Leading for Innovation: And Organizing for Results

13.3. Promote Team Behaviors Conducive to Innovation

Raise the standard of what happens when people work together, and develop new skills for encouraging innovation.

Everyone agrees that effective leadership teams are and will remain essential to organizational success. But few companies benefit all they might from teams because they set the bar too low—using teams merely to align tasks, to ensure only the absence of overlaps and gaps between team members' responsibilities. Team members, particularly members of executive teams, frequently work independently. That's unfortunate, because innovation is a more probable result when team members challenge, corroborate, and build on others' work, insights, and expertise rather than just aggregate results. ...