Small change: check your team is a team

When is a team not a team?

This is a question that doesn’t get asked as often as it might. But it’s common for teams to exist in name only: less a functioning group and more a collection of individuals pursuing agendas that on examination aren’t well aligned.

One answer is “when the group lacks shared goals”. A team has work that requires genuine interdependence. Its members succeed or fail together. By contrast, a group that merely reports to the same manager while pursuing separate objectives is something else entirely.

The tell is in the behaviour. Where people always argue from their own function’s perspective, care only about their own metrics or show little interest in decisions outside their patch, you’re looking at individuals playing their own game – whatever the collective banner might say.

Something to consider: what would have to change for this group to need each other?

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