How Organizations Cripple Teams

One study has suggested work teams aren’t as effective as they might be. What’s worse, many firms thwart team performance by not changing their organization’s structures to support group efforts.

These findings came from a study by Wilson Learning Corporation, a worldwide training and development firm. The study was based on in-depth interviews of business leaders and surveys of 4,500 teams at 500 organizations.

Organizational barriers were frequently cited as foils to team effectiveness. Survey respondents complained about:

• Compensation and reward systems. These systems focus on individual performance, reported a whopping 80 percent of the respondents. And members focus on personal agendas, not team goals.

• Performance appraisal systems. In most of the surveyed firms, team issues didn’t factor in appraisals. Most respondents felt there was little incentive to function as team players. Sadly, only 10 to 20 percent of the respondents said team issues were a part of their firm’s appraisal systems.

• Information barriers. Many participants griped that critical information wasn’t readily available to team members. Noted one respondent: "...top management has not done enough to push strategic information down to the employees because they assume the material is not necessary for productivity."

• Top management resistance. Many griped that top managers didn’t feel employees could handle the duties of team leadership. Without this support, teams couldn’t push forward with their work.

Survey respondents also cited individual factors that impeded team progress. These included: The unwillingness of team members to forego old habits or set aside power and position...poor skill levels among some participants that drag down team functioning...conflicts arising between personal and team values, or "what works for the group may not work for the individual."

Teams that Thrive

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