In fostering there is no one individual who owns a work area or process all by themselves, people should be open and receptive to ideas and input from others in the Team . The values of teamwork should be shared among the members of the team while compensation and rewards should depend on collaborative practices as much as individual contribution and achievement. It is important to identify and thereby set a benchmark to the rest of the teams.
However before embarking on , conflicts of all kinds should be resolved within the organization. Apart from the required technical expertise, a variety of social skills are essential for success in aTeam culture. The Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing model (Bruce Tuckman, 1965) takes the team through four stages of TEAM development. These phases are essential and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, plan the work effectively and deliver the end results.
However there is a need to establish and develop collaboration and trust between team members vis a vis interactive exercises, team assessments which will enable teams to cultivate effective team building strengths amongst each other. Modern society and culture continues to become more dynamic and the factors contributing towards this include the communications revolution, the global market, specialization and division of labor. Thereby individuals are now required to work with many different groups of people in their working environment and also the personal lives.
Successful Team that creates effective, focused work teams requires attention to the following areas mentioned in Figure A. Empowerment is the process of giving an opportunity or authorizing an individual to take decisions, think creatively and have a control of his/her duties in an organization. It is the responsibility on the organization to create a work environment, which helps the desire of employees to act in empowered ways.
Top management of organizations has a very important role to play in making employee empowerment successful. Initially the managers need to understand what empowerment really means; and thereby establish boundaries for empowerment, in the event of the managers absence, the decisions that could be made by staff members should be clearly defined; Managers should also build faith and trust on their decisions made by their employees; further managers should coach, train and provide necessary information and learning opportunities for staff to make effective decisions.
They should tackle situations wisely and not blame or punish their staff for minute mistakes to avoid employees flee from empowerment, The organizations should ensure that they remove barriers that limit the ability of staff to act in empowered ways. Employees should be motivated in terms of compensation, recognition and responsibility in order to drive success of empowerment. The Flow Chart below depicts the increasing role for employees and decreasing role for supervisors in the decision making process in todays context. The supervisor makes the decision and cascades it to the staff
The supervisor makes the decision and obtains commitment from staff The supervisor invites ideas into a decision while retaining authority to make the final decision The supervisor invites employees to join him/her in order to make the final decision The supervisor delegates to another person to make the necessary decisions. This is only where empowerment steps in. British American Tobacco (BAT) came into light with one objective; to seek market leadership in all countries where a market existed. BATs expansion to Ceylon was in 1905.
Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC) Limited continued its Sri Lankan operations and was incorporated in 1932. Between years of 1990 1994, a self assessment was conducted and CTC identified the following lacunas such as lack of overall direction, lack of awareness on business issues, discontinued management team, departments functioning in isolation and in disciplined environment. After which the management identified Key initiatives and actions such as knowledge management, people involvement, culture change, gaining confidence of unions/employees and improvements in productivity via practicing concepts of Teamwork, industrial harmony etc.
During the period 1995 1996 CTC focused on building Trust within the company employees by adapting Teamwork throughout the organization, extensive training for shop floor employees, common time entry system, common recreation facilities, common social events etc. During 1997, shared vision and mission with focus business strategy, re-engineered business processes, multidisciplinary cross functional project teams, extensive training and education, creation of a winning culture, industrial and non industrial benchmarking and focus on continuous improvement.