Dear Bob ...We have several very well functioning teams in our IT group. They don't all call themselves "teams" ("Systems Crew", for example), but that's what they are.My problem is that they don't see themselves as part of a larger team with common goals. We get comments such as (from an office staff member) "Those open lab guys sit on their butts all day and then I have to help the students find rooms." Or, fr Dear Bob …We have several very well functioning teams in our IT group. They don’t all call themselves “teams” (“Systems Crew”, for example), but that’s what they are.My problem is that they don’t see themselves as part of a larger team with common goals. We get comments such as (from an office staff member) “Those open lab guys sit on their butts all day and then I have to help the students find rooms.” Or, from an open lab person, “The systems guys think they can take down the net at any time, and don’t know what misery that causes.” I can fix the immediate problem (“EVERYBODY should help students.” … “If we don’t reboot that server today, the whole lab will crash”), but not the “them vs. us” problem.We could use some resources, or suggestions, for helping these diverse teams appreciate each other’s problems and purposes.– Managing the menagerie Dear Menageraging …Ah, the old team-spirit-at-the-expense-of-the-larger-team-spirit problem. 143,456th time this month!The dynamics of this are pretty straightforward. It’s in most people’s nature to divide the world into “us” – those we can trust, who understand, and who will watch my back – and “them” – the source of all that’s wrong with the world. When you figure the nature of a strong team is that its members have high levels of trust and alignment of purpose, it’s hard for team members to avoid disparaging everyone else – those with whom they lack a strong sense of purpose, a strong sense of alignment, or both. You aren’t, however, helpless in the face of human nature. You can exploit it to solve the problem. What you can do is to form cross-functional project teams on a regular basis, to force people who consider each other to be “them” to work together enough to start building some “us”-ness with each other. The project’s objective is their shared purpose. Once they’re all on board with it, they’ll figure out the rest with little more required of you than some facilitation to get things started.Oh … one very significant factor required for success: The projects have to be real. If they’re nothing but pretexts for getting the people together, they’ll figure it out pretty quickly.Good luck with it. – BobPowered by ScribeFire. Technology Industry