Yet when the chips are on the table, it's the lone rangers who tend to walk away with big promotions, boffo salaries and all the bravos. Business owners talk about supporting the team, but they often structure compensation around star performance, which penalizes mentoring and other good business practices.

As the business climate gets tougher before it gets better, it's time to walk the talk if you want to grow. Owners will need all the teamwork they can get in 2003, experts say. So you'd be wise, they say, to rethink your policies and maybe the entire compensation system. Find ways to truly recognize collaboration, and you'll be better positioned to grow.

How can a business put rewards to smarter use?

Here are some companies that beat the competition by rewarding teams, and also some ideas to put money where your motivation should be.

When companies recognize teamwork with tangible rewards, they become more productive and better at retaining employees. Besides boosting profits, a stable staff cuts the costs of recruiting and training. 

"The traits these companies have in common are that they put people on teams and they pay teams real money," Jennings says. "They do not encourage lone wolf or star performance, even for the CEO." And another common thread: The companies do not lay off workers when times turn hard. They find ways to pull together to cope and compete. They share a managerial mindset that sees employees as assets rather than as costs.

Nucor, a steel company headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., pays each worker only a $20,000 annual base salary, but provides an additional $80,000 (on average) when the teams of six to 12 workers meet targets. Everyone's paycheck depends on how much steel his or her team produced. Everyone shares equally in bonuses.

Nucor has had 131 quarters of profitability, and an average of 20% annual growth, says Jennings. And that's in an industry that's been shrinking for years.

As you know, automatic salary increases have become as exotic as company-paid pensions. But if you think nouveau pay-for-performance policies motivate teamwork, think again. Variable pay flows toward individual accomplishment, too.

In its 2002-03 survey of company budgets for salary increases, WorldatWork (formerly the American Compensation Association) found that 65% of small businesses have variable pay policies. Yet a scant 30% used group or team awards. Again, it's lone performers that rate; 82% of small businesses used variable pay for special individual recognition and 74% for individual incentive awards.

If you want to build teams, you need to work at restructuring your reward systems. Begin with communication, not cash.

"Step back and set the right expectations," advises Rodger Stotz, managing consultant at Maritz, an international research and performance-improvement company based in St. Louis. Develop in your managers and staff an appreciation for the potential of teamwork.

Here are four key steps:

1. Make sure your words and efforts coincide. Don't talk up teamwork and then empower the player who always goes to the hoop and never passes. "Live the example," Stotz says.
2. Share experiences that validate team achievements. Send around press clips or white papers that track data. Take the staff on a field trip to interact with a company that depends on team compensation. Provide anecdotes about what you've seen and why collaboration works.
3. Get customer and employee feedback to test how it's going and to tap staff anxiety or buy-in. Keep surveying.
4. Quantify how employees and teams contribute to the bottom line. Called "line of sight" by the compensation pros, this means each worker must see a direct path between his or her effort and the impact on profit.

Small businesses have an obvious advantage. Employees can measure their critical roles in small companies much more easily than in large corporations.

"If the owner is reticent about profits, he can offer access to team performance numbers or a surrogate profit number or a percentage of the internal budget to set up the line of sight," Stotz says.

There are options to encourage teamwork that are less radical than company-wide policies such as Nucor's.

Typically, profit sharing or annual bonus programs are based on a range of targets and are awarded as a percentage of individual salaries.

For example, if an owner's goal is a net profit of $500,000 for the year, bonuses might kick in for any profit over $300,000. An employee might get an additional 1% of his salary for every $25,000 to $50,000 that the company nets over $300,000. You can up the ante by boosting rewards at the upper end — in this case, say, 2% to 4% for anything over $450,000.

Project teams can work similarly, with awards triggered by a range of deadlines, budget parameters or by meeting or exceeding goals. If the company is public, you can also consider real or phantom stock options or equity awards.

Rewarding employees for referrals will further encourage team spirit. Three out of five U.S. companies (59%) offer financial rewards when staffers bring in new employees, according to a recent WorldatWork survey. The largest group of companies award as much as $1,000 and up to $5,000 when referred applicants are hired.

Then there's the old standby. "A spot bonus for performance can be a sharp, quick return. But the policy has to be well thought out," says Kay Schmitke, manager of research at WorldatWork. A $50 bonus may be all you can manage, but it's too little and even offensive to teams that work overtime or full out for weeks.

So don't make cash the only award. On the line at Saturn, the car manufacturer now synonymous with team spirit, the team reward was a Hostess Twinkie. Saturn broke all records for bulk orders of the tasty treats.

You can hold an award ceremony in the office or at a more formal evening venue to grant plaques, certificates or even funny T-shirts — each of which can be put on display. You can host award dinners at local restaurants, either for the entire team or as gifts for an employee and a partner. Weekend getaways are always a treat. Other possibilities:

• Sports events, concert or theater tickets
• Time off or flexible hours for a specified time
• Newspaper ads or billboards that thank the team
• Donated services or money to a cause designated by employees
• Special notices sent to customers that recognize the team

Just make sure rewards stay matched to the behavior you want to motivate. "Incentives are like fire," Stotz says. "They can warm or burn you." Occasionally, when unmanaged or frozen in place, incentives become the main reason people work, instead of the reward for special achievement.

With weak profits and tight resources still on the horizon, teamwork can be your smartest strategy for growth. Instead of starting the year with the same old lecture, think about putting your money where your mouth is.