Lean in the Classroom

So, Just What Is A Team?

A team is a group of people who come together to achieve a purpose. There is no magic formula for "building a team," but it can be very tricky unless you understand the dynamics that run deep behind the scenes.  Teams are organic - they grow and change - but we can study how teams work and this affords us a greater capability in helping team members learn how to work together more effectively. In Teaming with Success, we study the essence of team structure, the hierarchy of needs of the individuals within a team, and how to break down the barriers to good communication between members and how to go beyond the spoken word to incorporate the speed of light visual communication that makes a team become highly successful.

The goal is to get everyone on a team thinking the same when it comes to continuous improvements and Lean initiatives, but that is easier said than done.  People come to a team carrying the baggage of their life experiences up to that point in time.  Some are new just out of school with no job experience; some have had a range of part time jobs from wrangling French fries at a fast food joint to cutting grass for a lawn service.  Others will have had sport team experience and still others will have had years of experience in doing the same job in a company using the "tried and true" process flow of the last one hundred years and are stuck in “that’s the way we have always done it.” Workforce diversity can present many interesting challenges for newly hired supervisors and managers to truly bring a group together into a well focused team.