With COVID’s significant disruption over the last 18 months, most organisations are reflecting on how they work. It is worth considering focusing on creating a network of teams in your organisation. In 2016, Forbes published an article, from research by Deloitte, on the benefits of team focused organisations including:
- Shared values and culture.
- Transparent goals and projects.
- Feedback and a free flow of information.
- People are rewarded for skills and contribution not position.
The article explains that teams and organisations which create Teams of Teams are able to more effectively align on the above plus have the transparency on the progress of teams against what they have committed to achieving. It should be noted that just creating teams and allocating work to them isn’t enough, in fact the design of the organisation needs to reviewed so that work is not only aligned by values streams which ensure works flows at the right speed for the customers through the organisation but also is designed for the “Us the People”. This approach refers to not only bringing the work to the people rather than the people to the work but also embraces the way humans want to communicate, collaborate and interact socially…in small groups.
Note that what we aren’t saying is that leadership isn’t important, it is, in fact it is critical however focusing on teams rather than just the leaders will not create the change most organisations are looking for.
Those who are aware of the Principles of Agile, will recognise that these benefits are variants of these principles.