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Archive: July 3, 2000

Building Teams in an Outsourced World

Ross Wirth, RWIRTH@citgo.com, asks a very interesting question. We'd love to hear your responses ... so respond ...
TO: teams@thinksmart.com
SUBJECT: TEAMS

Ross says ...
I would like to suggest a topic that has been on my mind for some time, without a clear answer.

Q: How do you build a team in an outsourced world?

With the trend toward increased downsizing even more parts of the company are being outsourced. A sizeable part of the systems programming staff, legal, even parts of customer service have been outsourced. The entire travel department is outsourced now. Manpower even has a staff person housed in our building for managing the part-time administrative staff. Consultants are being employed to do marketing and strategic analysis that would have been done in-house in the past.

We are all working toward a common goal, yet the loyalties are often split between the "client" and the "employer." How do you generate a team feeling with an individual whose involvement is temporary?

Share your ideas and experiences and we'll provide a summary next week.