Smart business teams focus on creating common denominators. Common denominators are the glue which hold successful and highly collaborative teams together. Even when it seems you have nothing in common.
- Smart teams create a common vocabulary for communication.
- Smart teams speak up when they do not understand each other.
- Smart teams focus on creating clarity rather than working in an environment of mis-assumptions.
- Smart teams are proactive and anticipatory about potential roadblocks in processes and culture.
- Smart teams are focused on excellence in the execution of strategy.
- Smart teams make each team member better than they were before they started collaborating together.
- Smart teams create leaders.
Have I described your work team, your engineering team, your customer service team, your executive team, your project management team, your sales team, your small business team?
Many of you have had an opportunity of working on one or two smart teams during your careers. I know I have. When creating smart teams in collaboration with my clients: we work hard, it takes time, there is no recipe.
Ours is a mindful and fulfilling process. Everyone gets to the finish line together.
Many of you currently work in frustrating environments encumbered by analysis paralysis and “but we’ve always done it this way” mindset. These environments are frustrating to you because you are focused on excellence. You do your best work when collaborating. You keep an open mind when working with colleagues and customers, no matter how different their perspectives are from yours.
- Smart Business Teams of Worth get to the finish line together: for their benefit, for their company’s benefit, for their clients’ benefit.
- Smart teams take it upon themselves to conduct an introspective diagnosis of what works and what doesn’t.
- Smart teams take it upon themselves to identify a strategy and processes to get them from where they are today to where they need to be tomorrow and in the future.
- Smart teams take the initiative. They create their own momentum. They identify internal resources and put these folks into play.
- Smart teams have learned how to collaborate rather than expecting someone else to recognize their needs and fix things.
- Smart teams have their own personalities and a relative degree of autonomy.
- Smart teams get things done: expediently, efficiently, resourcefully, economically, remarkably.
Smart teams become their own Band of Brothers and Sisters. The collective experience of collaborating together across departmental silos becomes part of their professional DNA.
Smart teams want to continue working with smart teams. They seek out smart people within their own company and their customers’ companies. They focus on creating sustainable, enduring business outcomes.
What will it take to turn your work team into a smart business team? That first step outside your comfort level may seem like an insurmountable distance.
Take that first step. Anticipate all of the smart business teams that are waiting for you to join and lead.
Babette N. Ten Haken builds innovative, productive and profitable teams focused on excellence in the execution of strategy. Her Playbook on collaboration hacks, including tools, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com.
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