Advice Line | Bob Lewis | InfoWorld | Creating teamwork among the teams | May 22, 2007 03:56 PM

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Creating teamwork among the teams

May 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Creating teamwork among the teams

Dear Bob ...

We have several very well functioning teams in our IT group. They don't all call themselves "teams" ("Systems Crew", for example), but that's what they are.

My problem is that they don't see themselves as part of a larger team with common goals. We get comments such as (from an office staff member) "Those open lab guys sit on their butts all day and then I have to help the students find rooms." Or, from an open lab person, "The systems guys think they can take down the net at any time, and don't know what misery that causes."

I can fix the immediate problem ("EVERYBODY should help students." ... "If we don't reboot that server today, the whole lab will crash"), but not the "them vs. us" problem.

We could use some resources, or suggestions, for helping these diverse teams appreciate each other’s problems and purposes.

- Managing the menagerie

Dear Menageraging ...

Ah, the old team-spirit-at-the-expense-of-the-larger-team-spirit problem. 143,456th time this month!

The dynamics of this are pretty straightforward. It's in most people's nature to divide the world into "us" - those we can trust, who understand, and who will watch my back - and "them" - the source of all that's wrong with the world. When you figure the nature of a strong team is that its members have high levels of trust and alignment of purpose, it's hard for team members to avoid disparaging everyone else - those with whom they lack a strong sense of purpose, a strong sense of alignment, or both.

You aren't, however, helpless in the face of human nature. You can exploit it to solve the problem. What you can do is to form cross-functional project teams on a regular basis, to force people who consider each other to be "them" to work together enough to start building some "us"-ness with each other. The project's objective is their shared purpose. Once they're all on board with it, they'll figure out the rest with little more required of you than some facilitation to get things started.

Oh … one very significant factor required for success: The projects have to be real. If they're nothing but pretexts for getting the people together, they'll figure it out pretty quickly.

Good luck with it.

- Bob

Posted by Bob Lewis on May 22, 2007 03:56 PM

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I'm not a big fan of touchy-feely motivational techniques, but I think a turn of phrase has helped with the "us v. them" issue. We don't refer to the non-technical department folks as "users", but as co-workers. This reminds me that we work alongside eachother for a common goal. I wouldn't want payroll to refer to those in my department as "payees".

Posted by: Jeff Helm at May 22, 2007 05:28 PM

There's a time and a place for suggesting and a time and a place for directing. You probably have about a week between those two times right now.
Your employees are not well functioning teams if they do not "play well with others"--period! They're looking out for themselves; no one else.

Perhaps you need to illustrate for everyone in one room at one time how each of them is interdependent on the others. Remind everyone you're all one large group/department/etc in the view of management; not a bunch of independent "crews". When you get done, publish written minutes, hand a copy to each person and then file a copy in your personnel files. When it's time to perform reviews, evaluate how they respond to your suggestion, guidance or whatever you want to call it.

On a more personal note, if you're hearing complaints about non-cooperation or sniping comments, you can bet your management is hearing them, too--you just haven't heard it from them yet! I've met more than a few senior people who would easily say, "OK, you can't work together; fine--I'll take care of it." A few weeks later, everyone gets pink slips as the function is outsourced to some firm who understands teamwork and customer service. You may want to head off that problem by telling your boss what you're facing and how you're dealing with it. Your boss may want to sit in on your meeting just to send an explicit, yet unspoken message to the employees.

BTW--in some areas of the US, the term "crew" carries one or more negative connotations. You may want to terminate that term's use, too, before someone in management hears it and reacts negatively (as I did when I read it).

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