On Chapter 7, Denning gives a
short description of how different people work together. He explains that for
teams, their:
Objective – has a specific operational objective
Time frame – when the objective is met, the team
dissolves
Authority – someone with authority decides the objective
Membership – the
person with authority or the person who put the team together selects the
members
Driving force – to get the job done correctly
Purpose – to get the job done
Commonalities – are the shared goals, objectives, and
timelines
Success and failure – usually clear
Risks – no clear goal; micromanaged by the organization
or person with authority
Examples – project management teams, task forces,
standing committees
High
performance teams also tend to have certain characteristics of a community.
These are: excelling customers’ expectations with the final product, shifting
their performance to what is needed, taking advantage of every opportunity,
turning every setback into a strength or good fortune, the team grows stronger
as individuals learn about each others values, strengths, and weakness, each
individual member grows professionally and as a person as they learn from what
they have experienced, their goals become more urgent, team approach is more
powerful than those of regular teams or communities, and lastly, they carry out
the tasks with passion and as a team.
There
are various reasons why values are important for an organization. Values are
what make us humans. It’s what we live by, as it is an estimation of your
worthwhileness for the organization. In other words, if your values are align
with the company’s values then it is highly estimated that you will continue
working for that company for years to come. Each person must be aware of their
own values and see if they align with the values of the company and of those
around you. In my opinion, there’s great importance for a high performance team
to share the same values. Sharing the same values enables the team to work more
closely together as the members will understand each other’s weaknesses and
with time guess the other members next step. At then end, when a high
performance team shares the same values they tend to work faster, stronger, are
a few steps ahead of each other and their time together is very meaningful,
productive, and effective.
It’s
essential for organizational effectiveness to have individuals working together
in either: work groups, teams, communities, or networks. Work groups are the
traditional units of an organization such as, departments or divisions.
According to Denning, teams are organizational groupings of people who are
interdependent, share common goals, coordinate their activities to accomplish
these goals, and share responsibility for the performance of the collectivity.
The concepts of communities that work together are groupings of people who
share the same common interests, practices, values, share knowledge across
boundaries, and are mainly together to learn from each other and enhance their
knowledge. Networks are defined as the collection of people who that maintain
contact with each other for the pure purpose of explicit or inexplicit benefit.
I
personally had many positive experiences from a community. During my undergrad,
me and a few of my classmates always met up after class to study together, to
do the next assignments, bounce ideas on our understandings of the lecture, and
so on. We had a common shared goal, which was to help each other to gain
understanding of the lecture and to get a better grade. We did not compete we
just collaborated and studied together. The results were that we all got an A
for those classes in those terms. The one bad experience I recall the most
refers to one team forced to work together during my undergrad. I was part of
the team, but certain team members would not get along or even work together.
The teacher had assigned these two individuals to the group in order to force
them how to work together by putting their differences aside. Reflecting back
on it now, I have to say that I did learn from the experience of how to try and
handle the situation. Unfortunately, at the time I saw nothing positive about
it. There were times where none of us wanted to work together or do more than
expected until it was time to turn in the project. Seeing that we were too
close for comfort to the deadline, we decided to just work to get the project
done. Basically we said: “the sooner we get this done, the faster you two can
be apart from each other and only meet up to present the project”. In the
aspect of leadership, it was not the best way to bring a team together since we
really didn’t handle the situation nor correctly nor properly.
With
what I have learned so far, if I had the opportunity to have this same
experience again, I think I could figure out a way to influence the outcomes
for the positive. Certain steps such as figuring out the root of why they cant
get along, how to make the transition to work together easier or more effective
between them, understanding their own weaknesses, equally complement their
work, provide guidance on how can they work more effectively, figure out their
shared values, and so on. Just try different approaches to solve the issue
between them and have them work together.
I have
not had the opportunity yet to work alongside or be part of a high performance
team as I’m just basically starting out my career. Comparing the fundamentals
of a high performance team to my undergrad team’s performance, I can say we did
experience parts of a work group but not of high performance team per say. Out
of the description provided by Denning (above), we did have an objective, time
frame, the instructor had the authority to determine which individuals belonged
to which teams as well as what our objective was, the team had the driving
force to get the job done as well as a purpose for belonging to that team and
commonalities. When it came to high performance, I don’t think we gave it our
best shot at the projects. We, basically, did enough to satisfy the
requirements, meet the teacher’s expectations and moved on to our own separate
and different schedules. In part, if we would’ve had more time, more passion,
or if it was the only project we were working on at the time then, maybe we
could’ve performed better.
Our
values weren’t fully the same. We tended to divide responsibilities as well as
the parts of the project. Met up once or twice a week to discuss our progress but,
mainly communicated through email and worked on our own individual parts. When
it came time to put the project together, one or two people were assigned to do
this task and to complete the finishing touches. The reason why I say that our
values weren’t fully the same is because we all had our own values but due to
the short period of time we worked together we didn’t find out what our values
were and whether or not we shared some of the same values. Again, maybe having
more time together or an exercise such as to find out what our values were
could’ve given a different but better result.
Denning,
S. (2011). Get Others Working Together. The Leader's Guide to Storytelling:
Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative (Revised and updated
ed., pp. 151-158). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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