Team Building: Proven Strategies for Improving Team Performance, 5th Edition

11

MANAGING THE TEMPORARY TEAM

The use of temporary teams, often called ad hoc committees, task forces, or project teams, is common in most organizations. This collection of people must come together and, in a relatively short time (usually from six weeks to a year), come up with a work plan, make decisions, develop recommendations, or take specific actions that are carefully thought through and useful. To ac­complish these goals with people who already have full-time assignments elsewhere in the organization, the team must quickly coalesce and be productive almost immediately—which is not easy given that developing the appropriate team context, composition, and team competencies typically takes considerable time. How to start and manage these ...