Organizing Teams

I have been part of a successful team before, and in several different types of structures. Chapter 5 helped me bring more light to the different ways in which the teams were organized and the different strengths and weaknesses that came with having those structures. 

The first "one-boss" example reminds me of an internship that I had in structured finance in New York City. The team of five interns all reported directly to one boss. Our tasks regularly included creating and building discounted cash flow models for commercial mortgage backed securities packages for large corporations. The process of creating these models was intensive, as they had to be created from scratch. Our boss would come in for a demonstration session for about two to three hours everyday. She would teach us the exact mathematics behind creating the models and the top-level structuring of the numbers, with some basic input on how we could go about implementing them on excel. After that, it was up to us to actually come up with the detailed excel formulas and create a working model. It was very intensive because, when you build an excel model with multiple sheets and layers, there are formulas linking to each other all over the place, some cells are connected to cells on different sheets or even models, and thus it requires a high degree of concentration and organization. At the end of the day we really only had to submit one good working model to the boss. We each worked on different aspects of the packages, and the key to being a good teammate here was to share formulas that worked with each other. Even though we were only reporting to one boss, it was important that we as interns worked together to make sure as a group we achieved a successful outcome. The idea as outlined in the book of a "middle manager" could be related to our senior intern, who had been working at the firm for the longest time and was transitioning into a full-time role. Though he was still an intern he acted in a somewhat managerial role, communicating information with the boss and making sure we were on track and able to complete tasks as interns. 

We fit well into Katzenbach and Smith's first characteristic of a high functioning team- our manager gave us some insight, some leadership and some guidance during the morning hours, but then the rest of the day was up to us to figure out how we could efficiently complete the day's tasks. We often worked very efficiently because we were incentivized by having our own schedule- if we finished early, we could leave early.  If our manager had decided to micro manage more, and perhaps keep us until 5 pm everyday or something of the sort, we would probably not be as efficient on our own. Though we did not really have the choice to pick the expertise of each intern- we did it somewhat- some of us were better at math, some of us were better at understanding financial topics, some of us were simply better at inputting numbers and formulas into Excel quickly. Our team was also a manageable size, only five interns, and thus there wasn't much confusion with too many ideas or opinions. We were all interns, on the same level, and thus we were collectively accountable for getting the models done correctly- the boss did not judge us individually. Thus we developed, in part because of this common judgement, a consistent pattern of working together effectively. I know that if one of us had not contributed to our structure, we would have been a lot slower and less effective. I can see that this would pose a greater problem even in a corporate structure- if an employee is good but doesn't "fit", he or she perhaps poses a problem to good work. I know that in our group of interns, one person having some great capability or higher degree of intellect would not have contributed as much as being a good team member did. I think the degree of autonomy given is something I will always keep in mind, because it was perhaps the largest contributor to us "working it out" for ourselves and delivering great results.