Becoming a Manager

11

Building an Effective Team

From where I sit, I see that managing teams represents an increasingly critical piece of today’s management puzzle. Due to advances in technology and the move toward globalization, I see new managers struggling to handle roles involving increasing complexity and interdependence. For example, running a multifunctional team of thirty people with varied levels of experience in a start-up can now be someone’s first managerial job. As horizontal networks and interfunctional teams take their place alongside—or even replace—functional and hierarchical organizational structures, managers find themselves managing interdependent, diverse, and possibly virtual or cross-cultural teams of talented colleagues.

Were I collecting ...