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

Team changedevelop strategies for managing teams through change and changethrough teams.We open with a discussion around what constitutes a group and whatconstitutes a team. We will also look at the phenomena of different types ofteams: for example, virtual teams, self-organizing teams and project teams.Models of team functioning, change and development will be explored.We look at the various components of team working, and at how teamsdevelop and how different types of people combine to make a reallyeffective (or not) team.We take as our basic model Tuckman’s (1965) model of team developmentto illustrate how teams change over time. This is the forming,storming, norming and performing model. But we will add to it by differentiatingbetween the task aspects of team development and the peopleaspects of team development.Finally we look at the way in which teams can impact or react to organizationalchange.WHAT IS A GROUP AND WHEN IS IT A TEAM?There has been much academic discussion as to what constitutes a teamand what constitutes a group. In much of the literature the two terms areused indistinguishably. Yet there are crucial differences, and anyoneworking in an organization instinctively knows when he or she is in ateam and when he or she is in a group. We will attempt to clarify theessential similarities and differences. This is important when looking atchange because teams and groups experience change in different ways.Schein and Bennis (1965) suggest that a group is ‘any number of peoplewho interact with each other, are psychologically aware of each other, andwho perceive themselves to be a group’. Morgan et al (1986) suggest that‘a team is a distinguishable set of two or more individuals who interactinterdependently and adaptively to achieve specified, shared, and valuedobjectives’. Sundstrom, de Meuse and Futrell (1990) define the work teamas ‘A small group of individuals who share responsibility for outcomes fortheir organizations’.Cohen and Bailey (1997) define a team as ‘a collection of individualswho are interdependent in their tasks, who share responsibility foroutcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact63