Are you aware there are 27 bones in your hand? Each one of them is important and essential to a functioning hand. I believe that is like our organization here at Silent Rivers. Everyone is important no matter what their role. Each person’s job is an extension of all of us as they give us their best effort each day. Now if you take those fingers and close them tightly in a fist, we become a UNIFIED force prepared to make a strong IMPACT!
The Silent Rivers team
I believe many companies give their employees and clients lip service when it comes to how “teamwork” oriented they are. Meanwhile, communication and process breakdowns throughout the company can cause feelings of frustration and anxiety leading to a bad customer or an employee experience. By no means do I want to project or pretend that we have this “mastered” at Silent Rivers, it’s a continual work in progress. Just like any relationship, maintaining a cohesive team takes effort, global perspective, a degree of humility, and sacrifice on some level by each individual.
Our company continues to grow and rebuild following the recession several years ago. With triple the number of employees and active projects, we’re finding that the old processes and communication efforts don’t have the same efficiency and effectiveness. The key is how we collectively approach and adapt to those new found areas of improvement. Is it with pride, ego, blame shifting and expectation – or is it with understanding, patience, kindness, empathy and humility? We always strive for the latter, and it has served us well.
At the same time, we must recognize the need for accountability and responsibility. Bottom line is we all want to both demonstrate and experience an excellent example of leadership and teamwork coming together. I know in my experience that if people have an example to draw from it helps to achieve the goal. Maybe this simple human fact of 27 bones in a hand helps us visualize what it means for our staff to become the best they can be.
In our experience, the core benefits of good teamwork include increased efficiency, the ability to focus different minds on the same problem and mutual support. However, there are other powerful effects to!
- Better Outcomes: Teamwork can lead us to better business outcomes because we can bring more resources to bear against a challenge and there is more oversight to reduce risk.
- Efficiency: When our team is able to work well together we accomplish more than individuals can do alone. This helps our company save money while being more competitive in our market.
- Better Ideas: A good team is made up of diverse members. When these members apply different skills to the same problem, they come up with a more effective solution than one person working on the same problem.
- Mutual support: When our team works well together, we are supportive of one another. Mutual support can encourage people to achieve goals we may not have realized we could reach on their own.
- Sense of Accomplishment: When members of our team work to achieve specific goals, there is often a greater sense of accomplishment than what an employee may feel when working on their own.
In order for teamwork to achieve these benefits, individual members must work well together. We need to be able to put thoughts of our own accomplishments aside to work for the benefit of the team and company.
And at the final walkthrough on a client’s remodeling project, we all feel a sense of accomplishment about what we achieved together as a team!