A Team With Focus
Humans work in different way than animals do. In the jungle, we often find animals teaming up with each other. Maybe they have a purpose for setting up those teams too. They may be banding together for food, shelter or protection, and that’s what keeps them together. Now, this is a common element with human teams in corporate establishments too. Or is it?
We do find a lot of teams in a lot of organizations that are set up just for the sake of setting them up. It is quite pitiful that most of these team members and even some of the team leaders helming these teams don’t have clarity of purpose. They don’t know why these people have been put together and given to them to manage, but that’s a crying shame!
That may be one aspect in which our corporate human teams are worse than animal teams in the Sahara.
But, thankfully, this can be overcome. Our teams can be much stronger than animal teams and, when you extrapolate that thought, you see that our teams can become more productive and creative-not like animal teams that have a single purpose day in and day out, week in and week out.
The best thing is that human teams can be made to focus. Today, ‘focus’ has become the guru mantra for teams all over the business world. Without concentrating on the goals at hand, it is quite unlikely that any team will make their progress, and it is definitely a long shot before the goals will be achieved.
Make your team focus. This process begins with giving the proper goals to work on. There shouldn’t be any ambiguity about what you or your organization wants. Tell them how the organization will benefit when those goals will be met. Tell them how they will benefit. This helps them focus.
Throughout the duration of the team, make sure to check on their progress. Correct members that are disengaged and reward engaged members. Set examples of things that have happened the way they should and prevent your team from sidetracking into inconsequential issues.
When you generate the right focus in your team, your team is able to think more creatively. They know what they want; this gives them the liberty to be more innovative about goal accomplishment and you will be most times surprised at what suggestions may come forth. So, try it out-be clear with your team, create the right amount of focus in them and see how they begin putting their best feet forward.
