Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Team

A Structural Look at the Power of Strategic Teams

Background on Strategic Teams

We have tracked the work of Twenty Kinds of Strategic Teams in organizations as diverse as the military, established corporations, start-ups, partnerships, and nonprofits. In some settings, Strategic Teams have evolved as functional and structural assets of the organization, with regular development and deployment. Other organizations have found the cause, energy, trust, and power of change in their Strategic Teams. Strategic Teams are part of the development of more effective, capable, and dynamic organizations today. They should be built, chartered, managed, supported, and dispersed with clear intent. Strategic Teams are forms of structure.

Why Organizations Need Strategic Teams

Executives have shared that their organizations have many interests in Strategic Teams as moving parts of their structure. They need Strategic Teams that help bridge the cultures of industrial partners – suppliers, networks, channels, and systems. They need Strategic Teams to concentrate on the drivers, constraints, incentives, and actions that contribute to breakthroughs, continuous improvement, process management, and development speed and readiness.

What makes Strategic Teams most valuable to organizations? Here are three ideas that serve to frame value and impact:

  1. Organizations Need Talent Supply Chains
    Strategic Team assignments provide the challenge, environment, motivation and experience that are force multipliers for leadership and management skills.
  2. Organizations Need Greater Collaboration
    Strategic Team experience puts people in situations and settings where common purpose, effective leadership, communication, character, influence and service matter.
  3. Organizations Need Another Point of View
    Strategic Teams are, by definition, assigned to subjects and projects that spark new mindsets, ideas, approaches, processes, options … and new value creation.
There are other needs of course, and many of these have been defined in our research with work on Twenty Kinds of Strategic Teams. What we have found to be most intriguing at this point are the prospects for organizational structures that charter, engage, and develop Strategic Teams as change engines.
Indeed, Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Team

The Challenges of Today, and the Options for Tomorrow

Opening the Conversations that Matter

Get in Touch