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Organizing Teams


If you've you've been part of a successful team please describe its structure by relating it to the various structures discussed in the chapter, starting on page 100 with one boss. Then also discuss your team in terms of Katzenbach and Smith's distinguishing features of high functions teams, which starts on page 107. If you've never been part of a successful team in all your experience you have two options. a) Write about a team that was only moderately successful or unsuccessful that you were on and address the same questions as above but, of course, some of this will be in the negative. b) Write about a team you are aware of from viewing it on TV, or seeing it in the movies, or some other way where you've become well acquainted with it. Then perform the above exercise on that team. In all of this please give enough background info so I can understand what is going on. Also note that in years past students have focused on team structure as the determinant of team performance. I encourage you to consider, in addition, what being a good teammate means, how that helps, and what encourages that sort of behavior.

For several years, I have been a part of an RSO on campus that consists of 20 board members. 4 compose the executive board and the rest are core board with 300+ general members. I was first selected as philanthropy chair, then I was elected to be on the executive board to be vice president last year, and this year I am the again on the executive board as secretary.

This organization is a classic example of B&D’s dual authority model. Of the 4 executive board members, the president ‘technically’ holds the most power. I say technically because our president chose to run our organization a little bit differently than it had been run in previous years. Although the president had the final say, she often made the rest of the executive board members feel as though we were equal to her and strongly valued our opinions and ideas. I believe this played a huge role in having one of our most successful years ever as an organization because it allowed for a clearer flow of communication and trust within the executive board.

Further, below each executive board member are 2-4 core board members that make up their team. Each executive board member is in charge of different aspects, e.g. philanthropy, membership, social, etc. In general, usually the executive board member and their under sights tend to come up with ideas and events, then the executive board member brings it to the rest of the executive board and seeks their approval and input, and then the event is set in motion.

In terms of evaluating the success of teams based on Katzenbach and Smith’s research highlights six distinguishing characteristics of high-quality teams, our RSO does pretty well for such a complex organization. The first characteristic is that high-performing teams shape purpose in response to a demand or an opportunity placed in their path, usually by higher management. This is a huge component of our organization. We begin the year by creating a clear goal and allow each team to create their own scope for the year. The executive board members then work with under sights to create goals and delegate tasks using work streams.  Because our events usually involve a level of creativity, we often allow for our under sights to bounce ideas around and give them quite a bit of flexibility. This also falls into another characteristic of high-performing teams translating common purpose into specific, measurable performance goals. Additionally, the characteristic that successful teams are of a manageable size is crucial. Since our organization and board is so large, there are many ways that communication can become difficult. Dividing people into small teams under one under sight allows for a clearer path of work for their respective department (philanthropy, etc.)  and allows us to hold people accountable.

Although our RSO was successful because of our high quality structure, other factors contributed to our success as well. One of these factors is the relationships we created in our organization. At the very start of the year we had lots of board bonding events that allowed us all to get to know each other and develop a sense of trust. This contributed to each board member working hard because they felt not only connected to the goal of the organization, but also to other people on board which ultimately increased their motivation.

Comments

  1. This post was very arm's length, so I go essentially no feel for what you did in your RSO nor of what your RSO tried to accomplish. I wonder if it is hard for you to give some detail that would explain these things. Without them, the post doesn't have much flavor.

    For example, at the end you said your organization was successful. That is perhaps obvious to you but as a reader who is ignorant of the situation, I'd like to know what the organization did accomplish to make a judgment of that sort. It would also help to understand why there are so many general members. What do they do? It would seem that most of them never get to be a Board member, given the numbers you cited. Is being a general member rewarding too? If so, why?

    In future posts you might ask what a reader who doesn't know about the situation (meaning me) needs to know to make some determination about what you claim. A good way to do this would be to pose some questions. And then try to answer them. Those questions either come out of the prompt or out of the situation that you are trying to describe. You really need to integrate the example to the prompt and in that way provide a richer description of what is going on.

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    Replies
    1. Hello Professor Arvan,

      For some reason I completely left out the part about what our RSO actually did. Maybe it was so obvious to me that I momentarily forgot that the reader didn't realize what I was discussing. Let me elaborate.

      Our RSO hosts events of different magnitudes and categories. We are a cultural RSO and we have 2 large cultural shows a year (300+ attended), we host barn dances, philanthropic fundraisers, and more. The reason we were so successful that year was because we had a greater turn out at every single event than we ever had in past years. We generated a large amount of money both for our organization and our charity that year. Additionally, because we had such great retention at our events, the demand for events increased and we created new events we had never done before such as a barn dance. This was extremely successful and we have done that event this year as well because of our success in the past year. This increase in turn out at the events could be the result of better marketing techniques, more motivated board members, and better quality of events.

      Being a general member allows you to participate in any event you want. Additionally, we have created a family system within our RSO for members. How this works is that two board members are paired off and they are assigned 20 or so general members and form a large family. The general members get to know each other, get to know more about our organization, and overall get to contribute more to the organization.

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  2. I would have like some more context behind your RSO to understand your team organization better. This would have given some more background to the story and I would have been able to imagine your team structure.

    You also mentioned that the structure led to one of your most successful years yet, what measures success in your RSO and what about the year was successful? What are some reasons why the structure was so successful and do you believe the structure or the people on the exec board played a bigger role in the success of the RSO?

    I think it's important that you mentioned how the organization was connected by a common goal and that you all bonded at the beginning of the year. I believe a successful team must be on the same page and have a common mission in mind.

    Let being said, I would like to know how you individually contributed to the success of your RSO. What individual characteristics do you bring to the table that you think are a key aspect of your team?

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