7 Strategies to Improve Organizational Effectiveness

Understanding the importance of workplace diversity in boosting company-wide productivity, organizations the world over are now embracing employees from a wide variety of cultural, social, and professional backgrounds as a part of cohesive work units. A diverse team comes with its fair share of challenges, however, as it can be difficult to bring every team member with a different professional mindset and work ethic on the same page, align their collective goals with those of the organization, and utilize their individual skills to bring forth the most creative and effective solutions to the driest and most mundane of problems. While every team has its unique set of challenges and goals, here are 10 tips to help with effective team building:

1. Specify the team’s mission, vision, and goals.Make sure that each team member’s goals are aligned with the team’s goals. Only if they are united in their own aims can they work towards achieving the organization’s long-term goals.
2. Clarify each team member’s specific roles and responsibilities. This will help each member optimize their individual tasks and coordinate with one another for increased productivity and faster, more concise results.
3. Establish clear, honest, and respectful communication channels between team members and leaders. Creative idea generation is only possible through inter- and cross-team communication free of hierarchal barriers. This reduce social pressure and ensures continuous creative idea generation. Also, promote acceptance and tolerance of individual skills, ideas, and opinions among team members.
4. Introduce an organization-wide culture change. One that implements newer, more inclusive ways of employee management, motivation, and development to accommodate the wide-spectrum workforce and encourage them to grow professionally and achieve their personal best.
5. Hold team members accountable for their individual roles and responsibilities. Rather than collectively blaming the entire team in case of unsatisfactory long and short-term results, have each team member understand the consequences of their actions and praise them for their individual achievements.
6. Practice participative leadership. Circulate leadership responsibilities among team members like leading meetings, assigning tasks, progress assessment, and determining the team’s direction. This will boost team-wide morale, and help them understand the responsibilities associated with each role.
7. Implement Electronic Brainwriting in place of traditional in-person brainstorming. Electronic brainwriting eliminates judgmental apprehension, production blocking, and insufficient sharing of ideas that plagues face-to-face brainstorming sessions by allowing the uninterrupted flow of idea generation via a chat program.

Through these changes, teams, and organizations by association, can effectively reorient themselves to bring forth innovative solutions and achieve maximum productivity.