View source for Building an Effective Management Team

Building an effective “management team” can enhance organizational success, performance and competitiveness.  

Building a management team becomes important when an organization grows beyond a founder and a few employees.  As an organization grows it becomes more complex and the leader directing the organization cannot have their fingers on all the decisions.

There are many other applications of team building, such as a project team or a sales team, but that is a separate topic and not covered in this discussion.

== Definition ==

Building a team at its simplest level means creating a group of people working towards a common goal.

== Forming a Management Team ==

Forming a management team could be as simple as gathering the president/executive director together with the division managers.  One issue to consider is whether the makeup of the management team represents the different views and functions in the organization.  If a view or function is left out, for example accounting, an important point of view may be missing in some discussions.  This could undermine implementing change or new initiatives in the organization.  

The team should be large enough to present a diversity of perspecives and ideas. [[Ideal group size|Group size]] whether too small or too large can reduce performance.

== Team Building ==

Some fundamental activities to build an effective management team are:
* Clarifying the team goals
* Identifying those issues which inhibit the team from reaching their goals
* Addressing and removing the inhibitors

== Management Team Functions ==

Once a management team is up and running and proven its ability to operate as a team it can tackle many organizational activities:

▪	Problem solving of challenges and crisis that face the organization
▪	[[After Action Review|After Action Reviews]] – review how the organization performed after the fact and internalize the lessons learned throughout the organization
▪	Planning – development of the strategic [[Building a Business Plan – New SBA Online Tool|business plan]] for the organization 
▪	Review of organization performance; financials
▪	Forum for information sharing
▪	Implementing and communicating changes and new initiatives in the organization

== Resources ==

* [http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2012/10/01/6-ways-successful-teams-are-built-to-last/ ''“6 Ways Successful Teams are Built to Last”''] Forbes, Oct, 2012; Glenn Llopis discusses leadership techniques that build a team.
* [[wikipedia : Team building]] Wikipedia page discusses more generally team building in multiple settings.
* [http://ucsfhr.ucsf.edu/index.php/pubs/hrguidearticle/chapter-14-team-building/ “Guide to Managing Human Resources, Chapter 14: Team Building”]University of California, San Francisco – review steps to building and effective team and organizational benefits
* [http://www.ted.com/speakers/tom_wujec.html ''“Build a Tower Build a Team”''], TED talk by Tom Wujec – lessons learned from teams building a tower from simple materials.

== Author ==

The author of this article is Terry Gardiner.

{{Terry Gardiner}}