High Performace Work Teams

Executive Summary

We are a company who seeks to change the corporate structure to enable success in the communications of departments to better utilize our skill and reduce redundancy in our resources. We are to hire an outside contractor specialized in High Performance Work Teams, to enable our management to lead this company into the ever-changing fast paced global economy. The High Performance Work Teams are very complicated to implement, which is why the outside source is needed. We are at a time in this company when we can no longer just get by ineffective communication. We must embrace the new ways and change our management’s way of processing and sharing information. This new strategy will take about one year total to implement, which sounds like a long time, but in the order of magnitude of the companies existence is a relatively short time frame to take on this task. The first stage will be the most difficult. This stage will take about three months to change the fundamental nature of the business social structure. We may need to change managers if they are opposed to this new style of work teams. This may seem harsh, but if the system is broke and it needs shaking, this is the best way to do it. Do not expect to see any profit increases for the first six to eight months, but there after we can expect a turnaround if the process in implemented correctly.

Major Adjectives

We are a medium sized consumer products company and we are considering implementing a High Performance Work Team into the organizational structure. The reason for the change comes with a harsh reality that we are losing market share because the companies departments including sales, pricing, marketing, product design, advertising, and supply chain/distribution have not been on the same page. The high performance work team (HPWT) is a group of interdependent individuals who work together in a specific manner to achieve a common objective. What separates an HPWT from any others is its ability to perform at the highest level possible for extended periods of time and to accomplish its tasks in the most efficient and effective manner possible. In order to redevelop a HPWT, the following goals need to be applied, develop goals and plans, enhance communication among members, develop and maintain positive relationships among members, solve problems and make decisions on a timely basis, successfully manage conflict, facilitate productive meetings, clarify roles for members, operate in a productive manner, exhibit effective team leadership and provide development opportunities for team members (Holmes). A major hurdle to implementing high performance teams is that many workers never learned how to work on a team effectively. Our culture promotes independence, self-sufficiency and competitiveness at the expense of shared goals and collaboration. We need a fresh perspective and some new skills to make this concept work.

Concerns/Pitfalls

When establishing a High Performance Work Team, we are committing to an extensive overhaul to our current company structure. This may result in the termination of employees based on their non team working ability or lack of necessity. We must do this with a certain taste and honor as much as we can due to the nature company layoffs and how they put a negative vibe amounts the employees. The strategy for implementation must have a high energy focused idea of what needs to happen and a clear timeline on who is needed for what position. We would have to commit to a three to four months of breaking down social barriers within the corporate structure and building healthy relationships between departments. In this stage we would need to remove the lack of trust from the employees, and start to bring a more constructive level of communication into the team that you can only get when you put honesty into the system. We need to get the issues that team members might have been reluctant to communicate about out in the open and now we can begin to move foreword. In order to break down barriers it is important to understand the way people communicate is rooted in their culture, and as the American workplace becomes increasingly multicultural, that means there is a lot of opportunity miscommunication. We must commit to a strategy of communication and implement correctly or the system could fail. Another Potential pitfall of the High Performance Work Team is wasted energy, lost time, high frustration, costly rework. These are all typical symptoms in today’s work place and grow more common with a higher workload. The pressure to compete, and to provide high quality services that satisfy and maintain costumers’ satisfaction also puts potential stress on the employees. At no other time has the need for effective and efficient processes like collaborative planning, problem solving and decision making been more necessary, but we must be able to employ stress management techniques as well. We also would need to address the question “why are we doing this?” We need to effectively show how this will benefit everyone. Failure to do so will lead to a failed implementation.

Potential Gains

It is increasingly apparent that one of the keys to successful organizational performance is the people within the organization, and the management systems that harness their talents and capabilities. If we effectively convert to a more productive environment, we can establish a new organization that has full communication among employees, the results will be increased production, sales force knowledge increase, corporate financial success and the value of employee power. The companies’ problems stem from a lack of communication of departments. We could get these department heads split into one specific team separate of the department teams. The sales team manager will meet with the pricing, marketing, product design, advertising, and supply chain/distribution manager to form there own separate High Performance Work Team. These managers are the ones who can make or break the system, so evaluation of each managers attitude and acceptance to change need to be evaluated. If these managers can work together to develop a strategy of open communication about the companies objectives and implement them with there own individual work teams the success will be inevitable.

Tactics and strategies

When implementing the High Performance Work Team, teams can sometimes form by themselves, even in spite of managers who can get in the way; it's more likely that a our management needs to properly facilitates team members through a process that leads to the team becoming as effective

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