Does Teamwork Really Matter?

Is teamwork really all that important? We preach it and we teach it — to our kids and our staff. We may even drop small fortunes sending our teams on corporate retreats to have them freshen up on it. I’d bet many of you have one of those “there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’” posters hanging up in your offices. But we rarely question the value of these efforts.

Is it even worth it?

The obvious answer is, of course, yes. Teamwork, at its very core, is invaluable and deserves all that we can pour into it. Unfortunately, many of us don’t practice what we preach. Sure, we want our staff to embrace teamwork and collaboration, but what about the business management systems that your teams interact with daily?

Why do we only apply the whole teamwork mindset to people and not our business management systems?

Think about it, don’t you want your Inventory Planning system to operate as a team with your Order Processing, Procurement, and Accounting systems? How about Payroll, Expense Management and Accounting? Wouldn’t it be great if all your systems operated as one lean, disciplined team? Imagine what THAT would do to your business!

With all the time and resources we spend on teaching and preaching teamwork to our teams, shouldn’t we make sure the tools they use do the same?

Imagine driving a car where the physical brakes and the brake lights didn’t operate as a team… you would undoubtedly end up in a wreck! But isn’t that what we’re doing when we ask our team-focused staff to use tools that don’t cooperate with each other? How much time do they spend overcoming that lack of teamwork? How many mistakes slip through?

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by David Williams | www.LinkedIn.com/in/RetailDave | (813) 321-1300