Creating a Culture of Cooperation and Teamwork

Bruce Lawler noted that one of the reasons a shift to team emphasis within an organization fails is due to lack of supporting structure. Supporting structure goes way beyond a positive leader or environment.

We see lack of supporting structure when executives are out of the loop. Ideas get shelved. I talked with someone from a major aerospace company who retired from the business. He mentioned that there was a great deal of talk about being a team, group synergy and the like. Reality was the company perhaps on an emotional level wanted to think of itself that way. However it did nothing to support it. Nor did it reward cost saving measures or creativity.

As we spoke it became clear that creativity, learning environments, economical solutions, and team work were not rewarded because of competing structures. Engineers who and found ways to adapt existing inventions were penalized. How the aerospace corporation only rewarded engineers for developing solutions – even if the solution already existed. Promotions came from how many solutions an engineer could originate. If the engineer was not the originator of the idea, than that engineer received no credit. This not saying the engineers were stealing the work of others and with a few adaptations calling it their own. No, they would give credit to the person who came up with the invention or solution, but they also wanted recognition for finding the solution and adapting it. It is easy to see how those gifted in adapting the solutions of others would soon stop doing so? According to the person I spoke with this policy cost the aerospace company millions of dollars in wasted man hours.

Similarly, cooperation among project teams was not encouraged because the larger teams or the team that had the higher profile project would get the brunt of the reward. Some departments by their very nature have less to contribute to a project, but that does not negate the importance of what they contributed. This too went unaddressed.

The climate at the aerospace company was also quite competitive due to the pushing for developing solutions. This led Executives to push for speed of product development rather than rewarding the best solutions. Why because the more products their division produced the more likely it was that the executive would be considered for promotion or at least a horizontal transfer to a more visible and rewarded position.

Hopefully from this you can see how schizophrenia a company can be if the leaders desires one outcome but do not have in place the pieces that support it. When making changes of this magnitude the company must be looked at as an organic whole. Edward Lawler offers a five star model that can be an aid. A lot of the needed changes HR will initiate like structure, hiring and rewards. However, such things as strategies and processes will need to be looked at to see if they support a new culture like creating a team approach.