TL;DR;
Are you a company or individual looking to get up to speed with team collaboration?
Would you like the State to pay for the training?
Sign up for a free virtual information session on how it works
Table of Contents
Working on a small team has many benefits
Indeed.com recently posted an article outlining the advantages of working on a small team. These benefits are important for those working on a small team, but also those who want to build the rockstar team. These benefits outlined in the article and include:
- Improved Communication
- Higher Engagement
- Increased Productivity
- Boosted Motivation
- Better Collaboration
- More Innovation
- Faster Progress
- Efficient Management
- Established Trust
- Maximized Resources
- Equal Opportunities
- Focused Specialization
Why I know this is important
My 30+ years experience shows that these factors are all important for the following reasons:
- Small teams often outperform large teams: The myth that often surrounds this fact is that large teams can do more work in a shorter period of time. However my experience Shows that the improved communication that is experienced on a small team often correlates to a larger, more quality focused work outcome.
- A small team can easily self organize around the work: productivity directly relates to how effectively the team members can manage the work. A Team that can manage and execute the work can establish trust better with themselves and with the business problem at hand.
- A small team establishes quality. The small, self-organized team establishes the quality standards that are released to the customer. This concept establishes the team’s ownership and its ability to take pride in their work. An organization that supports the team’s quality standards can establish trust with the team quicker and gain a better customer relationship.
-
Small teams can easily adapt to change: things rarely go according to a well-thought plan. With little directions, a small team can adapt to change with little or no feedback thus allowing quick adaptation to unrealized problems.
-
Little waste: a team that maximizes its resources often realizes very small waste. This means that a self-organizing team will be able to do work more effectively and everyone on the team has equal responsibilities to complete a goal.
- Optimized workflow: a small team can easily see it’s bottlenecks and make changes to its own workflow to remove the bottlenecks and increase workflow to get work done faster.
Of course…there are drawbacks…
Working on a small team is not easy. There are some things to consider before you start an effort to make or work on a small team.
-
- You cannot learn collaboration from a book or a course. You need to be able to get real-world experience first in order to be effective working with others.
- Resolving conflicts can be difficult. Conflict on a small team is inevitable. Everyone has their own ideas of how to best manage the work and produce effective results. The best course is to hear everybody’s ideas and personalities in order to choose the right solution. It then takes a mature team to learn from its own mistakes and try another course of action.
- A framework for working effectively needs to be in place. A few team members cannot just learn a set of skills and then start working together to produce the desired outcome. An agreed-upon framework of rules needs to be established before business goals are established, planning is done, and work starts.
- Actually getting something done can seem hard. The whole idea is to get things done quickly, but with all the complexities mentioned here, it might seem impossible.
What is needed for a small team? Watch videos from our webcast, Raw Agility!
Enter “Agility”
Agility is about one thing: focus on getting “done”.
The work is accomplished by a small team working to produce small iterations of work, inspect the outcome, and adapt new techniques to the next highest prioritized work items.
The idea is to obtain feedback rapidly and respond to change. For these reasons, the benefits of a small team are quickly realized. The result is happier customers, repeat business, and a rockstar team that can adapt and grow and is happier with their own work.
Attend one of our virtual, free information sessions below to learn how you or your team can take short 2-day training classes to earn industry-recognized credentials in as little as a week, and have the State of Ohio pay for both.
