Business Zen: Teamwork enables you to achieve your goals

Before moving to Wanganui, I was a senior manager with Deloitte in Auckland. Our team specialised in strategic planning, business process effectiveness, control assurance and risk management and was quite cosmopolitan - a mix of many different backgrounds and nationalities.
Bar none, the two best staff that I managed and trained in that time were Canadians, Barry from Toronto and David from Vancouver - both were on secondment to New Zealand. We often undertook multiple complex assignments with high pressure deadlines and over a period of two years both Barry and David exceeded expectations every time. So much so that they were regularly asked back to undertake future assignments by some of the biggest companies in the land.
While working in Auckland last week I caught up with Barry, who is now a director in a national business servicing the construction industry. It's no surprise to me that he is successful in what he does, even though he started with a "blank slate" three years ago when he took on a management role. As we reminisced about the Deloitte days and discussed how both our new ventures are progressing we both commented about the strength of teamwork and the qualities that your staff bring to day to day challenges.
Having recently re-read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I am reminded of the key quality which set Barry and David apart from their peers and also made our team highly effective. Collaboration.
Both of them understood and could articulate the goals of our team and translated that into the way that they worked. More importantly, they understood the goals of our clients both strategically and as they applied to the particular project which we were appointed to perform. As a result, nothing got in the way of us achieving our goals as a team, because we all worked for the team and were not distracted from what we were there to do. Sure, we all had personal goals but they contributed to, rather than drawing us away from our team objectives.
It will come as no surprise that the three-year period of working with them was highly productive, successful and rewarding for us all. Both David and Barry have gone on to other organisations where they are adding value and they became the template for what I look for in people.
We organise ourselves in teams because we can achieve more collectively than we can individually. However, if the team members are working co-operatively and collaboratively the results of our efforts can be exponentially more effective.
As with everything in this world there is another side of the coin, and when you have a teammate or employee pulling in a different direction or just not buying into the vision it can undermine what you and your team are trying to achieve.
When you consider this, it places great importance on your recruitment processes and also how you retain your best staff and how you upskill and involve the staff that you have. If you are putting together your 2011 strategic plan, why not invest some time thinking about this? A collaborative team will enable you to better achieve your goals.
Zenith Solutions is a Wanganui-based management consulting practice. It specialises in providing strategic planning, business process improvement and financial management services. Contact russell@zenith-solutions.co.nz or phone 021-244-2421.