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Eight Considerations For Three Types of Teams

There are three common types of business teams used in high performance organizations. Although different experts may call the teams by various names, the teams are either obvious work groups, for temporary projects, or pertain to a process that is cross-functional. Although the team-building and training criteria for all types of team may be somewhat similar in some ways, the scope of the team work will be vastly different. Presented are eight things to consider if deciding which of these three types of team to implement for a particular business need.

Work Teams (a.k.a. Cell or Natural Team)

1. Permanent teams where members are in the same department and typically do the same type of work or have interdependent jobs.
2. Team is given goals and objectives to accomplish along with how much decision-making power they have and when they must consult management.
3. Greater understanding of joint work promotes new suggestions and idea sharing.
4. Improvements in efficiency and productivity can be made easily.
5. Quick process changes, effective problem solving, and fast procedure updates are possible.
6. Easy to implement since group does similar work and may already know each other.
7. Increased employee involvement and high levels of horizontal communication to better resolve issues and service customers.
8. Every team member increases skills, knowledge, and capabilities through joint problem-solving, team decision making, and potential for flexibility with cross-training and role rotation.

Project Teams (a.k.a. Problem-Solving or Task Team)

1. Temporary team pulled together to accomplish a particular task, to solve a specific problem, or to analyze potential ideas or business opportunities by a given deadline.
2. Team purpose, budget, milestones, and boundaries may be determined before forming team, but team members determine how to divide and schedule work assignments.
3. There may be conflicts of interest since members could be from different work areas and will have both the project leader and their regular manager to report to as well as receive assignments from.
4. Although each vote is considered equal, membership will be a mix of people from different levels in the organization and who have varying skills, knowledge, and perspectives of the project goal to be accomplished.
5. Each team member will be required to carry out certain work assignments according to their expertise, skill level, desire to learn, or area of influence.
6. Requires high-levels of trust, participation, respect, and communication among members to accomplish tasks and solve problems.
7. Team should work internally within for group decision-making, but may work with those outside the team for suggestions or ideas for the team to consider.
8. If necessary, the core project team may form sub-teams or groups with members inside or outside of the core team in order to more efficiently accomplish necessary project work.

Cross-Functional Teams (a.k.a. Process or Focus Team)

1. Team may be permanent or temporary depending on design and required activity, which is typically to focus on implementing an organizational change effort or improving a common process or system.
2. Team should have performance measure and be required to have open communication and information sharing both within the team and to their functional groups outside the team.
3. Members are from various departments, where each department holds a part of an overall process.
4. Significant process improvements and increased customer satisfaction may result from joint work efforts.
5. Potential for cross-training to increase staff flexibility and enhance knowledge of all process related work.
6. It may take a while to get productive since there may be problems with communication and trust as departments may have blamed each other for problems in the past or do not understand the work of others on team.
7. Team looks inward for problem solving and decision-making and searches outward for potential issues or new ideas for the team to consider.
8. Acceptance of improvements by team may be better from others outside the team as they were given input to the process through their representative on the team.

Consider the eight things to when determining which of the three type of team to implement to meet the business need. Does a work group, temporary project team, a cross-functional team, or some combination of teams what is necessary to meet the need? Also consider what team-building and training needs to be available to make the type of teams chosen more effective when defining the scope of the team and deciding on membership.

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Source by Shirley Lee