Improve IT Team Effectiveness
Four key factors to ensure IT teams are successful.
Contributors
- Andrea Price, Senior VP of Operations, Eckes & Associates Inc.
- Carolynne Wintrip, President & Founder, Luminus Learning Inc.
- Dr. Eduardo Salas, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology, Rice University
- George Eckes, Owner, Eckes & Associates Inc.
- Joseph Eckes, Associate, Eckes & Associates Inc.
- Kristeen Bullwinkle, Online Marketing Consultant, Kristeenbullwinkle.com
- Nancy Gore, VP Talent & Leadership Development, Lee Hecht Knightsbridge
- Professor Sattar Bawany, Chief Executive Officer, CEE Global
- Organizations rely on team-based work arrangements to provide organizational benefits and to help them better navigate the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) operating environment. However, teams often fail to reach their full potential because teamwork presents unique challenges and complexities they are ill-equipped to tackle on their own.
- A wide variety of behaviors, processes, and cultural factors impact team effectiveness; addressing this can be intimidating because there is no single formula for highly effective teams.
- Teams are ultimately accountable for their performance, but many teams struggle to address challenges. These teams lack the knowledge, skills, behaviors, and/or processes required to improve themselves; they need outside help to course-correct.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Info-Tech’s IDEA model uses four factors to assess team effectiveness: identity, decision making, exchanges within the team, and atmosphere of team psychological safety.
- Teams should not be left to work out their problems on their own. Although they are ultimately accountable for their performance, teams struggle to course-correct without outside help.
Impact and Result
- Use Info-Tech’s IDEA model of team effectiveness to identify team strengths and challenges, and select focus areas for improvement.
- Facilitate a team meeting and team activities to address challenges and create an improvement plan.
- Plan to ingrain and sustain team effectiveness habits.
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why and how you should equip managers to improve team effectiveness, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.
1. Assess team effectiveness
Prepare to assess team effectiveness and administer the team effectiveness assessments.
2. Analyze assessment results and prepare for the team meeting
Analyze the team effectiveness results and prepare to share and interpret the results with the team.
3. Review progress with the team and help them plan for continuous improvement
Reassess team effectiveness and identify progress, and communicate successes to the team and the rest of the organization.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is a six call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Assess team effectiveness
Call #1 - Prepare to assess your team(s).
Call #2 - Prepare to use the assessment tools.
Guided Implementation #2 - Analyze assessment results and prepare for team meeting
Call #1 - Review your assessment results.
Call #2 - Review your assessment results and plan next steps.
Guided Implementation #3 - Review progress and plan for continuous improvement
Call #1 - Review your re-assessment results.
Call #2 - Share the results with your organization.
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
First Ontario Credit Union Ltd.
Guided Implementation
9/10
$20,500
5
Zodiac Pool Systems LLC
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
2
