Teams vs Workgroups

Teams vs workgroups

Understanding the difference between teams & workgroups is critical when setting and aligning OKRs.

A team is a small interdependent group of people (usually 5-9), with cross-functional, complimentary skill sets and mutual accountability for shared outcomes. Thanks to The Wisdom of Teams via Christina Wodtke for this definition.

Think of a string quartet or a basketball team. Members cannot act independently and still achieve their goal. They must be attuned at every moment to what everyone else is doing on the team and act together as a single unit.

By contrast, a workgroup is a group of independent individuals each with their own backlogs of actions, working towards their own individual outcomes, with individual measures of success.

Consider a call-centre or a large construction crew.

Workgroups require coordination but teams require genuine collaboration.

It’s very difficult for workgroups to set OKRs because they ultimately don’t have a common goal. They have many individual goals.

One of the reasons it can be very difficult for senior leadership teams to set OKRs is because they’re often not actually a team but a workgroup made up of leaders of various functions within the organisation.

Often simply pointing out this distinction is enough to help groups of people identify if they are truly a team or acting as more of a workgroup. The key is for them to identify if they have shared outcomes and definitions of success before they attempt to set OKRs together.