Organisational Environment
Teams differentiate themselves from their environments as a system. The particularity of teams is that they have two environments which they must consider if they wish to last: the organisation and the members of the team (if you have not yet become familiar with the distinction between system/environment, please first read more about it here).
Without an organisational environment there can be no team. It is only when you integrate the task of a team within other tasks that need to be coordinated, that it becomes a team. This means that the overriding interests of this environment constantly ‘intervene’ in the guiding processes of a team. Thus, no team has autonomy over its goal, its composition, its resources, the interests to which it is exposed, which solutions are accepted, what team culture is possible and what it can, or may, reflect upon. For a team to work well, therefore, it requires the ability to fulfil the expectations of the organisation, and, notwithstanding this restriction of autonomy, to adequately work on achieving its goal. To do so, it is imperative that the members support the autonomy restrictions where they are functional and give appropriate resistance where they are dysfunctional. A team requires both humble adaptation and brave opposition to the organisation. Here, too, action in paradox takes place, however.