Why do we need teams and team working? Casey (1993) from Ashridge Management College researched this question by asking a simple question of each team he worked with: ‘Why should you work together as a team?’ The simplest answer is, ‘Because of the work we need to accomplish.’ Team work may be needed because there is a high volume of interconnected pieces of work, or because the work is too complex to be understood and worked on by one person.
What about managers? Do they need to operate as teams, or can they operate effectively as groups? The Ashridge-based writers say that a management team does not necessarily have to be fully integrated as a team all of the time. Nor should it be reduced to a mere collection of individuals going about their own individual functional tasks.
Casey believes that there is a clear link between the level of uncertainty of the task being handled and the level of team work needed. The greater the uncertainty is, the greater the need for team work. The majority of management teams deal with both uncertain and certain tasks, so need to be flexible about the levels of team working required. Decisions about health and safety, HR policy, reporting processes and recruitment are relatively certain, so can be handled fairly quickly without a need for much sharing of points of view. There is usually a right answer to these issues, whereas decisions about strategy, structure and culture are less certain. There is no right answer, and each course of action involves taking a risk. This means more team working, more sharing of points of view, and a real understanding of what is being agreed and what the implications are for the team.