High Performance Teamwork

The general model of planned change was established by Kurt Lewis and it serves as a blueprint for organizations to follow during times of change. The general model of planned change consists of three simple steps. The first step in this process is unfreezing, during this phase the object is to reduce forces and maintain organizational behavior at its current level. The second phase is moving, which involves shifting the behavior within the company to a new level. Thirdly, refreezing is the last step in the process this stage is about the stabilization within the company at a new state of equilibrium. The general model of planned change consists of four different phases or activities. The four different stages are entering and contracting, diagnosing, planning and implementing, and evaluating and institutionalizing. All of the above activities are the different stages that a company undergoes to ensure that planned change happens in an effective manner.

These are the first two Phases of Planned change as defined by Ronald Lippitt, et al, in 1858: Phase 1 Diagnose the problem, Phase 2 Assess motivation and capacity for change. (Mitchell 2013)

High performing teams operate in an organizational culture that encourages employees to be engaged in project work and the decision making process. Individuals who contribute to high performing teams are genuinely interested, motivated, and proud of their achievements. They work well with others, are open and honest, and have the ability to work on a cross functional team. When brought together, engaged employees, high performing teams and businesses who support agility, have a competitive advantage.

A high-performance team should have greater productivity, superior quality, small response time, and less costly. The team should work as a one to control his/her day-to-day production, quality, and administrative duties. A high-performance team should have performance characteristics that include: Quality leadership, quick reaction, purpose, fabulous

Roles, needs, and diversity are all key elements to the formation of a successful team, and as such affect the functionality of teamwork. A diversity of experiences and personality types make up the framework of any given group. Additionally, these varying personalities take different roles within the team. For example; some team members may be highly energetic, and thus generates forward movement and energy for other members of group, wherein other roles my include harmonizing the team and therefore may be good at reconciliation for aggressive group members. Still others may offer great insight and information for the team, whilst others dominate the group and participate in the team losing focus. Groups work together best when there is a

A team is more than people who share a workplace; “a real team is a group of very different individuals who share a commitment to working together to achieve common goals” (Fripp, 2007). More attention is being given to the influence of diversity in the workplace as the structural makeup of personnel continues to change (Hobman and Bordia, 2006). Knouse (2006) speculates that teams composed of diverse individuals should have more opinions to contribute, varying methods to solving problems, and broader viewpoints to analyze decisions. However, that does not always work to the team’s advantage. The differences could be so vast as to drive the team in to chaos and render it unable to

Significantly, difficulties that managers face in establishing self-directed and high performing teams should be identified and possible solutions put up. Resolutions to the problems should be followed by recommendations that show what managers should do in order to achieve the requirements for successful business operations in their organizations. Another area of concern is the characteristics of successful team building elements.

In today’s business world, more and more organizations are moving away from the use of individual work assignments to a combination of manager-led and self-directing teams. These businesses are relying on groups of unique individuals to come together and work on a common goal with a shared purpose. The ultimate goal for these teams are to produce more than what the individuals could do separately. In order for those teams to accomplish this, they must become high performance teams. High performance teams consist of a small number of individuals with complementary skills, who are committed to a specific goal and mutually agree to hold each other accountable for their results. Those teams who make it to this level experience autonomy,

The aim of this literature review is to synthesise literature on the topic of teamwork. It is important to study teamwork as most people will participate in some form of a team within their everyday life; whether it is working together in order to complete our MCOM200 Team Report or playing as part of an international championship team such as the All Blacks (Wheelan.S, 2010). This literature review focuses on identifying and analysing the key characteristics of a high performing team. Katzebach (1993) suggests that a team consists of a small number of people with complementary skills, who are also committed to a common purposes, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. This report starts with identifying communication with regards to teamwork. This report will go on to identify and analyse characteristics of high performing teams such as the level of commitment, leadership and motivation.

Different types of change are as follows: the process change, policy change, the changed job roles, system change, and the scale of change along with the speed of change- fast or slow.

This paper will cover several topics related to high-performing teams and work groups. It will discuss how these two kinds of workplace people sets and how they differ in their pursuit of organizational strategy and compare these differences to virtual teams. It will identify the characteristics of successful leaders of high-performing teams and finally discuss why high-performing teams are important to organizations.

The term “Organization change’ usually refers to modifications in an organisation’s structure, goals, technology and work tasks. (Stephan Linstead, Liz Fulop and Simon Lilley, 2009)

"Organizational change" refers to the any major shift or directional change in the organization such as an internal business restructuring, incorporating a new business entity, adopting or integrating a new technological platform, any company wide process change, like adoption of a new ERP process. On the other hand, there can also be comparatively smaller changes such as adopting a new operational process, bringing in new resources into a team etc. Different categories of an organizational change can be classified as follow:

According to Burnes (2004), “planned change is primarily aimed at improving the operation and effectiveness of the human side of the organization through participative, group‐ and team‐based programmes of change.” Field theory, group dynamics, and action research are the three stages models that using in the organization change (Burnes, 2006). In addition, Lewin’s (1952) model of planned change holds that change entails a three-stage process including freezing current behavior, moving to the new behavior, and refreezing the new behavior (Todnem, 2005). The advantage of planned change is help to increase an organization’s effectiveness, service ability, and productivity (Planned Change, n.d). Enhancement of the value of goods justifies as planned change in an organization and quality of the products is the term of success of the organization. However, one weakness of this approach is its basis on the assumption that firms act under constant environments that can be factored and planned for. Furthermore, the planned change is not able to combine with the radical change and transformation change due to it is too simple while the organizational changes is a continuous process to all.

According to Burnes (2004), “planned change is primarily aimed at improving the operation and effectiveness of the human side of the organization through participative, group‐ and team‐based programmes of change.” Field theory, group dynamics, and action research are the three stages models that using in the organization change (Burnes, 2006). In addition, Lewin’s (1952) model of planned change holds that change entails a three-stage process including freezing current behavior, moving to the new behavior, and refreezing the new behavior (Todnem, 2005). The advantage of planned change is help to increase an organization’s effectiveness, service ability, and productivity (Planned Change, n.d). Enhancement of the value of goods justifies as planned change in an organization and quality of the products is the term of success of the organization. However, one weakness of this approach is its basis on the assumption that firms act under constant environments that can be factored and planned for. Furthermore, the planned change is not able to combine with the radical change and transformation change due to it is too simple while the organizational changes is a continuous process to all.