Nice piece on an idea that is perhaps losing focus in the emerging “empowered individual” conception of enterprise social. Winning over the boss to social initiatives must begin with augmenting the conventional hierarchical structure and not circumventing or destroying it.
Teams that don’t execute don’t stay teams for long. The explosion of enterprise social tools makes moving past this truism and adding an educational component to teamwork a reality in today’s organization. And the digitization of educational acts makes the quantitative metrics that much easier to capture.
If participation in the learning stream were made a part of staff performance expectations and compensation plans, all would benefit from the ever-expanding knowledgebase — directly at the point of action, and serendipitously at points in the future.
If I could add one component to this model, I might re-examine the inwardly-focused idea “Aligned” (which Pontefract describes in terms of individual members aligned with team goals specifically), and expand that across teams.
Those situated at a level above multiple teams, who are responsible for their combined strategic execution, must deploy them and support them in such a way as to maximize their unique potentials and all pull in the same direction.
Thus, for me the fifth of five traits of high-performing TEAMS is “S” for “Synchronized.”
Teams of Thoughtful Educators Aligned, Measured, and Synchronized with each other will increase the effectiveness of management, facilitate their own agendas, and cement perceptions of a truly collaborative organization internally and externally – all without directly subverting the necessarily hierarchical corporate structure.
