In reading Chapter 5 Team Effectiveness in Theory and Practice in Industrial and Organizational Psychology by Cooper and Locke, there were some great gems the authors compiled through their collective years of researching the area of team effectiveness.
Lesson 1 - "Senior management must understand that too many directions can result in no direction at all."
Lesson 2 - "Organizational direction gets lost in the downward cascade."
Lesson 3 - "Direction cannot be over-communicated. Received messages must be constantly checked and the intended message received."
Lesson 4 - "Rapidly changing business environments can undo efforts to maintain a clear, consistent direction."
Lesson 5 - "Those responsible for articulating direction are themselves sometimes unsure what the direction should be. They 'get it' in different ways, at different times, and from different sources. Exposure to successful teams, in particular, can reinforce managers' own commitment to the collectiv direction that they are supposed ot be advocating."
Lesson 6 - "It is often tempting - but a mistake - to overemphasize the performance benefits of large teams and ignore their coordination costs."
Lesson 7 - "Creating a balance of technical skills multiple teams can suboptimze the technical performance of some teams. BUt taking a differentiated view of skill levels in composing a team offers the opportunity to find useful and productive roles even for those individuals who are technically less proficient."
Lesson 8 - "Cross-training increases task interdependence, cooperation, and team effectiveness, but often is prohibitively expensive and resisted by line management."
Lesson 9 - "Team stability is critical to team effectiveness, but market pressures, new strategies, and competing goals can make team stability a low priority for managers."
Lesson 10 - "Teams can make good use of start up tools to help establish norms and work processes."
Lesson 11 - "It is difficult to implement high quality team-based reward and recognition system. Local managers may need help devising open-ended programs that tie rewards to team-level performance, provide meaningful payouts, and reinforce both superb performance and continuous improvement."
Lesson 12 - "Training intact teams is crucial, with learning experiences spread out over several weeks or months to enable the teams to apply their newly learned skills."
Lesson 13 - "Team-level performance information systems are critical. These systems can never be started too soon, and they must be constantly assessed and modified as teams' objectives and priorities change."
Lesson 14 - "Teams must take time to actually use the information systems in solving problems and refining work processes."
Lesson 15 - "Allowing managers to experience working in teams themselves before asking them to work with other teams increases their coaching capabilities."
Lesson 16 - "Managers can be encouraged to manage teams rather than individuals by increasing their spans of control, but this process can go too far. The ideal span of control is three to four teams, depending on the teams' level of maturity and performance effectiveness."
Some nice points to consider based upon your own contexts and organizational landscapes.
