Team Structure and Success

During my four summers in high school, I got to be part of a successful team through working at my school’s bookstore. At our high school, students needed to buy textbooks and supplies (for various elective classes) the day of registration. This meant that after students were done getting their IDs and taking care of administrative obligations to enroll in school, they had to pay fees and buy textbooks through the bookstore.

The staff at my high school’s bookstore had 30 employees consisting of 24 high school students and six alumni college students. My assumption was that the college students continued coming back to work because they had a pleasant experience working there, got a .25 cent raise every year, and was convenient in that they only had to work during the summer and didn’t have to go through the application process again.

The 30 employees were divided into 4 stations where each student had to go through after registration. The first station had 5 cash registers, and students paid mandatory fees and other fees for their respective classes. At the second station, the employees had to find the correct books according to each student’s schedules. While we were getting the books, the students would be waiting in a room until they were called to the third station. The third station required each employee to verify with each student that they have received the right text books and supplies for their respective classes. Finally, the last station was a checkout station for the textbooks and supplies with 8 cash registers.  

Comparing my high school bookstore with various structures from the book, I would say that the bookstore would most closely resemble the one boss or the simple hierarchy configuration. I am not too aware of the upper management at the bookstore, but I personally got to only interact with my co-workers and manager. Within the one-boss configuration, the manager would be our one boss and by title, he had authority over the employees and makes almost all the decisions for our group.

However, I would say that information did not flow directly from the manager to the employees. At each station, there was at least one alumni college student who has been working there for at least two years. These alumni students did most of the training for new employees and communicated often with the manager. Whenever I had a question, I would immediately report to the older workers rather than the manager himself because it saved a lot of time. I also felt that the alumni workers were more knowledgeable about each of the stations rather than our manager who usually took part in logistical and clerical duties. Our bookstore was much like the baseball team described in the book in that employees can be transferred from one team to another because the tasks at each station are not too complex. Also, a change in our manager wouldn’t have made a significant difference in our team performance.

I believe that this group is considered successful because we were able to accomplish all of our tasks with minimal complaints from the customers (students) and there was little to no tension within the group. We were able to work together as a successful team because of the size of our group, familiarity of our tasks and roles, and fun team dynamic.

The book describes an optimal size for an efficient team being somewhere between two and twenty-five people. Although our team consisted of 30 employees, having less than ten people at each station made things more manageable. It can be assumed that because there were smaller teams within a team, there would be some kind of division among the whole group. However, because 30 was still a relatively small number of employee, it wasn’t hard to getting to know everyone on the team.

Also, in addition to the college students, many of the high school students came back to work at the bookstore. Because there were many returning employee, they didn’t need to go through training and was able to perform their task even more efficiently the second time around. Through our summers at the bookstore, all the employees were able to build a close bond which allowed us to enjoy working and keep each other accountable.

Through the effective team structure and other various components within the bookstore, I was able to experience what it meant to be part of a highly performing team.