This week’s Entrepreneur University comes courtesy of Roger M. Ingbretsen. Roger is the Principal of Ingbretsen Consulting and with more than three decades of operational and leadership experience, he has developed a sharp eye for how organizations and their leaders can retool and become strategically focused. Roger shares his advice with us on how to build effective teams for your company.

“Teams and team work can be very effective in many organizational settings if, and only if, they are formed correctly and used to solve problems that are best resolved by several people working together. Teams and team work for the sake of teams, is most often a failure. The first thing that must be decided, does it truly make sense to form a team or teams. Next, will the time, money and effort expended obtain the desired results? Then, how long will the team/s need to be in existence to accomplish its objective? If you are serious about establishing “formal” or even “informal” teams in your organization the following 21 secrets can increase your success.

1. Think of teamwork as a beautiful delivery “system or device.”

2. Individual “innovative ideas” are needed for a team to implement.

3. Think of the team as the “entire company.”

4. Give all the people the opportunity to “build a legacy together.”

5. An effective team is a group of people with a “shared purpose.”

6. Teams require a lot of “hard work” because it goes against traditional thinking.

7. None of us are as smart as all of us! – If we are all truly “prepared and engaged.”

8. Beware of group thinking – “If everyone is thinking the same… someone isn’t thinking!”

9. You must “reward teamwork” if you want it to work.

10. “Strong teams begin with strong people” – individuality and individual excellence are key elements and ingredients of a strong team.

11. People must have both the “mind-set” and the “skill-set” for effective teams to occur.

12. You need team “decision-making” at all levels within the organization if you are going to keep pace with the competition.

13. You need to see the “interdependence” between all members of the organization – who needs who and why, then you will start to truly understand teamwork.

14. As a leader, have you ever been part of an “exceptional team” at any time in your life? What did it feel like? What did you learn? What can you share? What can you apply in your area of responsibility?

15. Teams and team members must be truly “interdependent” and value working with others.

16. The more specialized knowledge becomes the more important teams become when working in “highly complex” organizations.

17. To work well, teams must become “the way we do things.” It is a long term…top down, way of doing business.

18. When you focus on an end-to-end process…on “seeing things as a system”…with many people trying to accomplish common objectives, then you begin to see the power of teams.

19. High “trust relationships” – the ability to work through differences – is a key ingredient for team success.

20. As in any successful organizational environment “a great attitude” by all team members is necessary.

21. The team must develop a “passion to win” not for the teams sake, but rather for the greater good of the organization.”