“My Team, My Team, My Team.”
The dynamic balance of collaboration and competition exists in most organizations, with the reality being that some teams are collaborative and some teams are competitive and some teams are a bit of both. It is that balance that dramatically influences quality and innovation and motivation.
For the past 20 years, I have used the illustration below to depict some of the issues (with the solutions pretty obvious, I find.) We know what to do to correct things, but implementing those changes is quite difficult because of power and politics and long cultural histories. The most competitive people are often the ones who rise to the senior levels of organizations, so isn’t competitiveness a truly great thing for people and performance? (Answer: NO. Remember that 50% of the people in any organization are below average and not motivated by rewards they cannot attain!)
I have always found it ironic that larger companies structure things into Divisions, and then somehow expect them to collaborate functionally or with innovation.
And that old oxymoron, “Interdepartmental Collaboration” is always in play, it seems. (that is a link to an blog on profitability). Reality tends to look something like this:
What do organizations do to help break down that structural impediment to organizational improvement, to improve the collaborative culture and generate more teamwork?
My team building exercise, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, is a powerful way to focus discussions on the balance of competition and collaboration and the impact of improving inter-team collaboration on the optimization of results. We will actually guarantee a positive impact on people and performance, so give us a call,
For the FUN of It!
Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
One of the best teambuilding exercises in the world, as rated by his users, is The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, which focuses on leadership, collaboration, alignment and focuses on implementing the collective performance optimization ideas.
You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com
Twitter @scottsimmerman