Complacency | Corporate narcissism |
Counterproductive secrecy | Disconnection from reality - not meeting customers, competitors and other industry insiders |
Disengaged team members | Empty promises - words without action |
Excessive structure - narrow roles and a lack of flexibility | Facility shortfall / physical environment |
Failure fatigue - repeated failures that have lowered morale | Failure to align to the goals of an organization (e.g. bringing politics to work) |
Failure to challenge assumptions | Favoritism - recognition, promotions and assignments based on friendship over talent |
Fear of criticism leading to cowardly communication | Groupthink |
Handling ambiguity - requiring too much direction | Handling criticism |
Hands-off - avoidance of details & practical work | Harsh Feedback - feedback intended to embarrass others or discredit them |
Hesitation to share ideas | Inconsistent direction and leadership |
Inflexible - assuming things must be a certain way | Lack of Candor - holding back on critical feedback |
Lack of accountability - not my mistake | Lack of comradery and shared experience |
Lack of entrepreneurial spirit | Lack of initiative - waiting around for instructions |
Lack of ownership - not my problem | Lack of respect for time - leisurely pace to meetings and work |
Lack of standards & process | Lack of urgency - allowing minor issues to derail progress |
Long-term focus - always talking about 5 years later with few results now | Low cooperation |
Low morale | Managing the expectations of stakeholders |
Mediocrity -- fear of conflict and avoidance of action items | Meeting commitments to each other |
Meeting commitments to stakeholders | Neglect of problems - not solving obvious problems |
One-upmanship - trying to look better than others as opposed to adopting a cooperative team spirit | Overcommunication -- too many meetings / emails |
Overdependence on a few key people | Overly democratic decisions without strong leadership direction to provide a sanity check |
Overly political | Overplanning |
Poor working conditions | Promoting value of team to organization |
Red tape | Relationships with stakeholders |
Resistance to change | Respect - negative politics / impoliteness |
Risk avoidance and a lack of calculated risk taking | Sense of purpose - what we are doing matters |
Setting expectations | Short-term focus - addressing problems today in ways that hurt the future |
Skills shortfall / training needs | Unclear goals |
Unclear structure - who does the what? | Underplanning / reactive mode |
Unmanaged risk | Unrealistic expectations - require constant feedback, praise and recognition |
Work ethic | Work-life balance issues |
Summary
A team weakness is any factor that prevents a team from being fully productive and creative. These can be structural issues such as systems, processes and tools. It is also common for team issues to relate to team culture and team management practices.
