Many people think & have such approach that building an ideal team is the biggest challenge. It is an initial challenge to build an ideal team, the REAL challenge is to sustain that team, empowerment, building strong relationship & coordination, communication, conflict management, liberty to express, experimentation, freedom of thought, equality and above all keeping all the bricks balanced. 

All these above words are not only words, there are BIG concepts behind it. Priorities may change by time but all these are high priority tactics to run the show. This was one of ethical value of my ex-organization, T.E.A.M. i.e. Together Everyone Achieves More – it is very simple but BIG message for those who dont believe in teamwork or thinks that individually they are the ones who are responsible to accomplish that goal or achievement. I believe & truly have faith in that only teams can do wonders.

One more mis-concept is that just being a manager teams can be managed, NO!! to accomplish goals in long run & sustainable management you always need to do leadership rather than just become a manager who executes work smartly but same time is loosing the most important resource that is the TEAM. Any organization that appreciates the achievements of its teams, reward & recognition is must for effective motivation. We have witnessed that many organizations invests in their people for better results & culture building which prosper the organization and gives energy to the employees for better performance, ownership, bonding with the organization and for both way benefits. There is no fix formula for success but there are factors which need to be taken care of always for any organization whether it is newly established organization or well established organization.

LEADERSHIP: It is defined in many ways, Leaders are those who see capacity of people not focused on the limitation, Leadership for team management is to give them power, push them, motivate, to have emotional element alive, to support the weaker and to empower the strong contenders, give direction towards the goal or objective, keep all on same page by open communication, should listen and face the ground realities.

In my professional career, I had experienced various cultures of different industries such as printing press, interior designing firm, advertising agency, industrial manufacturing public limited organization, FMCG, Communication / ISP, Textile & Fashion Retail Brand ….. The short liner of these years would be:

“Great leadership with clear vision can lead beyond limits, however, management with lust of profit making will keep all moving in circle and heading towards nothing”

MANagement – this word starts with MAN, the worst part it now a days the management practices are they dont care about MAN, they care for MACHINE & MATERIALS. The result is an incomplete equation for successful project i.e. MAN+MACHINE+MATERIAL.

Being Visiting Faculty Member, I have taught to MBA students subjects like Risk Management, HRM, Recruitment & selection, Project Management, Project Appraisal & etc the funny part while teaching MBA was that whatever concepts we teach, practically we are not following or implementing in our professional life and the reason is lack of management commitment to the process in its actual spirit. I have witnessed that in many areas/depts. norms or best practices are not followed but individual likes or dislikes are followed. I guess that is the reason now people dont select the organization they prefer to choose the boss/manager.

Coming back to the actual topic i.e. Sustaining the Team, YES!! the real challenge is to sustain the team after building an ideal team. The concept needed to deliver to the individuals is that all should focus on the prime objective rather that there personal accomplishment. Brick by Brick all should support, aligns & coordinates with each other. The Management role is to sit back and supervise, NOT to do is Micro management, to achieve bigger goal MACRO Management is the key. Let people perform independently, you should have exceptional monitoring, evaluation, aligned process & integration between the processes, cross functional key resources should be used for effective coordination/communication, weekly/fortnightly/monthly review meetings can help in sustaining the momentum and there should be only progress,recognition & achievements discussed rather that pulling legs of individuals for not performing. The non-performers should have proper counseling seperately to avoid demoralization. SUCCESS is not a short term vision of any organization,once you taste it you gets more aggressive to achieve higher SUCCESS but in that aggression many organizations losses their key contributors, the key players but i would say very few do keep an eye on them too and luckily they get SUCCESS with retaining the key players for the longer run.

My advice to all the CEOs, COOs, GMs, HoDs, Managers is to always keep the human factor alive in you and look after your manpower as good as the machines and materials. For every SUCCESSFUL PROJECT you need 3Ms i.e. Man, Machine and Material.