7 Reasons - Why Top Teams are Vital in Times of Crisis

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Why are effective teams so important in challenging times?  Because history invariably proves that organizations who husband their teams well in challenging times, are those who will still be standing at the end of those times. 
The Chinese use two distinct brush strokes for the word “crisis”, one stands for “danger” and the other for “opportunity”.  Well prepared, cohesive and effective teams can avoid the former and capitalise on the latter in a time of crisis.  Focusing on the basic fundamentals of teamwork and hard work can ensure that when the going gets tough, the tough can really get going!

Examples abound in nature, the military, sport and especially in business of top teams being a natural and very effective mechanism for ensuring survival in hostile, competitive or rapidly changing environments.  In response to changes, threats and challenges an effective team will be far more likely to adapt and survive than an individual or even a group of highly skilled individuals that comes together to form an ad-hoc working group. 

The risk in challenging times in that leaders and managers can succumb to the task overload and stresses of the times and lose focus on maintaining the basics of effective teaming skills within their organization.  This loss of focus only serves to increase the stresses and pressures on the organisation, when focusing on the “people bit” within the team can alleviate them and aid in survival.

See “Teams in Challenging Times” options
7 MAJOR REASONS WHY TOP TEAMS ARE MISISON CRITICAL IN TIMES OF CRISIS

1. Achieve More With Less
   Increasingly organisations in challenging times are expected to achieve more with less (within generally flatter organisational structures).  A high degree of interdependence is thus essential to enable this without “burning out”.  Individuals, working groups in isolation or poorly working teams simply cannot address the complexities of situations that demand a diversity of skills and approaches to deliver results quickly and maximise profitability and survivability.
2. Meet Cross Functional Challenges
   People increasingly work between or across functions and not just within them to be able to react quickly to new realities.  This requires a high degree of collaboration and teamwork to ensure big picture success.
3. Deal with Rapid Change
   Rapid change by definition requires quicker responses and greater flexibility to remain competitive.  This means an increased need for quality teamwork and collaborative decision-making to collectively be able to respond.
4. Engaging and Retaining the Best People
   With higher pressures and demands, employee morale comes with far higher expectations of being consulted and involved in decision-making processes in order to remain engaged.  This increases demand for genuinely team based approaches to decision-making and that in turn creates a higher sense of involvement, team spirit and sense of belonging.
5. Drive Effective Project and Alliance Teams
   The increased use of project, alliance and multi-disciplinary teams (that come together to tackle major projects and challenges and then disband), requires a high degree of quality teamwork to ensure quality and productivity are truly achieved.
6. Build Mission Focused Teams
   Roles of managers and leaders in companies are now much less directive, as teams are often empowered on their own missions to achieve results with far less overt direction.  Consequently the calibre of teamwork is increasingly important.
7. Maximise Lessons Learned
   Rapid improvement and learning across organisations in tough times becomes increasingly critical.  Top teams ensure that diverse real world experiences and lessons learned are quickly shared and holistic and pragmatic solutions are found just as quickly to seize opportunities and avoid pitfalls.

The Impact of Effective Teamwork on a “Day to Day” / “Person to Person” Level
Teams truly succeed or fail one relationship at a time.  The behaviour of team members, particularly in challenging times, has a discernable impact on team morale, productivity and success.  There is far less room for error and duplication of effort in times of crisis.

There are at least 9 major clusters of behavioural input that are readily observable as being effective within organisations and that bring to any challenge such attributes as leadership, planning, creativity, liaison, relationship development, implementation, attention to detail and technical input. 

Individuals invariably do not possess all of these in great strength, but rather have a blend of natural, manageable and least preferred roles.  The real world implication of this difference is that one person naturally cannot cover all bases with regards to these team role strengths (as nobody possesses all of them in high strength), and thus teams are essential to be able to tackle complex, large or important tasks that an individual alone cannot handle in there totality.  It’s not just an issue of volume of work, it’s equally about balanced approaches at the right stages of the life cycle of any given challenge or situation.

Dr Meredith Belbin of Cambridge (universally considered the Father of modern Team Role theory), feels that in real world business teams “what is needed are not just well balanced individuals, but individuals who balance well with each other”. Different team role types, each of which brings different but equally valuable contributions to the table, are required to enable organisations to deal with increasingly complex business environments.

Different people bring different levels of strength and weakness to any situation and so an effective team is the best possible way to enable individual weaknesses to be offset so that nothing is missed.

Top teams are not only an increasingly vital factor in 21st Century organisations (even across geographically dispersed or home based working cultures), but especially so in challenging times where they are simply “mission critical” to survival.

Since 1988 Sabre has been in the vanguard of helping clients to build capable teams, leaders and solutions in the good times and also in the bad.  We have the skills, the experience and the range of solutions to help. 
Article By:
Talan Miller
Managing Director
Sabre Corporate Development
(E) Talan@SabreHQ.com

Sabre’s Team DNA and Leadership DNA Packages along with numerous other team based programmes are aimed at improving team, individual and organisational execution in challenging times.

 

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