“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” -Henry Ford
Teamwork. This is a term that is widely accepted as being paramount to success in all aspects of life; from kids playing sports, to local fundraisers or a group of students making a presentation. Therefore, I think it is prudent for myself to consider what ‘teamwork’ really means and why is it so important on the change projects that I work on.
The very essence of human beings means that we possess unique characteristics that set ourselves apart from one another as individuals. Although it is possible to achieve success as an individual, it is much more common to achieve this as part of a group.
In order to achieve a common and shared goal, it is essential to accept that we have weaknesses and thus need to take advantage of each other’s strengths by working together. This does not mean that individuals necessarily need to be best friends and agree on everything, but it does mean valuing each other’s input and being prepared to compromise for the sake of this agreed goal. In fact “push back” from disagreements shouldn’t necessarily be discouraged, as it can bring innovative ideas to the fore that could be the ultimate difference between success and failure.
In my experience on change projects, which traditionally have poor reputations of success for various reasons (e.g. poor leadership, planning failures and lack of communication) it is absolutely critical that members of a project team can work together for its duration. This is because today’s pressures of shrinking timelines and compressed project budgets from senior management dictate that there is little margin of error when the pressure is on and therefore time is so scarce it cannot be wasted from people working in tangents. By not utilising the most proven method of achieving success of working as a team on a project for reasons that are not relevant for the task in-hand could be considered akin to “shooting oneself in the foot.” Moreover, when working on projects, in order for a team to prevent itself from becoming another mere statistic of unsuccessful projects they must buy into the ethos of “teamwork” or else the prospect of failure is far greater.
