A lot of the focus of intranets, and the vision of Claromentis 6.0 – is, as we have posted before, around the ease of progressing an initial idea to some kind of collaborative effort and then onto execution of that idea against measurable objectives ( “Shout -> Collaborate -> Execute” ) as Claromentis 6.0 has chosen to describe this process.
So it is with interest that I read research and opinions that point out the many pitfalls with teams, and the occasions when they fail.
Many corporate cultures, indeed one might even argue national cultures, encourage teams as some higher goal and ‘being a team player’ as skills to be rewarded above all else – and that expression of individual talent can be taken sometimes as selfish or detrimental to the corporate good.

Team players
I watch people in our company, talk to our clients and read with interest examples of great team success : and I have a few rather disjointed observations.. hence this post.
1. When is a team not a department and what does that imply?
To me a team is obviously volatile, it will be ultimately disbanded – and therefore everyone on it has a real job and a personal agenda somewhere else. That doesn’t sound like a great start.
To me that certainly means they need a strong leader and a vision to carry them through – and a good selection of skills to get the job done – but how can these needs be met if by definition there is no recruitment process for a team, by contrast with jobs in a department or business unit?
How do you make sure a team has the best resources if it has no recruitment and assignment process to go with it – just because it’s a team not a ‘proper job’?
Would it be better to resource up your top talent and change the jobs of everyone else so they are available to help on demand?
And anyway - if you decide to form a team instead - who wants to spare their best people for an uncertain innovative collaboration agenda?
2. People talk about team Obama
Often raised as a great example of a quickly implemented and talented team – he implemented his top officials in record time.
Yeah right – so he had a real recruitment problem – only had to chose between about 200 million American citizens who would have loved to spend the first term in a highly paid job with loads of travel working for someone generating a global buzz of anticipation…
3. My productivity Nirvana – a uniquely talented individual having all required resources..
In Claromentis I see time and time again that a really talented person can achieve so much if they just have resources to allocate to a task they need done, and be able to trust in the quality of that work. They don’t see this as a team at all – they just see it as someone available to do what they need to the standard they expect.
They don’t want anything in the way – this isn’t a team –it’s a resource pool they can select from on demand because they are the most talented implementers of our objectives. They get so frustrated if there isn’t someone to do the required work fast enough, or to the appropriate skill level.
So its all about managed execution with the right resources always available to help talented people.
So I vote for a team that is just in existence because someone sufficiently talented needs to allocate some skilled recourses so as to deliver their vision.
I know I have to have resources on the bench ready for his assignments – but in reality they can be working very effectively in their ‘normal’ jobs.
So maybe Claromentis 6.0 is right on the money – the final emphasis is resource allocation management to implement the vision of the person in authority – the ‘execute’ stage.
Just make sure you have the right person approved as someone who has overriding authority over all those resources – that’s actually manageable in a small company - but of course completely impossible in a larger one – which is why an oil tanker can’t turn on a sixpence.
Or more appropriately why every manufacturer of yesterdays mobile phones cant just create an i-phone. They have no-one with the vision, the authority and the resources just sitting on the bench. Shame for them – they probably have quite a few teams in place, lots of budget and a very large HR department…. and they had all that way before the time when the i-phone was invented.
Corporate News, General Intranet Posts, People and Cultural Issues, intranet applications
collaboration, intranet software, teams