In our company every department does its own thing, different rules apply everywhere – does that make sense?

CORPORATE CULTURE AND TEAMBUILDING

Yes – and no:
Team-specific rules shape identity and are therefore important for cohesion and the sense of belonging to the team. But like any identity, it is defines deferral of the environment.

So YES, team-specific rules make sense as description of the quality of cooperation. “How shall we deal with eache another? How do we solve conflicts? What do we decide together, what is a management issue? What do internal communication paths look like? What is e-mail and what is personal communication? What are the response times?” etc. If these rules have been expressed and all team members are familiar with them, they can be conveyed to those who join as new members or, as the case may be, revised together in their integration process, revived or even adapted.
They can also be communicated to interfaces or adjusted to differing rules of the community, for example, an internal team response time may differ from one applicable throughout the company.

And NO, different rules make little sense and often cause conflict if they are not explicit and agreed, and therefore only turn out to be different when the situation arises: a colleague from a different department automatically approaches topics with a different understanding; a new colleague needs time and learns from mistakes in order to find the relevant “correct” rules. The Team Members themselves have a vague understanding of these rules and their interpretation, rules are made unconsciously, and therefore they are often not necessarily based on factual requirements, etc.

Teambuilding always works on creating a shared identity, an identity which is understood as a healthy part of a greater organism. The triggering event may be “being curious to get to know” a new group, addressing the “dealing with known differences more consciously” or promoting the “working on nonverbal conflicts” in a motley group.

ARGO has a long-standing experience with different methods – from cognitive to experience-oriented approaches – to support Teambuilding processes from various starting positions!

Please do not hesitate to contact me for details: b.thoma@argo.at