draw up a list of materials needed for the Olympic Hall facility project.

c. Define and implement the plumbing system for the Olympic Hall project by documenting the process.

From the simple example above, it is clear that option (a) is too broad for a single operations team: in a sense, it would require the new team to replace management. In option (b), on the other hand, the objective is characteristic of the engineering specialists, who would most likely be able to get the job done faster and more effectively without the support of the installers. In option (c), however, the team is tasked with carrying out the entire project and, more importantly, developing and documenting the process it intends to use to achieve the objective, generating a codified knowledge base that the firm can benefit from in the future.

As we have seen in the examples above, a shared objective is not the only necessary condition for a team. Take for example the group of people who are sheltering from the rain under a porch: why aren’t they a team? Because they don’t need to collaborate or pool their skills or experiences to reach a common goal. To be a team, the members must be interdependent on each other to achieve their objective. This element has powerful impacts on team structure and composition. In other words, the team must have all the necessary skills to achieve the desired output. Moreover, as the members are interdependent, internal coordination and hence communication will be paramount. Interdependence among members also makes them mutually responsible for attaining the end result: no one person will be able to achieve the objective individually, and in case of failure, all individuals in the team will be responsible. That is, each member is held accountable for both their own input and the overall performance of the team.

Another aspect of a team is distinctiveness. In order for a team to be successful, i.e. for members to use their skills and expertise to achieve the common objective and to work together with other members, people need to realize that they are part of a team, and the members themselves need to identify with it.

How else could one imagine individuals exchanging information? And collaborating? To address this need, teams are often created and legitimized through formal communications, e.g. a kick-off meeting.

To sum up, we can define a team as a set of people who work together interdependently to achieve specific objectives for which they are mutually responsible, who recognize themselves as members of a team and who are perceived as such by an external third party.

1.2 The descriptive elements of the team

From the previous discussion and the definition provided above, we can derive the main elements that describe a team (Figure 1.1):

Figure 1.1 Elements that describe a team

Figure 1.1 Elements that describe a team

•objectives;

•size;

•network;

•identification;

•structure.

1.2.1 Objectives

As mentioned in the previous section, unlike other forms of aggregation, setting team objectives makes it possible to:

•determine whether or not there is a real need to form a team;

•identify the skills needed to achieve the common objective;

•define key tasks to be performed and timelines;

•assign objectives at an individual level and establish reward systems.

Table 1.1 Type of activity

* When the team is assigned a disjunctive activity, its performance—being mainly dependent on the member with the greatest competence or expertise—is expected to