Business Teamwork Is Never An Accident

Hello again. It's been awhile since the last issue, and I hope you're having a terrific summer. One lesson I learned this summer is sometimes you have to turn off one creative spigot in order to do other things. After writing an average of more than two articles a month for the past five years and posting them on my website, I took the past three months off. Partly to reenergize my brain, partly to finish the manuscript on my first book and get it to my publisher, partly to spend more time with my family (we had three long weekend trips and one glorious week in Destin), and partly to begin work on another book. Now I look forward to the monthly task of trying to craft value for a very diverse audience.

In the past three months, I've received more calls to help strengthen corporate teamwork than I have in the past three years. When something unusual like that happens, I ask the profound question, "What the heck is going on?' Here's my hypothesis. From 2001 - 2003, corporations were focused on just surviving. Their attitude became: "If teamwork falls apart, who cares? We have to make sure we remain a business and we'll need to lay off people and downsize and put all issues aside until we weather this storm." Well, in many ways the storm is over and now companies realize that people need to be effective in group settings in order to accelerate their critical business companies.

Teamwork simply means a group of people who support one another toward achieving a meaningful cause. If it's that simple, then why is true teamwork an extraordinarily rare occurrence in the business world? Why do teams fall apart? And how can a group of people become a true team?

Teamwork rarely happens because people have to set aside their own agendas to support the other members on the way to driving better results. That's hard to do. People want their careers to accelerate and they don't appreciate it when other people get in their way of success. When you go home, your spouse doesn't say, "How did you help the team today?" More likely, your spouse says, "How is that going to help your career?" At a gathering with friends, people don't talk about how they assisted a fellow employee with a big presentation that won a brand new account. Instead they talk about how they achieved record-breaking sales. If employees could work in a vacuum and never have to worry about their promotion or salary or prestige at home, then they might focus more on the pure enjoyment of being a member of a great team. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we don't operate in a vacuum. Creating great teamwork doesn't happen by accident. It requires sustained, focused effort over the long-term.

Why do teams fall apart? It's usually a case of "purpose outage" or "passion outage." If the group loses the sense of the incredible importance of their work, then they end up focusing on internal issues. Suddenly issues that would seem insignificant molehills compared to the overall purpose of their group become huge mountains that eat up everyone's time and energy. One way to get an immediate sense of purpose is to be confronted with a crisis. One of the greatest crises in the history of the U.S. was September 11th, 2001. Suddenly Americans pulled together in an unprecedented display of teamwork. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we can't create a crisis in the business world everyday. Each group has to take the time to identify the reason why their group exists and it has to be an important reason.

The other reason why teamwork falls apart during tough times is people lose their passion for their work. They see their friends losing their jobs even though they were doing good work. They watch as the company shifts from one strategy to another. The employees refuse to get excited about the new approach because they know it will change again in a year or so. The net result is a group of individuals who have lost their sense of purpose and their passion for the job they do. These individuals then spiral downward into an atmosphere that generates anger and frustration and bitterness. Everyone is focused on their needs and not on supporting their comrades. Why support other people toward achieving something if it's not at all clear what that something is?

So how do you build teamwork in such a quagmire? First, you remain very patient. Individuals don't regain a sense of teamwork overnight. They don't clarify an important purpose for the group without pouring in some effort. They don't buy into the benefit of supporting other people when they've been burned in the past. So you take the long, steady route. You find examples of where a member of the group or several members of the group made an enormous difference in the life of a customer and you highlight the heck out of that. Rather than asking people to identify what's wrong with the group, you ask them to identify what noble work the group is doing. Rather than asking what additional benefits you can provide to individuals, ask the individuals to identify the benefits of supporting the larger purpose of the group. If people don't see the value of supporting other people, then they won't do it. If people don't see the value of communicating with respect, they won't do it. If people don't see the value of sacrificing for their comrades in order to achieve greater success for everyone, then they won't do it.

In the end, teamwork is created when the individual members of the group believe that the purpose of the group is enormously important and that supporting one another toward achieving that purpose is worth the effort. No book or workshop or speaker can ever make a group of individuals into a team. The only way is for the individuals to clarify the purpose of the group, believe it is a very meaningful purpose, and then support one another toward the achievement of that purpose.

So, for starters, ask the members of your group this question: "What is the purpose of our group? What significant thing are we trying to achieve together? Whose lives are we going to make better and how are we going to do it?" If you can recharge the "purpose batteries," the passion outage will be solved.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month

I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.

My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.

My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.

If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.

Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.

If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.

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