Teamwork Should Go Beyond Obedience And Cooperation.

Like P, like death and tax, an unavoidable reality of organizational life is a periodic "Team Challenge".

For such a project, the team needs to go beyond the work done at present or before.

For the high level < a href= "http://www.91se91.com" > management team < /a >, it may be to reduce the total cost of 20% or the total number of employees; for a sales or business development team, the target may be a 10% increase in sales next quarter; for a product development team, the key point may be to advance the product launch time by two months.

All kinds of challenges are endless, but the common theme is that everyone works together - everyone assumes their respective responsibilities - to achieve common results.

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< p > to accomplish these projects, teamwork is indispensable. This should be the quickest and most effective way to get results.

Surprisingly, however, over the years, I have seen that teams have three basic ways to deal with these challenges.

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< p > first, I call obedience.

Each team member acts independently in its own field to respond to challenges.

In other words, each member obeys the need to do things, but avoids working together.

For example, I worked with a team leader, and the company asked them to lay off 10% in order to achieve the company's goals.

Without any discussion, everyone agreed to lay off 10% of their respective departments and report them to the head of the Department.

Although this "shared pain" approach has met the requirements of the company, there may well be a better way.

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< p > the second reaction is cooperation.

Everyone will formulate and implement their own plans, but they will share what they have done with the team.

Although there are some common discussions, the focus is still on individual actions rather than on common strategies.

For example, a technology company has substantially increased sales targets in all regions in order to increase sales performance.

Therefore, the regional a href= "http://www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp" > manager "/a" has the ability to accomplish these indicators.

Some have improved the sales targets of salesmen comprehensively, some have redistributed resources to high potential customers, and others have made use of service contracts to make up for the gap.

They share their practices at weekly telephone meetings and give feedback to each other.

But they have never formulated a common strategy to make comprehensive use of resources, ideas and talents.

Finally, although some indicators have been completed, the overall figure is disappointing.

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< p > in the above two situations, if there is real collaboration, the result should be more robust and effective.

In the first case, the leadership team should identify specific areas that could lay off more than 10%, and consider merging similar activities into shared service centers or taking other possible practices.

In the second example, regional managers can reconfigure resources among different regions, carry out joint promotional campaigns for certain products, or get more ideas that can be quickly verified and promoted through brainstorming.

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< p > it is interesting that the two teams did not intend to cooperate.

It is a natural reaction for them to do so either by themselves or partly by themselves.

The real situation is that real collaboration is not easy.

When collaborating, personal goals should be subordinated to collective goals, and intense discussions and emotional exchanges with colleagues on strategies and ideas, and new ways of work will often make people feel uncomfortable or uncomfortable.

Because of these difficulties, most teams feel that collaboration is easier said than done.

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< p > this is not necessarily the case.

Teams can respond to challenges through real collaboration and achieve excellent results.

The starting point is to consciously make a common decision: pcending obedience and < a href= "http://www.91se91.com > cooperation < /a >.

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