Fast Teams

Facilitated discussion and presentation by:

Deborah Lipman Slobodnik, Options For Change .

Deborah Lipman Slobodnik introduced a systems approach to teams explaining that there is a new paradigm for teams emerging. We are beginning to see a new culture of teamwork. There is a need to shift our approach and to use our tools and techniques creatively.

To focus the discussion, Deborah split participants into 4 groups representing: Cross-functional teams, Culturally Diverse teams, Globally Distributed teams and all of the above. The task of each group was to think about and identify the critical issues generally faced by those teams, and create a role play scenario to demonstrate the issues and discuss them as a large group. After each group role played their work situation some of the critical issues demonstrated and discussed were:

What does the OD practitioner do with these issues? Deborah and their was agreement from participants that they have seen a shift taking place in the field of OD – teams and change management. There is a significant change in the areas of speed and timing. It has effected the OD role and strategy in response to the needs of the organization and the delivery of services. Deborah calls it the "Fast Team" Culture. There is the urgency of moving things faster. It is evident that people need training to make it happen with little time for it. What she has observed is that:

• Learning is based on the need to know.
• Organizations want more in less time.
• Technology has changed the organization of team to cross functional and virtual teams.

The driver of the program is that technology has enabled organizations to work across boundaries of time, function and culture utilizing a distributed workforce. Speed and urgency are critical. Influence has replaced authority. Real time learning has replaced formal training. Facilitative leadership has replaced hierarchy. The commitment to work meaning and contribution has replaced company loyalty.

We, as practitioners of change along with our customers, are looking for new solutions. There is a need for "out of the box" thinking. The old tools, techniques and approaches are no longer effective or desired. What does that mean for us?

Her company, Options For Change, has identified 12 team traps that all teams go through. These predominant symptoms create predictable dynamics of rising interpersonal turmoil and falling productivity. She identified the team traps as:

1. False consensus: lack of buy-in
2. Inability to reach closure: ineffective problem solving and decision making
3. Rigid hierarchy: operation by power and control
4. Weak leadership: inadequate direction from the top
5. Uneven participation: underutilized resources
6. Calcified interactions: role patterns of behavior
7. Lack of mutual accountability: absence of evaluation and consequences
8. Unrealistic expectations: burn out
9. Forgotten customer: too insular approach to marketplace
10. Left-out stakeholders: lack of support by key players
11. Unresolved overt conflict: personality conflicts
12. Undiscussed covert conflict: underground conflict.

Deborah suggested that the only effective way to change a team’s behavior is to identify and modify this web of relationships and interconnections. To address these team traps at a structural level, Options For Change, has created an internet based learning service to provide fast, real and lasting solutions to previously intractable problems. They call it FASTEAMS. By addressing these team problems from a systems perspective through an awarness of the most common team disablers, providing guidance for intervention and offering a powerful toolbox for teams to be more productive, people can learn to work on the system. This is generally a more effective way to improve group dynamics.

Some of the learning, tools and techniques that they provide to their clients from their internet service, Fastrack, are:

• Process checks for their team; this is a point of entry and review. It benchmarks where they are with high / low indicators, and provides a summary report while offering an opportunity for discussion.
• Team traps show that while there is a certain amount of variation among teams, these problems occur at predictable developmental stages.
• Team tools help leaders and members keep one step ahead of the process and provide "turnaround tools" to use on the web site. Through a modular approach, they help teams settle purpose, membership, workflow and operating agreements as soon as possible. They also assist teams to enhance their ability for decision making, conflict resolution, communication, closure, evaluating results, maintaining good stakeholder relationships and problem solving.

Through this internet learning approach, Deborah believed that a virtual classroom has been created that responds to real time needs, in a real time framework, that can be controlled by their customers, leaders and teams. This has allowed them to create an "E-room.com" partnership with their customer organizations. Options For Change can now perform the needed intervention, work and learning in a synchronous or a-synchonous manner.

The evening closed with a discussion of participants’ approach and examples of how they have dealt with this new paradigm.

For more information on Fasteams, new paradigm, concepts, tools and techniques please review: