Editorial

Citation

Wing, L.S. (2002), "Editorial", Team Performance Management, Vol. 8 No. 3/4. https://doi.org/10.1108/tpm.2002.13508caa.001

Editorial

Organizational leaders are becoming more aware of the intricacies of creating conditions which support successful team outcomes. We are becoming more aware that in order to create support for teams, we need to look beyond or under what appears readily to our senses.

Take as an instance the review of a business or a manufacturing process. Our customary review of a business or manufacturing process in the past was to delineate a process flow by drawing boxes on a piece of paper, identifying what discrete business or development activity occurred at each point in the flow chart.

We are now beginning to understand that business processes carry within them the culture of the organization, and that it is within each process that culture becomes manifest in the organization. From a top-level view of the process, we know that order entry processes have highly differentiated tasks than say a manufacturing process. Yet, this is only the very briefest of views of process investigation.

A look beyond or under these cursory views of process reveals a whole cadre of activities, exchanges of information, decision making, to name a few of the "real" activities of the process. These activities and exchanges of information reflect the real process; and it is the lack of understanding about these deep "patterns" in the process which often results in process reengineering failure.

A failure to look at these deep patterns in organizations can support team performance, or create barriers to team performance. What are the deep patterns in organization that manifest themselves in your business processes?

Linda S. WingEditorE-mail: lwing@usinternet.com