Today’s world moves so fast and is so complicated that we need to look beyond just the individual. Building good teams is a critical digital success factor. But, how can we build a “good” team? How do we learn to operate as a team? How do teams succeed in flatter organizations that focus on empowering the individual? There’s more to success than just asking a group of people to work together.
In Team-Based Analytics for Informal Learning (TAIL), I focused on social learning analytics, team competencies, team models (Agile / Scrum / Spotify), team maturity models (Tuckman), tooling (Slack / MS Teams, Github, Jenkins) and measures of success. The teamwork competencies are sourced from work by Vivian, Falkner, Falkner, & Tarmazdi (2016) and include: Team Orientation, Team Leadership, Communication, Monitoring, Feedback, Backup Behavior and Coordination.
With this background in mind, I was excited to see that Microsoft has partnered with IDEO to introduce a new guide titled “The Art of Teamwork.” To go along with the guide itself, they’ve also created a Guided Tour (which includes exercises, facilitator guidance and thought starters).
The guide opens with: “The secret behind successful teamwork lies in the ability to intentionally nurture and maintain healthy team dynamics.” This is a great place to start – great teams don’t happen by accident. There needs to be thoughtfulness, intent, and maintenance – to get value from teams, we need to invest. The core elements of the framework are: Team Purpose, Collective Identity, Awareness and Inclusion, Trust and Vulnerability, and Constructive Tension. These elements are then situated within the larger context of organizational culture and processes.
The guide is well written, has some stories to support concepts, and is thoughtful about how to support adoption of the framework. I’m looking forward to exploring and experimenting with the guide. I’d also like to hear your thoughts on the toolkit and developing great teams:
- What resources and approaches are you finding that best help you to develop strong teams?
- How are you evaluating the impact of your teams?
- How are you supporting the development and evaluation of “teams of teams”?
- What do you see as the difference between cooperation and collaboration?