ting work teams and are not ready to throw themselves into committing large chunks of their workforce to work teams.As organisations and managers hear the success stories of Federal Express, IDS and the Ford Motor Company, they also want in on the action and want the benefits of successful team implementation as well. However, they obviously want to steer clear of the possible problems and costs that unsuccessful team implementation can produce. As Dumaine (1994:86) points out, "teams are the Ferraris of work design. They're high performance but high maintenance and expensive." What organisations want is a Ferrari with the costs of a Ford or Holden. Although all teams require maintenance and costs, there are factors that can be fine-tuned to keep these costs to a minimum, which will also maximise a team's success.The first factor that should be addressed before the actual team is implemented is, what are the reasons for implementation? As Magee (1997:27) points out, "the decision to form teams involves taking risk. It means that the agency believes that the product of the team will be significantly greater than what can be produced by any one individual." Therefore, management is risking resources when appointing them to teams. So, the decision to create a team should only be made if there will be an expected improvement in production. To help with this decision, a comprehensive planning and study period should be carried out. This should be done so your knowledge of teams and teamwork is high. This will help facilitate team building and from this the building process can flow smoothly as a result of preplanning. The study process should not be limited to reviewing literature. As Dewar (1999:W3) suggests, the best type of research "is a visit to other companies and organisations who are involved in team activities." Here you can get first hand experience of team functioning, which can facilitate your team building process. Failure to ad...
