Team Work Pros and Cons

Today, I will talk team. Team is crucial because many tasks are difficult for working individual. In the classes, we have group project, in the students associations, profit nonprofit organization. They all need teams. Basically, A team is a small group of people with complementary skills who work together to accomplish shares goal. Working in a team can increase productivity and improve problem solving. However, team members work together, sometime might not get a better result. There has a good quote from our text book “sometimes teams can be more pain than gain. So today I will use 2 examples to talk about teams make a good result and negative result. And how manage create a good team. First, I will give whole foods as an example of good teams.

Whole Foods Market, Inc. is an American foods supermarket chain specializing in natural and organic foods. Whole Foods Market has been included in Fortune magazine's annual list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For" every year since the list's inception in 1998, most recent at No. 44. Whole Foods Market is organized by teams, including grocery, produce, bakery prepared foods and wine. The firm’s Website states one of the company’s core values is “We Support Team Member Happiness and Excellence”. It creates an empowering work environment where motivated team members can flourish and succeed to their highest potential. They believe their success is dependent upon the collective energy and intelligence of all of their team members. All teams are self-managed team and they are responsible for achieving a team’s goal. Frequently, they are an opportunity for team members to give discussions, solve problems, share information. They are central to how stores operate and improve the company's values. Each store meets monthly as a team as well. They have right to share their point of view that increase high-performance among members of Whole Foods teams. Co-CEO Walter Robb believes that “employees are everything”. He believes that team member’s happiness and intelligent play an important role in attracting customers, so Happy Team Members is equal to happy customers. it's a win-win philosophy. I search whole foods teams in Youtube. There are a lot of interviews of whole food teams. One of member in Los Alto store said” Whole foods is different because they treat their team members, their employees so much different so much better, your team members your coworkers make your job. I think whole foods teams are so successful because they are really care about their team members and give a lot of opportunities to their team members and leaders.

          While whole food Market shows a good example of good teamwork, some company’s teams experienced underperform in their team projects. A team can sometimes take longer to produce a desired result. Whenever a group of people is assembled to achieve a goal, at least some conflict is likely to occur. Some employees desire to be liked, or they fear of losing a job, so they confirm their leader’s decision and give up their ideas. Here I wanna give you an example. One of my professor, he gave his own experience when he was working for a computer company. My professor and his coworker suggested they should give their computers a design make-over. Make them look more up-to-date. Market research result showed that new customers said they would be more interested in buying their computers if they looked cooler. Their technology was advanced but the outside design looked really old-fashioned. At first, more than half group members supported this idea, but a few senior managers didn’t support the design change because they focused on technology, changing the design is an unnecessary cost. Almost immediately, some of their supporters changed their minds. Even my coworker changed his mind because he didn’t want to make a band impression on the managers that he might lose his chances of getting a promotion by not looking like a team-player. They finally decided to keep same design. My professor said at that time, their competitor came out with a new design that attracted some of their customers and lost their potential customers.