Teamwork Doesn’t Take Forever
When I’m out talking about the benefits of teamwork, it’s common to hear a few objections. One of the challenges I hear most frequently is that teamwork takes too long.
I agree that when you are attempting to consider everyone’s opinion and are working to build consensus, this can and often does slow down the planning process. The thing about measuring time that’s important to remember is that what you designate as the start and stop points matters. To me we shouldn’t be measuring just the planning phase of the project when evaluating teamwork. Rather we should measure planning and implementation together.
When you measure the whole project start to finish , then I’m not sure teamwork does take longer. If teamwork helped you make better decisions about what to do and how to do it, and people were more willing to support the process; then you will have saved some time.
