Purpose and Mission in Behavioral Norms

In the last byte, we listed the characteristics of a mature group. In today's byte, we look at the aspects of Purpose and Mission as well as Behavioral Norms.

Purpose and Mission: A group could have a purpose or a vision for itself through one of the two methods:

1. The purpose/mission was assigned to the group
2. The purpose/mission emerged from within the group.

In the first case it is also possible that group may reexamine, modify, revise or question the mission; or it may simply accept the mission given to it.

Behavioral Norms: these are standards of behavior that is well-understood by the group members. These could have evolved over time too. These are like the bench marks against which the team members would be evaluated.

These Behavior Norms could be written rules - say something like an attendance policy; or could be informal.

These norms could also evolve around performance and productivity. It has been observed that high-performance teams would set its productivity standards above organizations expectation - so that they could excel, while the average teams set it consistent with the organizational expectations, the non-compliant or counterproductive teams would set its standards below the organizational productivity!