Teams: Design & Development

 

Work teams are a popular mechanism for organizing and running enterprises. If you currently use teams, or are considering them for your organization, let our knowledge and experience help you design and develop strong and effective teams. Teams are not the solution to every situation. But, where they do fit, they can be powerful tools to achieve results.

 

"Teams" run the gamut from temporary groups focused mainly on improving operations or quality, to self-directed work teams involved in team member selection, training, discipline, and compensation. The Business Center's model for team development and involvement can help you define where your teams are and how far you wish to go with them. With it you can provide the right structures, processes, skills, and styles of leadership to make your teams a success.

 

Don Barkman, president of The Business Center, has been actively engaged in helping organizations effectively utilize teams to create high-performing workplaces since 1981. That's well before teams became the popular approach used today. Don has been responsible for team designs from inside a company and as an external consultant. He brings both conceptual knowledge and practical insight to the topic of teams.

 

Don works with clients to see if teams are a good fit. He does this by meeting with the leadership group for a careful discussion of your organization's objectives, business drivers, technology, work processes, workforce skill level, and receptivity to the use of teams from the top to the bottom. If circumstances are favorable, Don will help your design group work out the details for the size, location, responsibilities, leadership, training, and communication and reward structures required to support teams. If you are creating a new organization (e.g., a start up), he can also help you muster the right mix of resources for your selection process.

 

Once your team design is in place, you can tap into the resources of The Business Center that are especially suited for team organizations. These include seminars like: Journey to Excellence, Effective Teams, Training Others On-The-Job, and Building Better Meetings. You can also use The Business Center to access the very successful DiSC® profile. It is a great tool for team building, communications, and leadership development. Don can help you map out a long-term plan for training and educating your workforce on the three key skill dimensions: technical, social, and business. He can also help you go beyond teams to a total high-performing workplace by working from The Business Center's E4 Model or using a Scanlon Plan approach.

 

The Business Center can also help you with "team building." This can be done for new teams and existing ones. Our approach is to determine the needs of the team, provide greater insight for members on the similarities and differences they share, how those affect their interaction, and to help them apply appropriate team techniques to work on real problems.

 

If your teams are experiencing difficulties, or you are moving them to a higher level of responsibility, The Business Center can help you identify issues and their causes and work out customized solutions to meet your needs. This is often accomplished through individual interviews and small group discussions.

 

For more information on teams, visit our Samples page and browse excerpts from our team-related seminars. You can also visit Don's team blog at http://www.teamsatwork.blogspot.com. Call or contact The Business Center today to lay the foundation for your teams' success.