You have just graduated from your program at University of Arizona Global Campus. You have been hired for a position in Organizational Development in the Training and Development Department at Pikes Peak Manufacturing Company (PPM).
Topic: Creating A Team Culture
You have just graduated from your program at University of Arizona Global Campus. You have been hired for a position in Organizational Development in the Training and Development Department at Pikes Peak Manufacturing Company (PPM). PPM is a $400 million company that is in the business of
manufacturing plastic parts.
Corporate headquarters is in Colorado Springs with three manufacturing plants; one in Dallas, Texas, one in Mexico City, Mexico,
and one in Huntsville, Alabama. The CEO of PPM has been pleased with the overall performance of the company, even in these tough economic times.
However, after reading numerous books, such as the Wisdom of Teams by Katzenbach and Smith and Group Dynamics for Teams by Levi, and attending a
high level executive training program, she has decided that PPM can enhance customer value by creating a more team-oriented culture.
Although there have
been pockets of team success, especially in the manufacturing plants, the CEO still believes that the company functioning fully in a team culture will produce
a higher level of customer satisfaction through creativity, higher level problem solving, and synergy. Some of PPM’s cultural highlights are:
Privately owned by one family
Strong entrepreneurial culture
High work ethic, with most managers working 50 to 60 hours a week
Strong individual players who get things done by persistence and their personalities
A top executive team that leads the company’s departments and functions like a group of high performing individuals
High performance teams that function in some manufacturing plants and the accounting division, while other groups function as teams only in name
One of the main reasons the position you accepted was created was to lead this organizational initiative and drive a team culture.
Using your reading and at least four other resources, write a paper analyzing how you would help your company create a high performing team culture that
would increase customer value. Make sure that you address the following:
Instilling structures of successful teams and team process
Creating effective team communication channels
Selecting, developing, and training effective team members and leaders
Identifying issues surrounding diversity and multiculturalism
Embedding team culture in the organization
Creating and implementing team training
Ensuring lasting team culture by creating a strong team performance-management system and reward system.
Required Sources
Levi, D. (2017). Group dynamics for teams (5th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Chapter 14 Team and Organizational Culture
Hogg, M. A., van Knippenberg, D., & Rast, D. (2012). Intergroup leadership in organizations: Leading across group and organizational boundaries. Academy of
Management Review 2012, 37(2), 232–255. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amr.2010.0221
Laszlo, A., Laszlo, K. C., & Johnsen, K. S. (2009). From high-performance teams to evolutionary learning communities: New pathways in organizational
development Download From high-performance teams to evolutionary learning communities: New pathways in organizational development . Organisational
Transformation and Social Change 6(1):29-48 · April 2009 doi: 10.1386/jots.6.1.29_1
You’ve probably heard this phrase before: teamwork makes the dream work.
It’s got a lovely ring to it, and it also rings true. Good teamwork goes a long way in business – resulting in high levels of productivity, efficiency, and employee engagement.
But, what makes teamwork… work? What makes up a phenomenal team?
According to research, it’s got little to do with the intelligence of the individuals. Your smartest team of employees will not necessarily be your most productive team.
Your best teams have something else: effective team communication. With good communication, they can out-do a team of geniuses time and again. Intrigued? Read on.
Before we look at how to achieve effective team communication for better teamwork, let’s clarify why excellent teamwork is so important.
Working as part of a team is quite commonplace in today’s workplace. In fact, in a matrixed organization, people are often part of several teams at any given time. This means a lot of a business’ bottom-line is reliant upon the success of those teams.
Thankfully, if a team is working well together, it will be greater than the sum of its parts. It’ll be productive, efficient, and less likely to make avoidable errors. A well-oiled machine.
Conversely, if the teamwork is poor, the opposite is true. There will often be silos of information, miscommunications, duplicated work, and unnecessary mistakes. The team, in all likelihood, will be weaker than the sum of their parts.
If you want to improve your teamwork, then it’s time address the way you communicate. The great news is that if you work with a team of brilliant but uncommunicative people, you can still achieve effective team communication. The first step is to create an open, collaborative, and respectful environment.
As with so many workplace initiatives, this starts at the top. Employees look to their leaders and mentors for direction. As such, leaders can do several things to encourage clear team communication:
By doing this, leaders are making a statement to their employees that their honest opinions are welcome. They’re breaking down a big barrier to effective team communication, as employees learn that they can communicate openly without fear of reprimand or embarrassment.
When this happens—when the communication starts to flow—the team becomes collectively more intelligent. This is the goal. By sharing knowledge and feedback they’re able to efficiently create an end product that’s more robust for having been shaped by diversity.
The other part of effective team communication is the communication itself—the way in which team members actually get in contact with each other. If your teams don’t have an easy and well-established way to share and capture feedback, they run the risk of losing a lot of good ideas and flatlining efficiency.