Organizational teams: the three basic types
One of the most important team questions, often ignored when a traditional or virtual team is setup, is What type of team are we actually dealing with here?
The Three types of organisational teams
Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith, in an article The Discipline of Teams, published in the Harvard Business Review July -August 2005 - The High Performance Organisation provide some insight into this by identifying three broad types of teams:
- Recommender Teams: those that recommend things - task forces or project groups
- Doer Teams: those that make or do things - manufacturing, operations, or marketing groups
- Managing Teams: those that run things - groups that oversee some significant functional activity
Team Type affects team collaboration strategy
If you are not clear on what type of team you are dealing with then you are unlikely to have the right focus in your team collaboration strategy.
For example:
Recommender Teams are often part-time; great for reviewing work but can lack a "team engine" for getting detailed work done.
Managing Teams are often staffed with senior executives who have serious time management challenges and are unlikely to engage with traditional team communication and meeting approaches.
Doer teams are great for doing things but their networks may be limited to their own functional areas which can blind them to some innovation and cross-functional opportunities.
Once you have resolved what kind of team it is you can then ask the second key question:
"Do you have the right kind of team members for the job at hand?"
Digg | 
del.icio.us | 
Reddit | 
Yahoo! | 
Add to my favourites
1 Comment | Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Bioteams Books Reviews
The secret physics of social network growth
A crowd draws a crowd but you need to be fit too. Distinguished Physicist Albert Laszlo Barabasi in his excellent book "Linked - the New Science of Networks" lets us into the secret of how any kind of network grows.
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
Related Team Leadership Development Articles
Team Collaboration: Funny Video Icebreaker
"For the Birds" from Pixar is a hilarious 3-minute cartoon video which I have used many times as a ice-breaker with teams, networks and groups. It is a great way to make people laugh, relax and quickly open up a really good discussion on some very important team-related issues. Make sure you watch right to the end with the sound on!
Leadership or Facilitation: funny video clip from Red Dwarf
At certain times a team leader needs to facilitate rather than direct. However when a leader acts too much as a facilitator or a facilitator starts to try to lead a team you get problems. Enjoy what happens when the Red Dwarf crew get themselves in a real mess over this point.
Team Leadership development: nurture good followers
John Austin, writing in his excellent blog, Tag your Team, references research by Robert Kelley on ‘followership’ which examines two different traits of behaviour in team members: critical thinking and pro-activity.
please are these the only type of teams in business,then what are their functions?"
Also, i want to know the ethical issues that surrounding bribery ? this question is under ethics and corporate governance.please give me more details for my reseasrch exams.my phone number is 0243173934.please give me a call and also your number too in your reply.bye