We use the word team as if it is a one size fits all descriptor for a group of people who just happen to work together. I suppose it is a somewhat stimulating or even motivating title, but with true teams the focus of accomplishment becomes one of successful task achievement while balancing its people and processes, but make no mistake it has mutual accountability to the successfulness of the task.

High performance is a discipline. A collective discipline that is the sum of its parts. Interdependently there are individual roles and functions, but collectively a product is born. Let's define a team shall we? Now, depending on what book we read last there will be varying definitions of a team, but they all have the same components.

A team is a group of people (more than one) with diverse talents whose members struggle for shared ambitions (a common goal) with measurable performance and joint accountability.

* Diverse Talents

Albert Einstein hit the nail on the head. You see for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In a team that means for everything we are good at, we are really not good at something else. It's relative. Teams and high performance are indivisible. Perhaps that is what Jim Collins meant by "who first, then what”.

* Shared Ambitions

Team member contributions are made it is with a sense of purpose. These diverse talents are tied to performance and performance is tied to the goal. It is through the inspiration of a shared vision that team members become aligned to this common goal.

* Measurable Performance

Converting directives into specific measurable performance plans will jump-start the team to its sense of purpose.

Some groups develop performance development plans that include nebulous actions items. If teams do not address, not just what, but how, who and when, then its easy to go back to business as usual and have goals fade into the sunset.

* Joint accountability

There is no "Us and them” only we. Commitment is the cornerstone to both individual and team accountable. Joint accountability means when there is success I need to look around me at all the people that made it happen and when there are setbacks and failures I need to look at myself equ

Work Groups

* Leader

* Broad sense of purpose-organizational mission

* Individual accountability

* Individual products

* Measurable by impact

* Bobble head meetings

* Delegation

* Inattention to results

* Dependent Teams

* Leadership

* Detailed team purpose

* Joint accountability

* Product is accumulative-the sum of its parts

* Measurable by assessing the accumulative product

* Open conflict and problem solving

* Joint ownership

* Commitment to results

* Interdependent

A Rose by any other name…but does it smell as sweet? We can use the word team as loosely as we want to describe clusters of people, but they are not the same thing. Being called a team does not guarantee teamwork.

A group's performance is based on individual achievement. A team's performance is based on individual achievement and cooperative achievement. So, at the end of the day we can call them the same, but the fragrance is definitely different.

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