For a wide variety of reasons, teams are brought together for the short term or the long term in organizations. For example, your organization may have to deal with a new client base or market, find a solution to a particular production problem, say, with quality, or pilot a new working practice before full implementation. Alternatively, it may be a creative experiment with handpicked, unconventional, imaginative research and development people to see what ideas they come up with.

Whatever the reasons that you need to form a team its effectiveness depends on its cohesiveness, which is to say that all its members need to be working together without conflict and for the same organizational cause. This is the ideal however. Often, as you might have experienced, problems develop. This may happen for several reasons that include: the team's goal is unclear, personalities of team members conflict, team and organizational goals conflict, there's a failure to communicate, the degree of management control from outside hasn't been properly agreed on, or there is conflict between different teams in the organization. Often too, there is simply resentment due to feelings that a new task has been thrust on those concerned or members feel they have been shunted out the way while new technology can supercede them.

Psychonomics begins the process of developing effective teams by conducting a needs evaluation to determine exactly what the goal is and whether it is a justified one - this sounds a logical place to start but is nevertheless often overlooked in many organizations. We then work either with individuals, the team as a whole, or management, and often all parties, for an integrated solution. And when further intervention is required this often entails not just a redefinition of the main goal or set of values but a change in the processes, dynamics, roles, and relationships within the team, as well as its external organizational links.

Throughout the process, we work to provide members with insights into how they and others function, while at the same time ensuring that our intervention addresses key business concerns. We therefore clarify the actions that need to be taken and, once these are implemented, we carefully monitor progress. Overall, we seek to create real, meaningful change in team operation that will last over time and that will positively impact on organizational effectiveness.

In practice, examples of how intervention with the approach Psychonomics promote has proven useful include: forming an interdepartmental team to help identify the general value set of a major bank as the foundation to putting in place a culture change program, and structuring an e-commerce group's management team in order to determine business critical factors that underpinned future market effectiveness.

Teams, therefore, often need help in moving forward, especially when they are newly established. Psychonomics provides support in helping teams understand the values they have as well as their individual, collective and personal styles, and how these impact on the team's overall effectiveness. Certainly, the integration of new people into a team frequently requires a fresh look at how the individuals will all work together. Over and above this we work with senior management to ensure that team compositions and member roles are optimized. Furthermore, we work to ensure that the team and the organization as a whole have business or organizational values in common so that all those concerned are working for the same objectives.