MEMO

To: Leaders of the Financial Teams of Capital Sales Inc.

From: Team 6
Date: March 25th, 2015
Subject: Inter-team Competition
Congratulations to your teams high performance over the last quarter. It is great to have such
motivated and dedicated employees performing at their highest level possible. Each teams
effort and dedication toward reaching the quarterly sales goals is recognized by the organization.

The organizations success is a sum of its parts; team goals should be aligned with organizational
goals to maximize that sum. Top management views the competitive climate that exists within
the sales department as a strategic advantage - the quarterly sales figures back this up. The
competitive nature between teams has produced highly motivated work teams with strong
identities. Members of teams like these are known to experience considerable job satisfaction
and self-esteem, and generally perform at an exceptional level.
However, the level of competition has escalated to the point where teams are beginning to
undermine each other and play dirty to get ahead. It negatively impacts the collective when an
us versus them mentality arises between workgroups and team interests are placed ahead of
organizational goals - cohesion and collectivism across the organization diminish significantly.
Increasing ones team performance at the expense of anothers does not align with the
organizations values and it ultimately leads to lowered overall performance. Consequently, if
the aggregate underperforms, the bonus funds for the highest performing teams will diminish,
thus, the negative effects will be felt at all levels. The work environment will become
increasingly unpleasant, employees will become exhausted from the competition, and unethical

behavior may develop if this is not remedied. Friendly competition is an asset, but rivalries
become a liability from an organizational standpoint.
To mitigate these issues and prevent any from further arising, we would like to redefine the
organizations goals and work to ensure that the teams understand and align their interests with
those of the organization. We have also designed a new reward structure which goes beyond
financial compensation, allowing for a competitive but fair, high performing environment. We
suggest moving into group and team based awards in the form of team outings and trips, for
instance. These are the steps we suggest for implementing such strategy:
1. Create a highly structured team charter for each team, and a group charter that
encompasses all of the teams. The charter should outline the expectations for
performance goals, communication methods, ethical conduct, and interactive behaviour
between teams.
2. Modify individual team performance rewards and introduce multi-level cross team
rewards. Incentives to reach departmental/organizational team goals that promote crossteam cooperation should be implemented. By creating some interdependence between the
teams, individual team success will partly depend on the performance of out-groups.
3. Conduct performance reviews on an ongoing basis upon team restructuring to evaluate
relationship and team building progress as well as job performance and financial targets.
4. Set attainable quarterly sales targets for each team individually and collectively
There are many benefits to implementing this plan. We can expect to see more consistency in
performance due to interdependence, and quarterly check-ups resulting in higher identity within
teams, and cross-teams. Thank you for your cooperation and we look forward to seeing the
continuing success of the teams.