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Thriving Through Teamwork
SPECIAL
FEATURE
Virtually
Trusting
Tips for
Building Trust in Virtual
Teams
Story Power
for Teams
Build
Team Spirit!
The
Inner Workings of Teams
Understanding
the Heart of Teamwork and Inspiring
Results
The Recipe
for Success? Get Funky!
Teams
Are Awesome! — They Really Are
Highlights of
Outstanding Teams
Thriving
Through Teamwork
SPECIAL
FEATURE
This year calls us to
reflect on our work, our lives—well nearly
everything. The deep national pains of September 11,
2001, are mixed with layoffs of colleagues and wondering
what’s next, what do we do differently, what should
stay the same? It is important to remember our strength
comes from being united, working together, striving for a
common goal. These pursuits resonate now more than ever.
Although the landscape has changed—virtual
boundaries, faceless workplaces—the challenges are
the same.
We
are one team holding hands around the world trying to
make every place, from the workplace to home, a better
place.
A Resolution for Our Future:
For the coming the year we vow to work together, embrace
differences, open our eyes to the world around us.
Change. Complain less. Treat everyone with respect.
This
issue of News For a Change is a great reminder
that things are better when we work together. The stories
in this issue offer ways for organizations of all sorts
to thrive through teamwork. They offer tips on building
trust in a geographically dispersed team, staying
connected in an ever-changing environment, and fostering
the heart and soul of teams.
We
hope that you will find encouragement and inspiration in
these stories to keep your team efforts alive…and
thriving.
Words to Work By
“It is not in numbers, but in unity that our great
strength lies.”
Thomas Paine, Common
Sense
“The miracle is not that we do this work, but that
we are happy to do it.”
Mother Teresa
“I never missed a single opportunity to remove
obstacles in the way of unity.”
Mohandas Gandhi
“Never doubt that a small group of committed
citizens can make a difference. Indeed it is the only
thing that ever really has.”
Margaret Mead
“There is no more fatal blunderer than he who
consumes the greater part of his life getting his
living.”
Henry
David Thoreau
“We must all hang together or assuredly we will all
hang separately.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Transport of the mails, transport of the human
voice, transport of flickering pictures—in this
century as in others our highest accomplishments still
have the single aim of bringing men
together.”
Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry
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Virtually
Trusting
Tips for
Building Trust in Virtual Teams
“What do you think he meant by that?”
It’s tough to create trust in cyberspace without
being able to see people’s faces… but it can
be done.
Creating Team Trust Virtually
As a result of global competition and advances in
technology, virtual teams have exploded as a type of work
group—nearly two-thirds of organizations in the
United States utilize virtual teams to execute business
strategies. Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel are
examples of multinational companies that rely on teams,
which interact electronically to run their everyday
business. Within those organizations, company management,
including top executives, are distributed
geographically.
Virtual Teams Defined
“We need to work together as if we were all in the
same room, although we’re not.”
Going Virtual, Grenienr & Meres
Virtual teams—also known as a geographically
dispersed team (GDT)—are a group of individuals who
work together on tasks, maintain healthy relationships to
support the tasks, and are enabled by the use of
technology to transcend barriers they encounter. Virtual
team members have complementary skills, are committed to
a common purpose, have interdependent performance goals,
and share an approach to work for which they hold
themselves mutually accountable.
While
much has been written about virtual teams, there is a
shortage of practical tips and techniques for developing
trust on virtual teams. The remainder of this article
contains best practices for building and maintaining
trust in virtual settings.
Building Trust
“An understanding of people and relationships
requires an understanding of trust. Trust requires the
coexistence of two converging beliefs—competency
and caring. When I believe you are competent and that you
care about me, I will trust you.”
Team Handbook, Peter Scholtes
In
all successful relationships trust is at the foundation.
For teams to be successful they need to build their
relationships carefully and intentionally. Trust is often
the result of members’ working through complex
teaming issues and knowing that each person can be
counted on to complete his or her portion of the
task.
Virtual teams with high levels of trust tend to
share three traits:
- They got to know one another before they focused
on the work.
- Roles were clearly defined for all
members.
- Members consistently displayed enthusiasm,
eagerness, and proactive communication.
Team-level strategies for an atmosphere of trust
include:
- Discuss as a team why trust is
important.
- Maintain focus on problems, not
people.
- Follow through—do what you say you
will.
- Provide substantive feedback to improve the
content of others’ work.
- Stay true to your team. Don’t make
disparaging remarks in public places!
Characteristics of Trust
The following individual characteristics help build
trust:
- Clear communication (expressing thoughts clearly,
orally and in writing).
- Honesty (telling the truth).
- Vulnerability (willingness to share strengths and
weaknesses).
- Self-disclosure (sharing personal information,
thoughts, and beliefs).
- Valuing others (respecting team members whether
they are different or alike).
- Sense of humor (keeping a healthy perspective even
when stressed).
- Awareness (being attuned to others’ needs,
perceptions, and reactions).
- Involving others (drawing out others, asking for
ideas, input, and feedback).
- Accepting others (valuing differences and unique
characteristics).
- Loyalty (commitment to team goals and team
members).
Clear, Concise Communication
Virtual team members must learn to excel as active
communicators. Their survival depends on their ability to
exchange information despite the challenges of time and
place.
Virtual teams must pay close attention to how the
team communicates. Members must be clear, conscious, and
explicit in their communication. Whether they are
speaking on the phone, using voice-to-voice or voice
mail, sending a fax, writing an e-mail, or asking a
question in person, their communication must be
responsive, clear, and complete.
Meeting Preparation
Teams that don’t have the benefit of regular daily
interactions require more meeting management and explicit
focusing than traditional teams. The team leader should
hold mandatory team conference calls (weekly or monthly).
If people are located in different time zones, vary
meeting times to minimize each member’s level of
inconvenience.
Once
the meeting has been scheduled, send the agenda with the
time, place, call-in number, meeting ID, and other
materials ahead of time. Don’t consider holding a
meeting without an agenda that includes start and stop
time frames for each topic.
Leading Meetings
Use regular (weekly, bimonthly, or monthly) conference
call meetings to share progress, provide updates, review
priorities, challenges, or opportunities, and to motivate
team members and maintain team identity.
During the first team meeting, have the team develop
a set of ground rules or group norms. Once developed, the
rules serve as a barometer for the team to assess the
group process and provide feedback on meetings.
Keep
the meetings focused and on topic, using a facilitator,
timekeeper, or both. To keep topics from drifting; rotate
responsibility for the roles so that all members have an
opportunity to increase their skills in meeting
management. Leave time at the end of the meeting for
feedback about the meeting and to solicit input for
agenda items for the next meeting.
Remain conscious of the communication medium,
replacing unavailable facial expressions with clear
statements (e.g., “That remark makes me
smile.”). Schedule time during each call for a
check-in, an informal process where each member takes a
few moments to update the team on how things are going.
Check-ins are a way to build the team and get to know one
another on a personal level.
Identify yourself when speaking if more than two
people are on the call and there is any uncertainty about
voices. Remember time zone differences when referring to
times, especially when scheduling a meeting. Be specific,
indicate that the next meeting will be at 9:00 a.m., and
include whether that is EST, MST, PST, etc.
Follow Through
Virtual team members must be persistent in obtaining
information they need. They need to make clear requests
of one another. For example, “Please respond to
this message by sending an urgent voice mail no later
than Friday noon, MST.” instead of “Please
get back to me as soon as possible.” There may also
be the need to make repeated requests to people who are
not responding and to send multi-channel messages, both
e-mail and voice mail, to cover all bases. It is unwise
to assume that others check their voice mail or e-mail as
frequently as you.
NANCY ASHWORTH designs processes for
clients to help executives, management, and their staff
deal with major organizational and cultural
changes.
Nancy Ashworth and her teammate Miriam Ritvo will be
presenting a half-day workshop on “Building Team
Trust Virtually” on Sunday, March 10, at
AQP’s Annual Spring Conference in Las
Vegas.
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Story
Power for Teams
Storytelling is an effective communication tool that
has garnered attention and gained credibility in the
business world during the past 10 years, particularly
among some of the country’s most successful,
well-established companies. Fast Company magazine
has featured the power of story as a business management
practice a number of times. For one article, Fast
Company interviewed executives at Nike, an
organization that operates on the belief that “the
best way for a company to create a prosperous future is
to make sure all of its employees understand the
company’s past.” That’s why, according
to the magazine, many veteran executives at Nike are
passionate about telling corporate campfire stories.
“The Nike Story? Just Tell It!” is available
online by visiting
www.fastcompany.com/online/31/nike.html and launching a
search for “Nike.”
Stories are effective as a business communication
tool because they captivate people by reaching both their
heads and their hearts. If you want someone to
remember what you’re saying, make your point with a
story. The Walt Disney Company is one stellar example of
an organization that understands the power of story. In
The Disney Way, authors Bill Capodagli and Lynn
Jackson explain that Disney not only operates a business
with the purpose of telling great stories but also
runs the business with storyboarding. And, as
Brian Ferren, planner, futurist, and executive vice
president of creative technology and research for Walt
Disney Imagineering, points out, “I’ve never
seen a great military, political, or corporate leader who
was not a great storyteller. Telling stories is a core
competency in business, although it’s one that we
don’t pay enough attention to.”
A
number of other well-known companies, such as FedEx, 3M,
and The Container Store, also deliberately use stories to
achieve their goals. Stories are effective in helping
companies to:
- Clarify and perpetuate corporate
values.
- Communicate vision.
- Build understanding, agreement, and community
(shared meaning) with employees and associates as well
as customers.
- Win the hearts and minds of all their target
audiences.
- Share knowledge and successes.
- Engender pride in the organization/team’s
identity and accomplishments.
- Generate memorable messages.
Stories are equally effective tools for teams as
they go through predictable stages of development; they
can help to move the process along. These five stages of
team development could just as easily apply to the phases
of a story’s development.
- Forming. At this stage the team members
gather to get acquainted, identify the skills and
strengths that each brings to the project, and usually
to identify the team’s leadership. Comparable to
the introduction of a story, forming is enhanced
by sharing personal and/or career development stories
to inform the other “characters” of
relevant experiences and to establish personal
connections. This sharing enables team members to
establish bonds and begin creating a cohesive, mutually
supportive team.
- Storming. After the group is formed, the
team members begin to express differences as they work
on establishing goals, assigning roles, and agreeing on
priorities. Achieving consensus can be facilitated by
telling success stories to illustrate how each
person’s contribution and unique perspective will
help the team achieve its goals. Storytelling also may
be used to convey the importance of hearing all
perspectives before making decisions. During
storming the plot begins to emerge.
- Norming. When roles are agreed upon, the
group moves forward with a common purpose to define
rules that will enable members to fulfill their roles
and meet their goals. At this stage, the group may
begin to select objects or stories to include in its
“sacred bundle” or its history as a team
that comprises agreed upon values and priorities. The
plot thickens as the team story begins to
develop!
- Performing. As the work project that
brought the team together is initiated, each member
contributes the talents, knowledge, and skills that she
or he originally brought to the project. Now the
members share success stories and congratulate one
another as tasks are accomplished and progress is made
toward the ultimate goals. A true team spirit emerges
and fuels the team’s rededication to its shared
purpose.
- Adjourning. When the work of the team is
completed, it may be appropriate for the team to
disband, bringing the team story to an end. Other
common reasons for adjournment are members deciding the
project is not feasible, or key members resigning. At
this stage, members return to their regular jobs where
they may recount stories in celebration of their
successes and also may continually retell war stories
about how the team overcame obstacles. These stories
shared around the corporate campfire ensure that the
saga of the team lives on.
As in
many processes, team development does not necessarily
proceed in a linear fashion from one step to the next. A
team in the performing phase may need to return to the
storming stage when new members arrive or when
disagreements arise. Shared values may be revisited. The
team can once again share stories that facilitate the
team development process and reinforce the values, roles,
and rules the members agreed upon. Stories shared with
others in the organization serve to reinforce corporate
values and help to create a sacred bundle of connections
across departmental and office boundaries.
As
Nike has demonstrated from its beginning, it’s
important for all the individuals in the organization to
know the corporate history before they can share an
appreciation for the present and work toward common
goals. The end of a team’s project is not truly an
ending. It is one step in the process as an entire
organization moves into the future together.
A Team Story Comes Into Focus
The account services team at the Seattle office of a
worldwide advertising firm was frustrated and
discouraged in its role as facilitator/interpreter
between clients’ objectives and the actual
products of the agency’s creative services
department. The creative output often was very
imaginative, but missed the mark in communicating the
client’s key message. The pressures of regularly
being caught in the middle resulted in a turnover rate
on the account services team of nearly 50%. The influx
of new members required the team to quickly focus on
the forming, storming, and norming stages
of development to avoid diverting any more energy from
their primary work: delivering high quality, on-target
ads for their clients.
During a storytelling session at a team retreat, the
group was able to identify their shared values and
reach consensus on the team mission or story. By
clearly articulating who they were as a
team—identifying their strengths and unique
contributions, as well as the benefits of their
contributions to the organization—the team
members experienced a complete shift in perspective and
attitude. Armed with their newly shared understanding,
a cogent team story, and strong consensus, the account
services representatives were able to focus on their
unique collective ability to make a significant
contribution to the agency. The energy created by the
story process enabled the team to achieve a high level
of productivity for the balance of their retreat and to
return to the workplace with renewed enthusiasm for
their role in the agency.
EVELYN CLARK is a facilitator, trainer,
and keynote speaker who helps organizations reignite
their spark. For more information, visit her Web site at:
http://www.corpstory.com/
PAULA BARTHOLOME combines internal communication and
organization development to help individuals and
organizations establish and accomplish goals.
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 Build Team
Spirit!
Spirited,
high-performing teams experience a different reality. An
hour may seem like a second, a year like a day.
Extraordinary service is generated easily and
effortlessly.
Through my experience facilitating and consulting
with spirited, high-performing teams in for-profit and
not-for-profit organizations, I have discerned a powerful
realm or domain in which these teams operate, leading to
extraordinary performance. I call it the gap and I think
it is critical that leaders be aware of its
presence.
What
is the gap, this place where teams find their spirit and
source of energy for extraordinary service? Individuals
have a place inside where the extraordinary occurs every
day; similarly, teams have a place where the
extraordinary is within their grasp.
The
gap exists in the space between individual and team. Team
members refer to their experience in the gap as
exhilarating, unbounded, inspired, unlimited,
extraordinary, incredible, uncommon, enlivening, and
inspiring.
The
gap is foreign territory to rugged individualists
(Rosabeth Moss Kanter calls them cowboy managers) or to
those who are wholly dependent on the group for their
identity. The gap evokes an entirely different
possibility: interdependence. When working
interdependently, team members fuse or merge their
energies, while honoring and drawing from the strength of
individuals.
The
jazz combo is a perfect metaphor for the realm of
interdependence, where talented individual virtuosi blend
and create new tonal and harmonic variations in
synchronization and interplay with other members of the
combo.
The
gap has several natures that collectively enable a team
to achieve spirited, high performance:
1. As a zone or state.
2. As a Zen koan.
3. As vulnerability.
4. As a gestalt of inner and outer work.
- The experience of the gap is not unlike that
powerful place or zone described by great skiers as
controlled-out-of-controlness where skiers are at their
zenith. It is a zone where we simultaneously surrender to
the team while tapping into our source of personal
power.
- Like a Zen koan (e.g., What is the sound of one hand
clapping?), the gap is paradoxical. It is a space, but it
is not the space of the individual and it is not the
space of the collective. It is a separate, third
consideration that encompasses the psychic energy of the
individual and the collective. It is useful for the team
to be aware of this third and distinct dimension of
reality.
- David Stendahl-Rasst suggests that spirituality is
ultimately about achieving belonging and a deep
connection. Accordingly, the gap is a place of
vulnerability and risk where the individual shares his or
her story and opens to the stories of fellow team
members. This aspect of vulnerability in the gap is
critical to fostering trusting relationships and
belonging.
- The gap is the place where inner work and mindful,
conscious awareness, at both the level of the team and
the individual, converge with action in the world. The
dialectic between confident inner knowing, at the level
of the person and team, and powerful action in the world
is yet another key to high performance and extraordinary
service.
Team
spirit is a team development process that supports teams
in exploring and accessing the gap. Leaders working with
teams to access the gap produce more, experience greater
satisfaction, demonstrate extraordinary service, feel
more alive and emotionally connected, and experience a
quality of energy, enthusiasm, and creativity not typical
of conventional teams.
BARRY HEERMANN can be reached via e-mail at
Tspirit123@aol.com. He is the author of Building Team
Spirit: Activities for Inspiring and Energizing Teams
(McGraw-Hill, 1997) as well as other books related to
adult and
experiential learning themes. His Team Spirit
Train-the-Trainer course is now offered through ASQ in
cooperation with Plexus Corporation.
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The
Inner Workings of Teams
Understanding the Heart of Teamwork
and Inspiring Results
In
some form, everyone has worked within a team at one point
in his or her life. Whether or not the team was
business-, school-, or sport-based, the basic
understanding of team dynamics found a home in the soul
of the individual. Now, with everyone having at least
elementary experience in teamwork, why has the study and
implementation of teams been such an ongoing and
sometimes frustrating task in business over the past
decades? Well, some of the frustration can be attributed
to personal denial within people who cannot understand
how or why teams work so well. Another large factor
continuing to keep teams somewhat mysterious is level of
experience. Although we’ve been on Little League
teams, middle school student councils, and committee
after committee in the workplace, our levels of
understanding and love of teams varies widely. What is
the answer? One solution—find people who care and
inspire the soul.
One
such caring person is Ray Emery. As senior strategic
management consultant for Scitor Corp. in Manassas, Va.,
Emery has dealt with a plethora of teams and team issues.
Yet, he continues to come back for more.
“Teams give individuals from all levels of an
organization a chance to make a difference in the work
they do—a chance to be valued and trusted,”
Emery says. “I think the benefits of involving
people and the resulting feelings of trust and value to
the organization are still very underrated by senior
leaders.” And therein lies the denial dilemma. With
top leadership so ensconced with cost and value
questions—especially in our current world—how
can one sell teams?
“I think that no matter where teams and
team-based performance systems are headed, advocates of
these approaches must demonstrate a balanced focus
between the interpersonal benefits of teams and the
bottom-line business results,” Emery states.
“I think the more accurate the total cost benefit
analysis of teams and team-based performance systems is,
the more we can expect to see organizations commit to
them.”
Most
of this knowledge was borne out of Emery’s work in
the late ’80s when he worked with the U.S. Air
Force. As part of the Air Force process improvement team,
he focused quite a bit of attention on a TQM-like
philosophy and was involved with improving aircraft
maintenance procedures and overall aircraft system
performance. This was also when he began to formulate his
own team philosophies. By opening up his soul and
reevaluating old experiences, Emery realized what he
thinks are the number one factors in team success.
“A clear charter or purpose,” he says,
“coupled with well-defined operating boundaries
including resources and decision authority and naturally
the support to fulfill the charter/purpose.”
Emery’s career has now developed to the point
where he judges team performance for outside
competitions, including AQP’s National Team
Excellence Award Competition. After years of first-hand
experience on successful and struggling teams, he knows
characteristics that breed quality results and those that
hold performance back.
“I focus most on identifying a causal
relationship between the team’s activities and the
end results,” Emery says. “By determining if
the team’s analysis creates a clear link between
their activities and the results, I can surmise their
level of success.” Emery also stressed his interest
in the methods and processes the teams use to benefit
from the collective knowledge and skills of their
members.
What
does all of this mean for people trudging through
meetings with non-performing teams or those struggling to
convey team value to skeptics higher on the
organizational chart? It means to continue to keep the
faith. There are believers out there ready to lend
support and expertise. It just takes some looking to find
them. The truth is that teamwork works—simply
put—and the naysayers are going to learn the hard
way as time advances business to new levels. Emery
agrees.
“I am most excited about the teaming
relationships that will be created as organizations
continue to outsource non-core competencies,” Emery
says. “As the value chain for a particular product
or service is spread across several organizations, the
advantage created by effective teams at each of the
interim customer-supplier handoffs can truly give the
larger organizational teams a competitive
advantage.”
And
with all of the actions going on in the world today
directly affecting U.S. business, who can argue with a
competitive advantage? The answers are in each soul.
Individuals like Ray Emery have captured the essence and
put it to use. As we search within ourselves and work
together with co-workers to piece the fabrics of teamwork
together for use in our businesses, we can better
understand what Ray Emery stands for—and we can
finally understand the value of teamwork.
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 The Recipe for Success? Get
Funky!
So you have
focused the firm, leveraged your competencies in all
imaginable directions, and created an innovative
organization that is the antithesis of a boring
bureaucracy. But, is this the recipe for future success?
Short answer: no!
Aided
by international consultants spreading similar solutions,
we bet that your competitors are also refocusing and
realigning. Inhabited by the same cadre of globally
standardized MBAs, it would not surprise us if your
competitors are also renewing and reengineering. Everyone
is renewing, refocusing, realigning, and reengineering.
So much so, they have become necessary but not sufficient
for securing success. There has to be a better way, a
more original route.
There
is. Look at the Finnish company Nokia that has come from
almost nowhere to become the number one maker of mobile
phones in the world. Does Nokia have access to some
technology that Motorola or any of the other companies
cannot get? Has it come across some management book that
is yet to be translated from Finnish? Or, could it be
that Helsinki is located closer to God and the future? Of
course not, any of Nokia’s competitors could seek
competitive advantage through location, technological
innovation, or organization. Nokia and other funky firms
succeed because they realize they need to exploit the
last taboo. They need to compete on feelings and fantasy.
Welcome to e(motional) commerce. Economies of scale and
skill still matter, but the new game is one of economies
of soul. We must use our imagination to attract the
emotional customer and colleague—not the rational
one.
Or as
Alberto Alessi, founder of the company with the same name
once put it, “People have an enormous need for art
and poetry that industry does not yet understand.”
He can charge some $80 for a toilet brush, so the guy
must be doing something right. Poetry and profits need
not be mutually exclusive.
Economies of soul are not a question of superior
price or performance. Again, this is necessary but not
sufficient. Ethics and aesthetics have little to do with
logic, but everything to do with affection, intuition,
and desire. Traditional competitive strategies will get
you nowhere. Momentarily you may be one step ahead, but
the others will soon catch up. The answer lies in
developing a sensational strategy, embracing our
emotions, and capturing our attention. Don’t try to
run faster—play a different game.
KJELL
A. NORDSTROM and JONAS RIDDERSTRALE are co-authors of
Funky Business.
To learn more about the authors and their book, visit
their Web site at www.funkybusiness.com
.
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Teams Are Awesome! — They
Really Are
Highlights of Outstanding
Teams
If
you have been with any group of
“twenty-somethings,” you may hear the word
“Awesome!” as often as we used to hear
“Like, you know…” a few years ago. So,
your ears and eyes may be a bit jaded to the word but
none other comes to mind to describe the power, energy,
and innovation that come out of teams working together to
improve their work, their work environment, and, as often
as not, themselves. They truly inspire awe. Each team
that enters AQP’s Team Excellence Competition is a
winner in our judgment. So, want to learn a bit more
about teams? Here are four teams selected at random from
those that have entered the competition. We don’t
know if any or all of these teams will make it through
the preliminary competition and compete in Las Vegas for
the top team awards, but we do know that they have
already won much for themselves individually, as a group,
and for their company. That’s more than we meant to
say but…. Here, read about some awesome
teams—and when you’re done, pass them on to
someone else and “Make their day!”
 Honda of America Mfg.,
Inc.
The Team: The Eliminators
Team members:
David Chapman
Jan Wigal
Terry Sowder
Tony Gibson
Jenny Purtee
Matt Smith
Gary Reeder
Team facilitator: Dawn Burris
The
Team Project: The Eliminators attacked the issue of
“excessive waste” in the Assembly Department
at the Honda East Liberty Auto Plant. Through data
collection and trash sorting, door bolts were identified
as the main cause of the excessive waste in the area.
Through associate feedback it was discovered that new
line-side recycling containers would improve C.O.P.
(Clean up, Organize, and Pick up). The total savings was
over $78,000.
NFC asked: While you have worked with this
team, is there something special, new, or unexpected that
you learned, or relearned, about teamwork?
The Eliminators responded: “Everyone
has a valuable opinion and something important to
contribute. In order for a team to work each individual
needs to be utilized and every opinion counts. Alone we
may fail but a team can prevail.”
NFC asked: What about problem
solving—anything new, or relearned there?
The Eliminators responded: “Everyone
working together with support can solve any problem at
hand, no matter how complex. Every individual idea or
concept should be analyzed and considered as a
team.”
NFC asked: What did you learn or relearn
about yourself?
The Eliminators responded: “Everyone on
a team is like a piece to a puzzle. All the minds must
interlock to complete the image. Look at the whole
picture. Don’t make decisions without all the
information and input from the team.”
 Output Technology Solutions
The Team: Production Associate Retention Team
(PART)
Team members:
Barbara Bemis
CeCe Briones
Dee Canady
Letti David
Robynn Davis
Gary Funkhouser
Larry Gunderson
Anna Lara
Lori Pearson
Manager Business Unit:
Jay Meacham
The
Team Project: The team was formed at Output Technology
Solutions’ Kansas City facility to discover root
causes of production associate personnel turnover. We
were asked to develop solutions to retain current
associates and attract new associates. The team’s
solutions/strategies resulted in an 11% reduction in
personnel turnover for an estimated cost savings of
$203,000.
NFC asked: While you have worked with this
team, is there something special, new, or unexpected that
you learned, or relearned, about teamwork?
PART members responded: “I have learned
that teamwork within DST Output involves learning new
skills, connecting with others including customers,
respecting different views, and a willingness to work
together to accomplish company goals.” Anna Lara,
Hold Area Monitor. “As a long-term DST Output
associate, I am proud to be a part of a team within a
growing company that has a well-established history of
high performance teams such as the Production Associate
Retention Team.”-Dee Canady, Quality Assurance
Analyst.
 DENSO Manufacturing Tennessee,
Inc.
The Team: Center Stage
Team members:
Sharon Compton
Rhonda Crosby
Keith Wright
Keith Burnett
Bill Beason
Pat Miller
Don Yarber
Team facilitator: Sandy Bonar
The
Team Project: Center Stage, a kaizen circle, used the
PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) cycle combined with other
quality tools to examine downtime at their Burn-in
Station. Through their teamwork and problem solving, they
eliminated 200.25 hours downtime and improved their
parts/month capacity by 801 units. Their solution
eliminated a need for ongoing overtime to meet production
requirements. The cost savings to the company is
$58,363.
NFC asked: While you have worked with this
team, is there something special, new, or unexpected that
you learned, or relearned, about teamwork?
Center Stage responded: “Each member
contributed their own ideas and opinions to this activity
and relearned that people with differences can work
together to achieve a common goal. For us this meant that
we had to find a compromise ground, that we could accept
and then pull back together as one.”
NFC asked: What about problem
solving—anything new, or relearned there?
Center Stage responded: “Our members
discovered that it required both listening and debating
skills along with the willingness to dig deeper to
eliminate the root cause.”
NFC asked: What did you learn or relearn
about yourself?
Center Stage responded: “One member
reflected that they learned how to use their increased
confidence level to reflect a motivated/enthusiastic
attitude to encourage others in their activity. This led
to other personal achievements.”
 Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of
New Jersey
The Team: Horizon Code Blue Crew
Team members:
Jim Albano
Deborah Blair-Crawford
Nicole Batton
Sandy Bellomo
Debbie Bestreski
Mary Hollywood
Amy Jankowski
Candi Santa Cruz
Krista Scott
Krisha White
Team facilitator: Cindy Lukenda
The
Team Project: Horizon Code Blue Crew was formed to create
ways to reduce administrative cost and to win the re-bid
of a state contract. The team exceeded its goal to reduce
administrative cost by 5% for a cost savings of $1
million and won the re-bid of the state contract for six
years. The team was also successful in increasing service
staff productivity and quality results to avoid $5
million in performance penalties, and reducing training
time by 57% for a cost savings of $251,508.00.
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January 2002 News for a
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