Profound changes in

culture. This is hard to achieve when, as is now the case in many big firms, a

large proportion of staff are temporary contractors. Teamwork improves with time: Americas National

have a strong

Transportation Safety Board found that 73% of the incidents in its civi-aviation database occurred on a crews

first day of flying together, However, as Amy Edmondson of Harvard points out, organisations increasingly

se""as a verb rather than a noun: they form teams for specifie purposes and then quickly disband them

The least that can be concluded from this research is that companies necd to think harder about managing

eams. They need to rid their minds of sentimentalism(感情用事 the most successful teams have leaders

who are able to set an overall direction and take immediate action, They need to keep tcams small and

focused: giving in to pressure to be more"inclusive"is a guarantee of dysfunction. Jeff Bezos, Amazon

boss, says that "If I see more than two pizzas for lunch, the team is too big. "They need to immunise teams

against group- -think; ackman argued that the best ones contain" deviant(离经叛道者) who are willing to

do something that may be upsetting to others. i

A new study of 12, 000 workers in 17 countries by Steelcase, a fumniture-maker which also does consulting.

that the best way to ensure employees are"engaged" is to give them more control over where and how

do their work-which may mcan liberating them from having to do everything in collaboration with

ever, organisations need to leam something bigger than how to manage teams better: they need to be

habit of asking themselves whether teams are the best tools for the job. Team building skills are in

short supply: Deloitte reports that only 12% of the executives they contacted feel they understand the way

people work together in networks and only 21% feel confident in their ability to build cross-functional teams

their work done because they are foreed tsp employees routinely complain tha they can get

Loose

much time in meetings or compelled to work in nosy

offices and

the individu

7. Decentralisation of authority was also found to be more effective in military operations.

In many companies, the conventional form of organisation is

giv

lg way to a network

3. Members of poorly managed teams are easily distracted from their work.

0. Teamwork is most effective when team members share the same culture

According to a report by Deloitte, teamwork is becoming inereasingly popular among companies

2. Some team members find it hard to agree on questions like membership and the teams purpose

work.

sent hon ase an E ao u o l o on eemian r mia

ction C

atements. For each of them there are four choices marked A) B), C) and D You should deed on the best

voice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre