Teamwork is the engine that drives many improvement efforts and contributes to commitment of staff as well as to the of culture of your organisation. Creating teams allows you to apply diverse skills and experiences to your processes and to the capacity for required problem solving during the different phases of an initiative. They provide an underlying basis of experience and history for your improvement effort and are a vehicle through which you allow all individuals to participate in that effort. Depending on the size of the initiative not only must individuals cooperate within teams, the teams must also cooperate together throughout the institution. An atmosphere of teamwork should permeate your institution, affecting not only formal team efforts but also each individual's interaction in the institution. Often encouraging teamwork involves teaching people who already work together to consciously act as a team with own resources, tasks and responsibilities. Your process can benefit by turning these natural work groups into permanent teams whose objective is the continuous improvement of the processes they own. Therefore:

• Work toward inclusion of everyone in an improvement team
• Support and reinforce team behaviour
• Facilitate team development and activity