Chapter 1

What is a Team, and Why Does It Matter?

Kris has recently been promoted to project manager of a software development team that works remotely, mostly from home, across three countries. Several of the team members have worked together on past projects, but many are new to the company. She has six direct reports, but each works on their own tasks and seldom interacts with their teammates. Although the work gets done, she doesn’t feel they are a team so much as a bunch of people who all work through her. Even though tasks are completed, and deadlines met, she wonders if there isn’t something missing.

The last few years have changed how we work. When working from home exploded, a lot of leaders focused on just keeping the organization going. Can people meet deadlines and do good work when they aren’t co-located? Will people put in the discretionary effort and communication efforts that have always been hallmarks of great teams? Can we keep the (figurative) doors open and stay in business until we go back to the office?

Those concerns were (and are) important, but they focused on immediate problems—putting out fires, as so many of us call it. Although it is easy to stay in fire-fighting mode, as leaders, we must put down the firehose and look to the future. When and where do people need to work to create great results? Can we collaborate effectively in new ways we haven’t yet thought about? Although a two-year pandemic forced some of those questions on us, we can’t let the need to look forward and be proactive and intentional be a one-time pandemic-related response.

One of the most common questions we hear across organizations is this: “How do we create a ‘one-team’ workplace when we aren’t in close proximity to each other all the time?”