Think One Team, 2nd Edition

summary

It’s self-evident that organisations can’t succeed in a complex, ever-changing world unless people work together.

But what does ‘work together’ really mean?

I believe it means working as one team. And that means the leaders are united and collaborating as partners, teams are high performing and connected, employees are engaged and productive, and as a consequence the whole organisation is nimble, resilient and change ready.

Of course, that’s not the norm across industry and government. Instead of engaged and resilient teams that work as one to move quickly to pursue opportunities and resolve problems, we see costly overruns, service slip-ups, turf fights and duplication.

While many people look to organisation structure and blame the silos, they miss the five distinct practices that differentiate the organisation that works as one from the all-too-familiar opposite.

In a one-team organisation people share a bigger picture than their own business unit agendas; they share the reality by getting the tough issues out on the table and they tap the collective intelligence by sharing the air. They share the load by co-creating solutions to problems and opportunities, and they learn and adapt by sharing the wins and losses.

Every day these one-team organisations can be seen aligning their goals, their expectations and their priorities; collaborating across the same boundaries that shackle others; and relentlessly reflecting, debriefing and learning from their experiences.

It’s ...