Blog 4: Team Structure

The most successful team I have been a part of has been the Leadership division of my service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega (APO). APO is a service organization dedicated to developing the community service and leadership skills of its members while also fostering camaraderie and fellowship among the members. The Leadership division of my fraternity is dedicated to developing members' leadership, communication, and teamwork skills through events such as business communication workshops, lessons on how to build a professional "brand", and lessons on how to lead diverse teams of people. The entire organization is led by a President, with Vice Presidents just under her that each head a different branch of the organization. Each VP has a head director that reports directly to them, and the head director is, in turn, in charge of the various other directors and chairs that make up the other officer positions of the branch. Those other directors and chairs are usually in charge of regular committee members. Each committee is made up of three to ten people. Guidelines and overall directives for the branch are passed down from the President to the VP, who passes those directives on to the head director of the branch just under them. That head director then decides what events should be put on, and specifies those events to the other directors and chairs. Those directors and chairs are then in charge of actually putting those events together with the help of their committee members. The committee members and directors other than the head director can best be thought of as the "boots on the ground" in this scenario. I was the Professional Development Director last semester, which was a director position in the Leadership branch. While other Directors may have handled their position and interacted with their committee differently, here I will focus on the organization from my perspective and how I interacted with my committee.

From the President down to my position as Professional Development Director, APO's organizational structure could best be described as similar to the simple hierarchy described in the text. The other directors and chairs in the Leadership branch report to the Head Leadership Director, who reports to the Leadership VP, who reports to the President. This structure frees the VP from having to focus on day-to-day operational matters to instead focus on the division's relationship with the President and the rest of the chapter. While this structure is efficient, it is not without its downsides. The directors and chairs other than the Head Leadership Director tend to have little access to their VP and President, with committee members having almost no access. From my Professional Development Director position to my committee members, however, our organization structure could be best described as an all-channel network. During my last semester, I exercised little authority over my committee members, preferring to allow them to volunteer for the duties they were interested in, and allowing them to make decisions and work among themselves as they saw fit. Information flowed freely among us, and my leadership position was mostly a formality. For example, during the planning for the etiquette lunch my committee put on, in which we invited other members to a lunch where there would be a presentation on mealtime etiquette followed by a chance to practice that etiquette over real food, our duties were dynamic and self-decided. One committee member took charge of writing the part of the presentation on handling silverware, while another member took charge of the part on proper mealtime conversation and dress. Another member took charge of procuring cups and plates for the event, while I took charge of procuring food. Information flowed freely among us so we could bounce ideas off each other. While this structure was very pleasant to practice, it sometimes made us inefficient as it took a long time to discuss what to do even for relatively simple tasks. 

The entire leadership branch of APO last semester followed Katzenbach and Smith's characteristics of high-quality teams fairly closely. We shaped our goals according to the guidelines the President gave us. The Head Leadership Director translated those guidelines into measurable goals by telling us what events to hold. At 20 people total, with 15 total committee members, 3 directors, our Head Director and our VP, our team was kept at a manageable size. From the VP to the directors, we had clear agreements on our working relationships. Our weaknesses were not having a good mixture of expertise (which is hard to come by in an environment of college students) and not having a way to hold each other accountable. However, each member of the team was responsible and ready to work with others, so we managed to power through those weaknesses as a team. Everyone wanted to contribute, so there was little need for a formal system of accountability.

At the individual level, I suppose that being a good member of the leadership branch of APO means being willing to work with others, communicating well, and holding yourself accountable (especially since there is little "official" way to hold each other accountable.) For committee members, you also have to be flexible on what you do, due to the dynamic, self-directed nature of committee member duties. These qualities help the team by helping information to flow more freely and team efforts to take place with little conflict. Everyone on the team last semester had these qualities, and if there were any major conflicts, I did not know about them. I suppose our good teamwork was encouraged by the fact that there was a lot of fellowship and camaraderie among APO members, and many of us knew each other outside of meetings. These relationships encouraged information to flow more freely and compromises to be reached more quickly and smoothly. While we were not a perfect team, as, for example, we had a clear divide between directors and the VP and the decision-making process within my committee was democratic but inefficient, by and large we managed to work well together as a team in spite of our issues. On my committee specifically, I believe the morale boost and resulting increase in productivity we gained by working in a flexible, open environment with similarly-interested people made up for the loss in efficiency from the all-channel network structure.