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Disappointment. You enter in a ten thousand people organization as mid-level manager and you confront the ugly reality: you are not there to build a new order and develop yourself but to deal with the situation formed by your predecessor. A group of people has to act under your supervision but you are nobody in this hostile environment. So what can you do?
Recovery. You need to form a team from a non homogeneous aggressive mass of people. You have amazing communication skills and till now everybody tells you that you are a great team player. Now let the team player build the team!
Group dynamics. You understand that interpersonal relationships already exists in this group. You start to investigate the informal structure of the group and to analyze the culture in the group and and the organization overall.
Getting know the group. You have talked with almost everybody and you have reviewed in-depth their social media profiles … Now you know who can do what, who work well together and which do not. That was easy!
Re-structuring. In the meantime you have detected the informal leaders and have already a strategy on how to turn them to team leaders. But wait! You want an agile organization, the team shall be self-managed. So you call them Scrum Masters! With this change you consciously sacrifice part of the precious time of the technical experts. But that’s the game and we all have to confront it. Now they must legitimate themselves as leaders!
Group’s cohesion. Before you realize it, the moment comes, you need to build the team. Fortunately Scrum is perfect for your case. Its rituals and team rules are your firewall to the chaos out there. The customer is happier than ever (according to your employees)!
Boom! The higher management sees your progress. Great! This is how a new era starts. A new era that boosts your career!
Nice, right? Do you believe that the company is the root cause of the team formation? Think twice!
This is the egocentric point of view of a manager toward a team. Now let’s discuss the more objective social face of the Team.
To continue reading click on Team and Society.
Other Publications on Economy of Teams™:
- My story, Part VI. Percieve the Economy of Teams™
- Economy of Teams™ Defined.
- Team Spirit
- Fear the project success
- Team and Society