The four elements required for teamwork to develop in any organization are:

1) High levels of two-way communication

2) Team members with diverse backgrounds

3) Common purpose/motivated by mission

4) Common goals/measurements

This Newsletter will discuss elements #3 and #4. Required elements #3 (common purpose/motivated by a mission) and #4 (common goals and measurements) are usually addressed together. The largest barrier to these two elements is departmentalization. Departmentalization blocks businesses from achieving organizational wide teamwork for the following reasons: 

• Departmentalization usually means individual departmental goals. Individual department goals prevent teamwork throughout the organization because everyone is concerned about achieving their own department's goals and how they will affect their own performance reviews and merit pay increases. 

• These individual department goals also produce a lack of Lean "system thinking." The system is broadly defined as the processes required from the time an RFP is received until the project is delivered. For owner satisfaction to occur, everyone in the organization must have owner satisfaction as a common goal so they will all pull in the same direction. System thinking requires that all decisions and improvements in an organization are made based on their impact on the system efficiency. If a suggestion will improve department efficiency but will negatively affect the system efficiency, it is not done.

 For example, people working for a department      (instead of the system) generally process the          "information product" passing through their            department in production batches. They use          batch production because, for their department,    batching is most efficient (due to mental or              physical setup or change-over time).        Unfortunately, batching stops the information    product flow, extending the information product  lead time and making the system less efficient.  Additionally, these individual department goals  may cause other behaviors detrimental to system  efficiency. For example, the business  development  manager who cares only about  "getting the  project" and not making sure that all  the owner's  expectations and requirements are  clearly  defined, or engineering tossing a design  "over the  wall" to the subcontractor even though  the design  is not installation ready. 

• Departmentalization inhibits cross-training, which prevents associate growth. It limits the full use of our mental resources in improving the system efficiency because few people understand how the system operates. 

Lean drives down the authority, responsibility, and accountability to the lowest levels in the organization. It includes eliminating silos and departmentalization that are a traditional part of most corporate cultures so the flow of information and material through the organization can improve. An organization that is organized in silos or departments creates many handoffs. Wherever there are handoffs, there are delays and opportunities for errors. In a World Class organization, flexible, cross-functional teams are created to focus on processes that provide products or services to particular customers or markets from RFP to project delivery. These Value Streams or Business Units are assigned to a team leader who forms a team. The team is then given the autonomy to manage its own processes based on the organizational goals. The teams are focused on maximizing the amount

of value delivered to the owner.