The Four C’s at Work: A New Approach to Team Building & Why It’s So Important

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The Four C’s at Work: Building Your Team & Why It’s So Important

© 2008 by Robert Isaacson, MA, MSS
All rights reserved.

Our focus this month is on building a cooperative and collaborative team that gets things done.

So why even bother building a team? Let me answer the question by telling you a story.

Three workers were busy constructing a building when an observer approached. The first worker was dirty, sweaty, and had an unhappy expression on his face. The observer asked the first worker, “What are you doing?” The worker replied, “I’m laying bricks.” The second worker was dirty, sweaty, and also had an unhappy expression on his face. The observer asked the second worker, “What are you doing?” The second worker replied, “I’m making $20 an hour.” The third worker was dirty and sweaty but had a beautiful and inspired expression. The observer asked the third worker, “What are you doing?” And he replied, “I’m building a cathedral.”

So the answer to the question why bother building a cooperative and collaborative team is a simple one. You want to inspire more workers to build cathedrals. And since building cathedrals is a difficult and complex process, you want all your people working together, on the same page, to do this. This holds true if you are anything larger than a one-person business.

We have four “C’s” to attend to in building a team. The first two, cooperative and collaborative, you have already seen. The next two are command-and-control.

I’ll explain with an illustration.

Companies often fail to build effective teams because they’ve typically looked like this:

Owners and executives are at the top. Middle managers are in the middle of course. First line supervisors come next, then workers at the bottom of the triangle serving customers.

Typically, owners or executives issue orders; middle managers interpret them, make them concrete and perhaps modify them slightly. Supervisors and workers carry them out, usually without question. If problems with orders arise, these are communicated upwards (sometimes and slowly, that’s why I have the dotted line) through the “chain of command,” and new orders are issued by the owners or executives. This is a command-and-control organization, the second set of “C’s,” quite hierarchical and formally structured.

In the last number of years companies are structured and very work differently.

There are still owners or executives, middle managers, supervisors, and workers. But notice the company is flatter, less hierarchical and formally structured. Two other things are different.

First supervisors and workers on the front line are empowered to make as many decisions as possible because they are the closest to customers and know them best. If you go into any of the expensive, high-end hotels in the US, and your bed is perhaps unmade or your soap dish contains a used bar of soap, housekeeping staff can spend up to several hundred dollars to make things “right” by you, without getting approval from their managers.

The second thing we see is cross-level and cross-functional teams springing up to anticipate and solve problems, as well as to find and respond to opportunities. So if you see a sales or marketing opportunity, you put together an ad hoc team of individuals from all levels (and functions) of the company to respond to the initiative. You may have an executive, a couple of middle managers, and workers on such a team. Some teams continue to function while others are disbanded when their purpose is over. This new, coordinated organization relies on more synchronized and robust efforts among team members at all levels. People communicate both vertically and horizontally within the company.

We call these organizations coordinated and collaborative, less hierarchical, more informally structured. This is our first set of “C’s,” the best yet in my book.

Why do you suppose there has been a massive movement in the last 30 years  towards these kinds of companies?

Because they are more profitable. Why is this so?

Coordinated and collaborative companies are nimbler, more able to solve problems and respond to business opportunities. They can “turn on a dime,” at least in theory. (Size has something to do with this of course. The bigger companies are, the slower they move.)

Workers, supervisors, and others are happier because for the first time they have power and influence over how decisions are made and carried out. Their opinions count. And we know from the psychological research and our experience that when our opinions count, we are:

=More motivated,

=More productive,

=Provide higher quality goods and services, and

=Are simply more profitable.

So if you want to build spectacular cathedrals and make money to boot, remember the four “C’s” and build teams of happy employees.

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