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James A. Chatfield, Ohio State University Extension, Northeast District/Horticulture and Crop Science; Joseph F. Boggs, Gary Y. Gao, Erik A. Draper, Keith L. Smith, Barbara G. Ludwig, Stephen R. Baertsche, |
Team history and a team's defining moments are important in understanding team development. The ENLTT formed in 1992, during a period of budgetary challenge within the Ohio State University (OSU) College of Agriculture and Ohio State University Extension (OSUE). For example, due to decreased statewide funding at that time, the number of faculty in the horticulture department fell from 30 to 21. This included an early retirement by a key Extension specialist in landscape horticulture. This resulted in the then chairperson of the department calling a meeting of industry clientele; field faculty in Extension; and research, teaching, and field faculty in the horticulture, agronomy, entomology, and plant pathology departments to discuss how to address resource challenges.
In that meeting, several key statements were made. The first was that with the retirement of the landscape horticulture specialist, the "Extension landscape/nursery program" was gone. This statement hung in the room for several beats. It was a not unusual sentiment with regards to a key retirement, but it sounded so wrong.
We all looked around the room, and finally someone spoke up that this was not exactly true. After all, there were numerous Extension agents in the room who had horticulture as their specialty area. There were landscape horticulturists with teaching and research positions in the horticulture department; there were entomologists and plant pathologists and turfgrass agronomists from other departments in the room. In fact, a group of at least 20 people easily came to mind as part of an "Extension landscape/nursery program" at Ohio State.
With that, someone spoke up and asked industry representatives if they would support a transformation of the program. Instead of 20 talented, competent people who loosely knew what each other was doing in the landscape horticulture program, what if we re-organized as a team of 20 talented, competent people who communicated well enough to additionally harness the genius of a team, to seriously run with the ideas of agent specialization and interdisciplinary cooperation? Brian Decker, then president of ONA (now ONLA, the Ohio Nursery and Landscape Association), said that if we developed such a team, "We would not be able to get to the bank fast enough to cash the check."
Talk about defining moments! The rest is history.
From this hook, a team jelled over the next month, coming up with a clear proposal to the industry, asking for financial support for team-building not simply for money to hire a new person or to provide a new service but for new money to encourage development of the team. More on that later, but the important lesson is that our team did not arise from simply saying that teamwork is good or necessary, but from a history that includes several defining moments, including a budgetary challenge and a critical interchange with our stakeholders.