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Cooperation and Collaboration

Cooperation and Collaboration. Farrokh Alemi, Ph.D. Why Work in Teams?. To improve coordination and cooperation To empower people To harness creativity and innovation To cut overhead costs. Types of Teams. Mix of top and lower level managers Mix of managers from different departments

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Cooperation and Collaboration

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  1. Cooperation and Collaboration Farrokh Alemi, Ph.D.

  2. Why Work in Teams? • To improve coordination and cooperation • To empower people • To harness creativity and innovation • To cut overhead costs

  3. Types of Teams • Mix of top and lower level managers • Mix of managers from different departments • Mix of front line managers and workers

  4. Teamwork and Cooperation Is Critical to a Firm's Long-term Success and Viability Yet This Issue Is Often Ignored

  5. Today’s Focus • What specific factors prevent management personnel from working together as a team? • What specific problems emerge when managers do not work together or cooperate with each other? • 3. What are the keys to getting managers to cooperate and work together as a team?

  6. Top Five Causes of Not Working Together • Personality conflicts and egos • Conflicting goals • Reward systems based on individual performance • Lack of unifying vision • Ineffective leadership from above

  7. Cooperation Is Not the Norm When left to their own devices, aggressive, strong-willed, self-starting managers do not naturally gravitate toward working together. Some do not have the skills to work together. Others face structural barriers.

  8. What Happens When Managers Do Not Cooperate? • Break down of communication • Duplicate work and waste • Loss of productivity • Reduce morale • Increased work place conflict • Failure to focus on customers An Organization that is hurting itself

  9. What Can Be Done? • Most managers want to work together • Many do not know how • Many do not have a conducive environment

  10. Five Solutions • Develop consensus around a common vision and organizational outcomes. • Implement team-based performance feedback, and reward systems. • Top management support cooperation in word and deed. • Train for team building skills. • Facilitate front-line management ownership of decision processes and outcomes.

  11. Despite All the Talk Empowerment Is Still Mostly an Illusion. The change programs and practices we employ are full of inner contradictions that cripple innovation, motivation, and drive.

  12. External Commitment Internal Commitment Others define tasks. Individuals define tasks. The behavior required to perform tasks is defined by others Individuals define the behavior required to perform tasks. Performance goals are defined by managers Management and individuals jointly define performance goals that are challenging The importance of the goal is defined by others Individuals define the importance of the goal. Differences in Commitment

  13. It Is Unrealistic to Expect Management to Allow Thousands of Employees to Participate Fully in Self-governance. How Participates? What Is Self Governance?

  14. Contradictions: Do Your Own Thing -- the Way We Tell You • When employees' actions are defined almost exclusively from the outside (as they are in most change programs), the resulting behavior cannot be empowering • Use of champions in virtually all contemporary change programs sends a similar mixed message from CEOs to employees • Organization politics does not disappear

  15. Charade or Reality • Recognize that every company has both top-down controls and programs that empower people. • Some inconsistencies are inevitable and must simply be managed. Encourage individuals to bring them to the surface; otherwise, a credibility gap will be created. • Don't undertake blatantly contradictory programs. • Understand that empowerment has its limits. Specify the likely limits of permissible change.

  16. Charade or Reality • Establish working conditions to increase empowerment in the organization. • Calculate factors such as morale, satisfaction, and even commitment into your human relations policies, but do not make them the ultimate criteria. The ultimate goal is performance.

  17. Charade or Reality • Help employees understand the choices they make about their own level of commitment. One of the most helpful things we can do in organizations-indeed, in life-is to require that human beings not knowingly kid themselves about their effectiveness. • Remember that empowerment can run contrary to human nature, and be realistic about how to achieve and use it.

  18. Organizational Politics • You cannot have human activity that does not involve group dynamics and political coalitions • Organization coalitions for team work

  19. Think It Through Exercise • What is the limits of empowerment you can accept? • How do you organize a coalition among the employees to support team work?

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