cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

STOP AND THINK!Q 2.8Q 2.9What team role(s) are you likely to use?Team changeWhat are the advantages and disadvantages of each of theeight roles?Belbin concluded that if teams were formed with individuals’ preferencesand working styles in mind, they would have a better chance of teamcohesion and work-related goal achievement. Teams need to contain agood spread of Belbin team types.Different teams might need different combinations of roles. Marketingand design teams probably need more Plants, while project implementationteams need Implementers and Completer Finishers. Likewise, thelack of a particular team type can be an issue. A management teamwithout a Co-ordinator or Shaper would have problems. An implementationteam without a Complete Finisher might also struggle.HOW WELL TEAMS INITIATE AND ADAPT TOORGANIZATIONAL CHANGEThroughout the last decades of the 20th century many organizationsrepeated the mantra, ‘people are our greatest assets’, and many wouldthen apologize profusely when they were forced into downsizing or‘rightsizing’ the workforce. Similarly many organizations have sung thepraises of teams and how essential they are within the modern organization.Many organizations have sets of competences or stated values thatimplicitly and explicitly pronounce that their employees need to work inthe spirit of team work and partnership.It was therefore interesting for the authors to discover that there was areal lack of any authoritative research on the interplay between organizationalchange and team working. We have seen in a previous chapter theeffect that change has on individuals and groups of individuals; but whathas not been studied is the effect of change on teams. And as a consequencethere is very little research on strategies for managing and leadingteams through organizational change.91