How and Why to Form Ad Hoc Project Teams
Just one of the team habits you can employ to enhance collaboration
Editor’s Note: This mini-course is a modified excerpt from chapter 8 of Team Habits. Follow the link to get your own copy of the book (or copies for your whole team), which includes more insights on team collaboration and other team habits for improving how your team works and works together.
Remember, too, that we live in Project World! Standing up ad hoc teams isn’t just for work — it’s a strategy that’s equally useful in non-work contexts. Think about family gatherings, holiday planning, school projects, or pulling together community events.
For my whole life, when I’ve seen a problem, my natural tendency has been to look around and see who’s there to help me solve it. It’s a by-product of growing up in a military family and spending my formative years in the Boy Scouts and the Army.
Because I grew up this way, I assumed ad hoc team building was a natural tendency for everyone: see a problem, look around the table, form a team to stand up and solve the problem, and then disband.
As I’ve learned, this isn’t a natural and fluid impulse for many people. Yet it can be an extremely powerful skill to cultivate.
When you teach communities how to create community response teams, it empowers them to be more self-sufficient and develop the capabilities to solve big and small problems. When you teach people within an organization to stand up temporary teams to solve problems and pursue opportunities, they unlock a valuable skill.
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