Teamwork has become an integral part of contemporary culture at work, at schools and even at religious institutions (Cain, 2012). It has been promoted so much that in some areas it feels excessive and arises hot disputes. In my point of view current “fashion” for collaboration is related to business environment which becomes tougher every day. The need to survive in competitive market reality facilitate companies’ strive for constant improving and performance increase, and teamwork is considered to be one of the most efficient tool for it.
Working in a team provides a wider view for a problem solution. Sometimes a solitary project can be put to a halt because of some obstacles which cannot be overcome by the performer. Team project can benefit from a fresh approach or a new idea of a co-worker. Provided on time, a new idea can both speed up the process and increase the quality of outcome. For example, in medicine additional expertise can be the only way to identify correct diagnosis.
Another undeniable benefit of teamwork is professional development of team members. Close collaboration with more experienced and talented colleagues gives employees an opportunity to learn and adopt effective methods and work style, let alone subject competence. All the internships, when interns operate as a part of an experienced team, are built on this “watch and learn” principle.
Performing in a team can increase personal accountability. This opinion is supported by Lau, Quora contributor (2013). When you work in collaboration with people you respect and don’t want to let them down it can be a powerful motivation to complete task on time and cope with personal drawbacks. Of course it works only in assumption that the team comprises of more professionals than simple slackers, but this assumption is fair for all advantages of successful teamwork.
One of the most valued advantages of teamwork is the feeling of engagement. People like to be a part of something big and remarkable, that’s why this feeling serves a strong motivation for high performance in the company.
However, there are no ideal approaches, so the drawbacks of teamwork can also be easily identified.
Teamwork approach can let slackers mingle in the group of other performers and make individual input diffused in common results. This effect can be mitigated by distinct segregation of duties but it is not always possible due to cross-functions.
As it was profoundly depicted in Cain’s article (2012) the teamwork limits the ability of sole thinking, while sole thinking can be very productive as proved by many geniuses. Indeed, if we look back at the history, the majority of inventions have been made by solitary performers because they had the opportunity to hide away from outside world in their nooks where no one could interrupt their thinking and analysis.
Collaborative system of work can make team interaction too excessive, which decreases its members productivity. The examples, provided by Cain (2012) specify needless interruptions, too frequent and not effective meetings, noisy openspace.
Another danger of teamwork lies in the effect that in common discussions unique personal opinion can sometimes be mingled among other people opinion and not be expressed at all. As we all know, the majority is not always right. So there is a real chance of losing sight of a talented person.
The functional areas of “business of fashion” vary substantially by tasks, competences required and, consequently, more effective style of work.
PR, Marketing and Communications, as well as Media are collaborative functions by nature. Employees in this areas should be very communicative and sociable, so, even if there are no formal teams, in the course of their work many of them organize teams themselves, not limited by the company employees. However, some analytical or copywriting tasks in this functions may require sole thinking, which shouldn’t be neglected during office organization.
Digital & E-commerce in my opinion imply more individual work in coding and programming area, but close contact with other departments (E.g.: Sales, Marketing, etc.) is obligatory to achieve maximum commercial results. Therefore, such specialists may benefit from solitary performance, being simultaneously a part of a big company team.
Solitary work will also be effective in Creative function and Design, as such creative areas in my opinion require more personal space and time for individual “inventions”. Yet, again, we can call this work solitary to a certain extent, as all their results will be then discussed with many different functions, from Production to Sale.
I assume that Retail Management will need strong collaboration with Sales, Merchandising and Marketing as they have the same general goal – deliver the product to a customer. In my point of view Sales is the area where “bus factor” (possibility to lose a performer unexpectedly) should be minimized to keep the customers served twenty four/seven. Therefore, these functions will perform more effectively in a team.
And in the end, Production is one of the most collaborative functions, I believe. Production is a complex mechanism with a lot of nuances and it requires a lot of expertise of various kinds to ensure flawless operation.
One of my best team experience is connected with basketball team at high school. We achieved good results at competitions although not all of the team members performed like “stars”. In my opinion the reason of our effective collaboration was that, on the one hand, every team member knew its role very clear, and on the other hand, we had been trained to be quite interchangeable. The team members were very different, but the trainer knew or strong and weak areas and arranged the game taking these peculiarities in account. I believe that it is impossible to perform excellent in all areas, therefore the team with very similar members will be less effective as it has a limited range of ideas and areas of expertise.
The example of an unsuccessful team experience can be taking part in a school theatre performance. The problem was that all the play actors were keen to get “star part”. When the roles have been distributed most of them were disappointed. They didn’t make efforts to make the whole play successful, but just performed their roles as they were instructed. In my opinion our theater instructor should have spent some time to explain to each actor the importance of his/her role in a whole play, create a spirit of engagement and identify a shared goal. Probably with this understanding the actors would have less formal attitude and better performance as a team. This case clearly demonstrated that the success of the whole team depends on each member input and it is impossible to get good shared result without a shared goal.
References
Mikoluk K. (2013, July 11). Importance of teamwork in business: how to optimize collaboration. Udemy Blog. Retrieved from https://www.udemy.com/blog/importance-of-teamwork/
Cain S. (2012, January 13). The rise of a new Groupthink. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new groupthink.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Lau E. (2013, Jan 13). Why and where is teamwork important? Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/01/23/why-and-where-is-teamwork-important/#1e3a6f8832d9
