There's No "I" in Company: The Importance of Teamwork in the Company

Have you ever wondered why a business plan should include a section on the leadership team? What about why the leadership team is mentioned in a public company's annual report? The answer is simple. People make the company. No matter how brilliant a business idea, people must carry it out, and the wrong people will fail, disappointing investors. The leadership team sets the tone at the top. If they are capable team players, then they spread the message that teamwork is vital to the company's success, and the company's employees will strive to work together.

Have you ever worked on a team where everyone got along well, did their part, and felt free to share ideas? Did this experience not produce better results than when you worked on a team where everyone argued, some lazy people did nothing, and a loud few dominated the brainstorming? Teamwork, or lack thereof, distinguishes these two experiences.

If you had a choice of working in a company where teamwork is a vital part of the corporate culture versus a company where teamwork doesn't exist, where would you want to work? I would choose the company with teamwork because working for it would be less stressful. I am an intelligent, capable worker, but I don't want to have so much work that it takes over my life. Such a situation would lead to burnout, which could inspire me to quit my job. Companies don't like having high employee turnover if it can be avoided because it can raise their recruitment, training, and compensation costs.

Being able to split jobs up into smaller tasks which are assigned to multiple people, management can increase productivity by better utilizing its employees. Instead of having one person complete a whole process, start to finish, the company can give that person the tasks in the process that best align with his skill set, thereby cutting down on that employee's frustration level resulting from doing what he isn't good at. Constant repetition of specific types of tasks will make that employee more efficient at them, decreasing production time. This can mean less overtime, which saves the company money (for hourly employees). From the employees' point of view, doing things faster and working less overtime means going home earlier, creating a better work-life balance.

Now a process is as slow as its slowest step. If the slower steps are sped up, then the whole process can be completed much faster. Identification of better ways to perform a process requires help from the people performing the process. How helpful do you think these employees will be if they feel that their jobs are threatened? An environment where teamwork is emphasized can change how these people think about their jobs, making them more likely to cooperate in process redesign. They should be more willing to answer questions about how the process currently works. In addition, team players should be more likely to voice their ideas for improving things because they're used to thinking that people listen to their input and take it into consideration.

In a teamwork environment, the team takes responsibility for the process they are performing, and the employees are empowered. That means if one person spots something wrong that doesn't relate to his task, he is more likely to mention the problem to the relevant person, so it can be fixed. Thus, the process's output should be of higher quality. This can result in higher revenue because customers appreciate high quality.

Teamwork can result in happier employees, and happier employees will be more interested in doing what's good for the company, instead of sabotaging the company's efforts. Like I said before, people make the company.