Building a Culture of Teamwork

The demands and competitive realities of today’s business environment require that companies operate with a combination of responsiveness, speed, and quality that can only be achieved through high levels of collaboration and teaming. In order to win in a demanding and rapidly-changing market, teamwork is not optional—it is essential. 

Unfortunately, many organizations suffer from poor teamwork. Despite the fact that most include “teamwork” in their list of core values, personal agendas and department agendas often dominate, and there is a continual struggle with turf wars, silos, and a lack of collaboration.

The bottom line is that when people and/or departments don’t work well together, performance and customer service will suffer. How you collaborate and work together has a profound impact on how you sell and the level of service you deliver to customers.

A hallmark of high performance companies is a deep commitment to teamwork. People, teams, and departments in the best organizations have learned how to commit to common goals and collaborate effectively. For these companies, teamwork is not simply a buzzword or slogan. It is a personal and organizational discipline they have worked hard to master.

High performance organizations work with each other on behalf of customers. People and departments work together to produce results they couldn’t produce working individually.

At first, acting as a team is slower than acting alone. It is not always easy to wait on — or align with — team decisions. It takes time to build high performance teaming and collaboration, but the payoff is worth the investment.

When you collaborate across departments, you win together – you sell more services, deliver greater value to clients, generate more revenue, and build a stronger reputation in the marketplace.

Developing a culture of teamwork is not easy. It requires a deep commitment to crystal clear cultural standards, relentless leadership at all levels of the organization, clear communication, consistent accountability, personal discipline, and uncommon trust.