Once upon a time, two people were walking along a river bank when they heard cries for help. A man was caught in the river's swift current and was struggling to stay afloat.

"Throw him your rope!" one person said to the other.

"No! it is too light. The water will carry it downstream. Find a long stick and hold it out to him instead."

His friend objected, "We'll never find a stick long enough in time! Throw him the rope!"

The two argued back and forth, each insisting his method was best.

Eventually, a third person came along, listened to the argument for a moment, then suggested the pair tie a short stick to the end of the rope like a weight, and throw it upstream, letting the current carry it to the man.

The pair considered the solution, found it made sense, and heaved the weighted rope into the water. The drowning man grabbed it just as he was about to go under for the third time and the trio on the bank pulled together to reel him in.

The man collapsed on dry land, gathered his breath, looked up at the original pair and announced, "The water's fine! Why don't you two take a dip?"

The lesson here is, nothing gets accomplished without compromise. A company can fill its ranks with the most skilled and clever employees, but if the workers disagree over how to meet their company's goals, the organization will go under.

The 21st century presents us with challenges unlike the ones we faced in the past. These are times of limited expansion, deregulation, unprecedented global competition and rapid technological change. Employee loyalty, although not completely a thing of the past, must be earned by the corporation.

Improvement only comes through the successful management of change. Changing ourselves as individuals; changing ourselves as managers, so that we can coach and empower people to work together. One of the most effective ways to do that is through team building. Team building is the process of collaboration. The goal in any organization is for good people to work together as great teams. Teamwork is the magic that lets ordinary people attain extraordinary results.

Why do team building?

• According to a study by Towers Perrin, the average sales force turns over about 43% and is downsized by 20% over a two year period.
• According to the American Institute of Stress, job stress and burnout cost employers an estimated $200 billion a year in turnover costs, absenteeism, lower productivity, and rising worker's compensation and health care claims. And replacing an employee is difficult.
• When you're stressed, you're not productive.
• 78% describe their jobs as stressful and getting worse.
• 33% of all Americans believe their job is more stressful than a year ago.

With this kind of climate just maintaining productivity is a challenge, let alone increasing it. So, we have to figure out ways to optimize our performance. We have to learn how to run faster in the product race to meet customers' demands.

Team building is a process that directly affects productivity. It allows you to outperform the competition, run the business profitably and keep your customers loyal. It accomplishes this through harnessing the power of various members of your organization working toward a common goal.

When a company fosters an atmosphere of communication and teamwork, results include:

• Speed. The ability to respond quickly to customer or market demands and to incorporate new ideas and technologies quickly into products.
• Consistency. The ability to produce a product that unfailingly satisfies customers' expectations.
• Perceptiveness. The ability to see the competitive environment clearly and thus to anticipate and respond to customers' evolving needs and wants.
• Nimbleness. The ability to adapt simultaneously to many different business environments
• Innovation. The ability to generate new ideas and to combine existing elements to create new sources of value.

By building collaboration among workers, you eliminate internal competition and other destructive forces that can undermine an organization, binding employees together instead to defeat the enemy on the outside: your company's competitors.

Take the story of Saturn. Its 165 work teams decide how to run their own areas, including the right to interview and approve new hires for their teams. One team in Saturn's final-assembly area voted to reject some proposed car-assembly equipment in favor of another supplier whose product the team believed was safer.

The team-spirit strategy apparently works. In 1997 Saturn expects to complete its fourth year as the only manufacturer, building exclusively small cars, which will be profitable. According to J.D. Powers, the Saturn nameplate earns the #1 position in the Premium Compact segment for initial quality. Saturn continues to retain the industry leading customer loyalty rating and leads the industry in retail sales per facility.

If You Build It, They Will Perform
Before you assemble a team, you need to set clearly defined goals. These should include:

1. To work together as an inspired, results-driven team, which connects opportunity with accountability and feels a sense of urgency.
2. To create a culture in which you support risk, forgive errors, accept diversity, enable each other through trust and are genuinely open to the influence of others.
3. To create a first-class support infrastructure through which you build and maintain a reputation for absolute trustworthiness.
4. To have a passion for continuous improvement

When geese fly in the right formation, the collective lifting power of their wings allows them to achieve twice the distance of a single bird flying alone. So, how can you tell if your team is going to fly? According to Richard Chang's "Building a Dynamic Team," a team should:

• Clearly state missions and goals
• Operate creatively
• Focus on results
• Clarify roles and responsibilities
• Be well organized
• Build upon individual strengths
• Support leadership and each other
• Resolve disagreements
• Communicate openly
• Make objective decisions
• Evaluate its own effectiveness

Team building should be considered a journey, not a destination. It's an ongoing process. The facilitator's role is to help team members realize this when guiding them in the decision-making process.

The ultimate goal in team building is collaboration. When the team has worked together over time and members learn to respect and trust one another, they will develop a relationship built on cooperation. This will carry over into the company's interaction with customers, which should be the goal of every organization. Because employee collaboration positions companies to outperform the competition.

With so much talk about "empowerment" today, team building is a concrete way to help employees effect change within an organization. By putting in place a process which not only hears their voice, but actually listens, a company truly empowers its workers. The result: improved productivity and a healthier bottom line. In short, team building allows a company to not only keep its head above water, but to emerge high and dry above the competition.