Sample Slide

with Executive Summary ►

 List of Smart & Fast Lessons

1. Team vs. Group

2. Building a Team Culture

3. Make Everybody a Team Player

4. Winning Team: 1 + 6 Intertwined Pillars

5. Characteristics of a Winning Team

6. 5 Keys To Team Success

7. Indisputable Laws of Teamwork

8. Nine Roles of a Team Leader

9. Virtual Teams: Benefits and Challenges

10. Leading Innovation: Inspire Your Team

11. Nourish the Entrepreneurial Spirit

12. Create Hot Teams, Not Dull Teams

13. Best Practices: IDEO's Hot Studio System

14. Harness the Power of Diversity

15. Cross-functional Teams: Key Tasks

16. Engaging Cross-functional Teams

17. Empowering Cross-functional Teams

18. Best Practices: Innovation Teams at Quantum

19. Cross-functional Teams: Recommendations

20. Team Assessment

How Good is Your Team?

Effective statements for team assessment help you evaluate strengths and weaknesses of your team and uncover teamworking problems that you might be experiencing. Give each statement one of the marks that best describes your situation: Strongly agree, Somewhat agree, Partly agree/partly disagree, Somewhat disagree, Strongly disagree. For best results, ask all team members to complete the assessment form and compare the views of team leaders and other team members.

Sample statements for team effectiveness assessment would be:

• All members share a vision to be an innovative team.

• The team understands what it needs to accomplish.

• The project contains stretch goals and intermediate milestones for progress.

• The team has the resources needed to be successful.

• Team members feel free to challenge each other and ask questions.

• New ideas are encouraged, decision regarding their implementation are made without any delay.

• The team has a specific process to overcome roadblocks to implementing new ideas.

• Team leaders support innovation through specific events.

• The team consistently creates an atmosphere of mutual trust.

• The team cultivates and harvests a "what we can learn" attitude when things go wrong.

• Team members balance their individual needs for autonomy with the benefits of mutual interdependence.

How Can You Improve?

Having assessed your team, move further to improve it. Ask these questions:

1. How could our team create higher value for customers and all stakeholders?

2. What mindsets and/or limitations hamper innovation?

3. What should be changed and how to make our team more effective and innovative?