Teamership: 93% of organisations aren’t ready

Research data in a 2019 report by global consultancy Deloitte highlights some interesting opportunities and gaps. The report states that shifting toward a team-based organizational model improves performance, often significantly.

The overwhelming majority (74%) of organisations that are at least partially operating as a team-based network are seeing improvements in performance. A total of 53% of respondents reported that operating as a team-based network had led to a significant improvement in performance.

While there is a desire and awareness of the benefits of a team based network, Deloitte’s research picked up some interesting trends – in particular, the gap between the opportunity presented by working through teams and the current reality. There is a huge gap between these aspirations and reality. The report states that:

“Sixty-five percent of this year’s survey respondents viewed the shift from ‘functional hierarchy to team-centric and network based organizational models’ as important or very important– but only 7 percent of respondents felt very ready to execute this shift, and only 6 percent rated themselves very effective at managing cross-functional teams.”

This emphasises two things.

1. A desire to be able to operate in a more team based network does not, in itself, provide the competitive advantage that your organisation is looking for. Just like simply wanting to get fitter doesn’t mean that you get fitter.
2. That finding a way to improve your capability to operate in a network of teams can and will set you ahead of the curve.

Here is something that I saw from Sarah Cooper a while back. Hopefully you can’t relate.

Some things to consider this week.

• How prepared are we to operate as a part of a team based network?
• What current practices support a team based network?
• Are any assumptions holding us back from working together better?

Go well,

Keegan