ABOUT HIGH-PERFORMANCE WORK TEAM
High-Performance Work team
A “high-performance work team” refers to a group of goal-focused individuals with specialized expertise and complementary skills who collaborate, innovate and produce consistently superior results. The group relentlessly pursues performance excellence through shared goals, shared leadership, collaboration, open communication, clear role expectations and group operating rules, early conflict resolution, and a strong sense of accountability and trust among its members .
• A deep sense of purpose and commitment to the team’s members and to the mission.
• Relatively more ambitious performance goals than average teams.
• Mutual accountability and a clear understanding of members’ responsibilities to the team and individual obligations.
• A diverse range of expertise that complements other team members’ abilities.
• Interdependence and trust between members.
Ingredients of High Performance
• 1. Leadership – build team, provide direction an inspire to a common purpose
• 2. Membership – clear roles
• 3. Methods of working together – common ways of doing things (problem solving, decision making and innovative thinking)
COMMON TYPES OF HIGH – PERFORMANCE WORK TEAM
Though they vary in duration, purpose and ultimate goals, organizations
commonly establish five types of teams to achieve work goals.
Work Team
• Work teams are continuing units responsible for producing goods or providing
services. Their membership is typically stable, usually full time and well -defined. Work teams are found in both manufacturing and service settings and
are traditionally directed by supervisors who make most of the decisions
about what is done, how it is done and who does it.
Parallel team
• Parallel teams pull together people from different work units or jobs to
perform functions the organization is not equipped to perform well. They exist
in parallel with the formal organizational structure, have limited authority and
can only make recommendations. Parallel teams are used for problem-solving
and improvement-oriented activities (e.g., quality improvement teams,
employee involvement groups, quality circles or task forces)
Project team
• Project teams are typically time-limited and produce a one-time output
(e.g., a new product or service, information system or plant). Project-team
tasks are not repetitive and involve considerable application of knowledge,
judgment and expertise. As a result, membership is usually diverse,
drawing from different disciplines and functional units, so specialized
expertise can be applied to the project.
Management teams
• Management teams coordinate and provide direction to their subunits
and are responsible for the overall performance of a business unit. The
management team’s authority stems from the hierarchal rank of its
members. At the top of the organization, the executive management team
establishes strategic direction and manages the company’s performance
by applying its collective expertise and sharing responsibility for the
overall success.
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Virtual teams
• A virtual team is a group of individuals who work together in pursuit of
common goals across time, space and organizational boundaries. They are
linked electronically by webs of communication technology (e.g., the
Internet, Skype, WebEx, internal networks). Members of a virtual team
coordinate their work predominantly with electronic information and
communication technologies to accomplish specific organizational tasks
and may never meet face to face. Virtual teams allow companies to obtain
the best talent possible for a specific project without geographical
restrictions. They are also generally viewed as more efficient in
expenditures of time and related travel costs.
