Building the peloton
The ongoing leadership team is perhaps the most easily identifiable type. Executive, divisional, or geographical leadership teams are, as the name suggests, typically stable over the medium to long term. Ongoing leadership teams are an enduring part of firms, integrating the expertise from across the business required to direct the firm. Project-based leadership teams (and the project-based teams they lead), on the other hand, exist for a set period of time to achieve a specific objective. They are formed at project inception, provide direction, oversight and governance, and then dissolve when the project concludes. The team’s level of seniority is determined by the scale or significance of the project and, like an ongoing leadership team, may comprise a range of functional backgrounds. A key challenge for project-based teams can be the speed at which they must form , norm , and perform . 14 The requirement for teams to rapidly form, perform, and then disband is only increasing. An execution-focused team exists to drive ongoing value for the organization, its customers, and other stakeholders, giving the team an explicit operational focus. Like the ongoing leadership team, execution teams are not attached to a particular initiative, and are most commonly associated with a persistent functional need, such as HR or sales. Execution-focused teams are oriented to a particular aspect of delivery or support and may also be referred to as a frontline workgroup due to their typical proximity to the “frontline,” which for most organizations would refer to the customer. Such groups are often the first within an organization to experience disruption and are therefore well-positioned to see and potentially learn from and adapt to change. 15 Of all types of teams, execution-focused teams are most likely to undergo continuous change as increasing automation pressures, customer drivers, and end-to-end service delivery models require a continuous redefining of the team. Finally, there are also “hidden” teams which, by their elusive nature, are tricky to categorize neatly. These are informal teams that may not be visible on organizational charts yet may be responsible for a significant portion of the work an organization undertakes. 16 For instance, a leader may have an informal team of advisers that they rely on, a middle manager may support an informal team to grow a capability, or a junior worker might form an informal team to share knowledge.
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