I recently experienced the pain associated with coaching a team with poor chemistry. It happened within a kaizen event team, so the pain was finite, being that a kaizen event is a rapid improvement of a limited process area. It was, however, an opportunity to learn a few team-formulation lessons, which can be applied to a kaizen event team or any other continuous improvement-oriented team, kaizen circle activity teams, mini-kaizen event teams, or project teams.

Teams must be built around the mission, not the other way around. So, for example, when selecting kaizen event teams, our criteria should encompass a number of items. At the risk of being way too brief and broad-brushed, here are a few of them:

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