Company News
What is ‘Teaming’ and How Will it Influence Businesses in 2023
In 2018, business school professor Amy Edmondson delivered a TED talk called ‘How to turn a group of strangers into a team’. Edmondson introduced the audience to the concept of teaming, which she believes is essential to organisational learning.
Teaming isn’t an entirely new phenomenon, but as we look to the new year and welcome in 2023, it’s one that could influence the way you shape your entire organisation. As astute leaders continue to monitor an ever-changing economic environment, teaming may hold the key to building responsive, adaptable and future-ready teams that are oriented towards success. Be prepared for an unknown, change-filled future.
What is teaming?
Edmondson’s TED talk expands upon her book Teaming: How Organisations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy. In this book, she writes:
‘In today’s complex and volatile business environment, corporations and organisations also win or lose by creating wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts. Intense competition, rampant unpredictability, and a constant need for innovation are giving rise to an even greater interdependence and thus demand even greater levels of collaboration and communication than ever before. Teaming is essential to an organisation’s ability to respond to opportunities and to improve internal processes.’
Edmondson goes on to detail that teaming is a verb – a dynamic activity, rather than a bounded, static entity. In Edmondson’s analysis, our overall understanding of a team is generally as a noun – an established, fixed group of people cooperating in pursuit of a common goal. This can fall short of organisational needs, however, when teams may disband almost as quickly as they were assembled in the first place, for example, temporary project teams, shift teams, or management groups.
From teams to teaming
The solution? To move from building teams to teaming: ‘teaming is teamwork on the fly. It involves coordinating and collaborating without the benefit of stable team structures… fast moving work environments need people who know how to team, people who have the skills and the flexibility to act in moments of collaboration when and where they appear.’
Teaming picks up on continuing trends of decentralisation, with collaborative dynamics structured less around rigidity, and more around responding to the evolving needs of both the organisations and the humans within it.
Remote work changes have continued to shift traditional collaboration styles, creating a moment of opportunity for the adaptive principles of teaming to further enable strengthened, robust team frameworks.
Teaming in 2023
Any organisational shift that moves from a static to a dynamic framework will be of benefit to teams in 2023, with continued global ripple effects impacting a vast array of industries and their corresponding growth potentials.
As Edmonson states, ‘by now, everyone knows that organisations need to learn how to thrive in a world of continuous change. But how organisations learn is not as well understood… This book offers a practical answer to the question of whether organisational change really happens: through teaming.’
When products and services are provided by interdependent people and processes, crucial learning can take place within focused units of action, creating opportunities for growth, iteration and evolution even within a large organisation framework.
Practising teaming
Red Leaf’s Surfing Virtual Adventure is the perfect introduction to teaming as a verb. Bring your team into an environment where individuals must work together and in parallel to succeed. Join expert Big Wave specialist Mark Mathews and learn what it takes to pull together a group of technical specialists to make the most of the limited window to create content that promotes some of the world’s largest extreme adventure brands. Client focus at its best!
Let this epic virtual adventure take your team into 2023, positioned for success. Sign up for Red Leaf’s FREE webinar for even more tips on making holistic business decisions this year – prepare for a 45-minute session that will motivate, inspire and transform.
