Management Teams Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Management Teams - Essay Example Belonging to a team means that you are part of something larger than yourself like the mission of your organization. Even though you are designated to a specific rank and branch of the company, you are grouped together with other employees to achieve a final target that is beneficial to the whole company including you. (Jones; George, 2003) For example, if you are the chief engineer of a construction company and you are asked to head the production of a recreational facility, you cannot enforce your own decisions over others. You have to listen to what the others have to say and consider any complications or drawbacks pointed out by the designers, accountants, workers, etc. This lack of coordination can lead to a series of catastrophic events bad for both, the company and you. No matter how qualified or experienced you are, a brainstorm of ideas from a group of lesser-qualified staff is always better than a single sharp mind. This shows that the effectiveness of a team relies more on the mutual understanding and cooperation of its members rather than their individual achievements. I hereby pronounce the title statement to be true. You may bring out the best people to find and make a team, but it may still not be the maximum. The best violinists or cellists do not make the greatest orchestra. The best players do not make the greatest sports team. Similarly, in business, the best accountants or marketers do not achieve the finest results. You may have all the right ingredients but not knowing the recipe will never result in a perfect product. (Baker, 2000). An excellent example to demonstrate this is the Apollo Syndrome, a phenomenon discovered by Dr. Meredith Belbin, which states that a group of highly intelligent people often perform worse than a group of less able people. He was one of the early discoverers of Team Building and took special measures to select candidates for his experiments. He observed their abilities and took aptitude tests to examine their skills. Although the Apollo teams were predicted to exceed every other group in the competition, they nearly always ended up at the bottom. This failure to excel above all others, including teams relatively much less qualified, was due to certain reasons mentioned below. The members spent a lot of time in destructive debates and arguments trying to convince other members to accept their ideas, and pointing out errors in other people's theories. This led nearly all the arguments to dead ends. They found it tough to reach a unanimous decision and even if they did so, the decision would not stick together. They were found to follow their own procedures without giving any heed to what the other members were doing. Due to this lack of coordination, the group was found to be tough to manage. They refrained from confrontations of each other, which made it extremely difficult to make a unanimously accepted decision. Sometimes, they realized what was going on but instead of taking the right steps, they over-compensated by putting in irrelevant effort. (Belbin, 1981) In today's world of business, concepts such as internal evaluations, promotions, forced rankings, rewards, aggressive client policies, and active union relations are a common practice, and thus force