Managing teams of skilled professionals gathered on the fly

Years ago, seeking to address an RFP (request for proposal) of a large prospective client, I assembled a team of skilled specialists. I was flattered that they all said “yes” to joining me, knowing only me and the prospective client. None of us, individually, could have met the client’s needs. We trusted one another enough to work together and arrange the details of compensation, etc. at a later date. But, I never gave a thought to how our team would be managed for peak performance.

In the current issue of Harvard Business Review, the author suggests that “…many critical tasks are performed by teams created on the fly, but lack of stability can hinder their performance…It’s one thing to make yourself more efficient, quite another to make a team more efficient, and still another when that team’s membership is in constant flux…

To some degree, technology and pricing policies are creating practices of “teams on the fly” as well as “unbundled services.” With short-term teams assembled on the fly becoming increasingly common, the authors set out to investigate how fluid teams can work better.

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