PREPARING
AND TRAINING THE
WORK GROUP
Presented March 29, 1995
The University of Houston
College of Technology
This paper was written by
Grady McAllister. It was completed as a research project
for a class in Occupational Technology at the University of
Houston. The ideas expressed do not represent the views of
the University of Houston or the College of Technology.
© 1995, 2007 by Grady
McAllister. All Rights Reserved.
The main "work
to be done" is actually the movement of information. The
mere interrelating of people by selected information is
now the principal source of wealth in the electric age.
. . such speed-ups of information have ended the divisions
of delegated authority in favor of the "authority of knowledge."
— Marshall
McLuhan, Understanding Media , 1964
Pacing about on a speakers
platform, voice booming, Tom Peters tells his audience that
he can boil his entire management philosophy down to one sentence:
"Crazy times call for crazy organizations ."
The new marketplace in one
word is "fashion." Every market is becoming a fashion market.
"That means: fickle, fleeting, ephemeral, faddish, and unfair."
Peters says you can thrive in the marketplace if you'll:
Free the human
imagination . . . Get close to and serve the customer.
. . Customize products and services . . . Abandon everything;
continuously reinvent yourself.. . Access the brainware
around you. . . Know the front line . . . Demolish the
monolith. . . Create teams that allow people to express
their personalities.
Peters says a corporation
today must be "curious." Don't expect the personnel in the
personnel department to hire curious people. Peters says they
operate by this unwritten rule:
"Thou shalt not hire a person
who has an unexplained nanosecond in their life past the age
of three."
They want the person who
maintained a 4.0 grade average through graduate school and
"has not had an interesting thought in their entire life."
They don't want any people
who drop out of college, spend a year and a half in Europe,
and offer no explanation. That, says Peters, is just the kind
of behavior to look for when you're ready to hire curious
people. He adds: "Hire a few genuine off-the-wall types. Collect
weirdoes."
Peters says he is totally
serious about this: "This is coldly logical stuff." Nobody
disagrees that markets are weird, "but how are you going to
conquer weird markets with stuffed shirts?"
The pressure to conquer weird
markets (and to re-conquer world markets) has led to teams
as a way to focus on quality, encourage innovation, and empower
the workforce.
According to Jack Gordon,
editor of Training magazine, the vogue for teams grew out
of the quality circle idea, "the lone Japanese import actually
welcomed by American manufacturers."
Because of their related
origin, total quality management (TQM) and self-directed teams
(SDT) are two strategies that are often talked about in the
same breath. Yet, they are very different ideas. Lawrence
Holpp, of Quality Partners, a Pittsburgh consulting firm,
writes: "It's one thing to replace capital equipment, introduce
a statistical process control system, or train everyone in
customer service. It's quite another to empower workers to
decide questions of cost, quality, vendor relations, and administrative
practices."
Holpp says that TQM is "a
performance management system" based upon a "Gold standard
of Customer First." It means "continuous improvement" throughout
the organization. The organization provides the vision and
the values.
SDT's are relatively small,
functionally focused units which manage their own affairs.
Typically, they manage work hours, work inputs and outputs,
quality, productivity, and costs. Pure SDT's set budgets,
pay, and bonuses. They hire and fire team members.
Holpp says that one difference
between SDT's and TQM is clear: "You can not have SDT's without
an obsession with quality, but you can throw your resources
into the quality ring without swearing allegiance to SDT's."
The very popularity of "teams"
means that a "team" can now mean almost any kind of work group.
These groups might have little to do with total quality management
or SDT's. Jack Gordon writes:
These days
the word "team" might be referring to a group of production
workers in a radically restructured company. On the other
hand, the term has grown so fashionable that the speaker
just as easily could be talking about a department that
functions no differently than it did in 1962: "That's
right, J.B., our sales team really got out there this
month and kicked some—"
To find out what teams are
really doing, Training surveyed organizations with 100 or
more employees.
Over 82% reported that
they had at least some employees working in a group identified
as a team. Of those, 45% were classified as permanent work
teams, 30% as temporary project teams, and 18% as permanent
or long-term cross-functional teams.
On the question of "self-directed"
work teams, only 42% of the organizations with teams claimed
to have teams of that type. The survey also found that the
autonomy which a team enjoys can range from setting work
schedules (a full 69%) to firings (only 21 % overall, 10%
in companies with 10,000 or more employees).
Richard S. Wellins, co-author
of Inside Teams (1994), says a manager should do the following
to create self-directed work teams:
1. Design the team "for
success." Learn about the SDT's and decide if teams "are
right for your culture." Give employees the organization's
ideas on empowerment and teams. Enter a "workplace redesign"
process and "take a hard look at the work and its systems."
Launch the SDT's and keep track of their progress.
2. Select the "team players."
Identify people who are "most likely to succeed" in the
new system. Be sure the process is fair, legal, and efficient.
3. Train the team to
succeed. Besides their regular job skills, training should
include "team interaction skills" and "skills for identifying
and implementing improvements."
4. Initiate "leadership
transitions". The team begins to control and schedule
work, appraise and discipline employees, and even hire
and fire. The manager coaches and trains the team. The
manager helps the team deal with suppliers and work with
the other parts of the organization.
5. Reward the team members
after they (1) learn more about a specific process , (2)
learn another job on the team, and (3) learn leadership
skills.
.
LEADING THE TEAM
\Typically, a team leader
is someone who had been a supervisor. This person forms
the link between the team and the rest of the organization.
The leader may also be a facilitator, conducting meetings
and teaching group process skills to the team members. How
well leaders handle these roles depends on how well the
organization prepares them.
Team management consultant
Harlan R. Jessup says that the best arrangement may be "shared
leadership." These leadership assignments can include:
· A "moderator"
who conducts the meetings
· A schedule coordinator
· A recorder who
keeps minutes, attendance records, and overtime and vacations
schedules
· A goal-tracker
who measures and posts performance
· A training coordinator
· A "cheerleader"
who schedules celebrations and seeks recognition from
management
But who is responsible for
the entire team? Houston Consultant Neill Carson says, "You
can obscure the issues around accountability, but you can
not avoid them."
Accountability, he says,
tends to take on a different meaning when applied to a team:
"Have you even heard of a team being fired for doing a poor
job? Ever heard of a team being promoted for doing an outstanding
job?"
Sometimes a manager has
to explain a team's poor performance, but there is no one
in particular to explain it to the manager.
Carson recommends these
guidelines for managing teams: (1) Don't let the team choose
its own leader.(2) Help the leader form the team and get
the required resources.(3) Assign overall responsibility
to only one person in the team. (4) Conduct reviews and
make any needed adjustments in deadlines. (5) If the work
is unsatisfactory, counsel and redirect the leader.
Carson concludes: "The
fear that individual leadership and accountability will
somehow suppress or destroy team effort is groundless. In
fact, the opposite is true. Ambiguous accountability destroys
morale and leads people to seek political solutions to problems
instead of business solutions."
FACILITATING THE TEAM
For people to work as a
team they must exchange information, communicate, and reach
decisions. The person who manages this process is the facilitator.
Rebecca Sisco, a contributing
editor for Training magazine, says, "The group is only as
good as its facilitator." By their very nature, teams call
for meetings lead by rank and file employees. That, she
says, is "part of what empowerment is all about.
"How well the meetings
go affects the team's decisions: "The leader must ensure
that the group dynamics present no barriers to finding a
good solution."
The facilitator lets the
group make its own decisions but keeps it away from disasters----such
as violating a contract.
Sisco makes a case for
splitting up the roles of team leader and facilitator. The
team leader can still conduct the meeting, but the facilitator
sees that group makes a systematic decision.
EMPOWERMENT
According to a study at
Cornell Medical College, the jobs with the greatest stress
are those which combine high demands with a low level of
autonomy. When organizations empower people to make their
own decisions autonomy is the result---one of the ingredients
for a self-directed work team.
Writing in Training &
Development Journal , Clay Carr points to what management
can do to empower a work force. He says: "Self-managed workers,
especially in self-directed work teams, are a lot like gyroscopes:
The system empowers them and sets their direction, and then
they function on their own."
Carr says empowerment is
not a one-dose event but a continuous process. This process
needs help from each of the managers above the team in the
organization. The manager supports. guides, and coordinates
the work teams. There is less focus on the manager's power
and more on the manager's influence.
Carr describes five roles
for the manager of an empowered work force:
1. The manager assures
that the goals of the workers line up with those of the
organization.
2. The manager coordinates
the teams so that their efforts support each other.
3. The manager helps teams
learn decision-making processes and guides the decisions
to fit the goals of the organization.
4. The manager provides
an environment of "continuous learning" and acts as a "learning
agent."
5. The manager creates
and maintains an atmosphere of trust. Empowerment, says
Carr, "exists only where there is trust."
Writing for the Training
and Development "Training 101" series, Don Kirkpatrick asks,
"How much empowerment is too much or not enough?"
He offers these factors
to consider: (1) the culture of the organization; (2) the
need for assistance; (3) the amount of risk involved; (4)
the qualifications of the employees; (5) training and decision
making--how well the employees have been trained to make
their own decisions; (6) the urgency of the decisions.
Writing for the same "Training
101" column, Frederick Betof and Frederick Harwood suggest
these principles for empowerment:
(1) People are part of
the management and can improve the organization.
(2) Good ideas they have
will be implemented.
(3) Suggestions they make
will be appreciated and rewarded even if they are not accepted.
(4) People can be trusted
with responsibility.
(5) They are respected
for their ideas and judgment.
.
TEAM DEVELOPMENT
IN ACTION
The variety of management
and human resource material which might be taught to teams
is virtually endless. It can range from traditional topics
like time management and meeting skills to such politically
charged areas as diversity training. Most team training
can apply to any work group, not just the self-directed
variety. The following example applies only to work groups
which are switching to SDT's.
SELLING THE TEAM ON SDT's
When one has
been hurt by new technology, when the private person or
corporate body finds its entire identity endangered by
physical or psychic change, it lashes back in a fury of
self-defense
Marshall McLuhan,
War and Peace in the Global Village, 1968
When an organization converts to SDT's, its employees often
resist the idea must be sold on the idea of a team job structure.
Video: A Team Leader's
Day . Description and summary:
Meet Jackie Ewer. Jackie
works at a Tylenol factory in Ft. Washington, Pennsylvania.
Her supervisor job evaporated
when the facility switched to self-directed work teams.
Jackie now acts as team leader and facilitator for a group
which packs Tylenol in blister packs.
At first, Jackie found
the change threatening. Team members received responsibilities
that had once been hers. But now she is pleased with her
new role. Her role now is to empower the Blister Team to
"think and act for themselves."
We see the team performing
tasks once performed only by supervisors and staff specialists.
We see the former supervisor Jackie leading meetings once
considered the exclusive right of upper management. We see
her meeting with outside venders, engineering and purchasing
people, and other production teams. She manages "the boundaries
and future of the operation" while the team handles the
day-to-day events.
Early in the day, the team
votes to shut down the line when an oil leak develops. Fifteen
minutes later the team has an opportunity for "continuous
learning" when they resolve a type of problem they had never
seen before.
Later, we see a disagreement
between team members and venders. Jackie reinforces the
team's decision to go against the venders' advice.
As the end of the shift
approaches, Jackie focuses on a long-time problem with the
second shift. If she was still a supervisor, Jackie might
have brought the complaint directly to the supervisor of
the other shift. Acting in the role of team leader, she
coaches the team on how they can all confront the people
on the second shift.
The video ends with this
observation: "Rather than fragmenting people at the bottom,
the people at the bottom are responsible for the job as
a whole."
CONCLUSION
There is nothing new about
participative management or the idea of allowing decisions
at the lowest possible level. What is new is the emphasis
on work teams as such.
But teams may not be right
for every situation. Brian Dumaine writes in Fortune : "You
don't use teams with insurance salesmen and long-haul truckers."
Even when they are appropriate, he says, they are often
launched in isolation without proper support or training.
If that happens, the team can "turn around and bite you."
In the final analysis,
any work group is just a collection of individuals, and--for
a work group to really work---it must allow each person
to contribute as an individual.
The
Vasthead is the professional web site of
Grady McAllister of Houston, Texas.
http://vasthead.com
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Betof, Edward and Frederick Harwood.
"Raising Personal Empowerment." Training and Development
Journal , September 1992, pp. 31-34.
Carr, Clay. "Managing Self-Managed
Workers." Training and Development Journal, September 1991,
pp. 36-42.
Carson, Neill. "The Trouble with
Teams." Training , August 1992, pp. 38-40.
Dumaine, Brian. "The Trouble with
Teams." Fortune , 5 September 1994, pp. 86-92.
Cowley, Geoffrey. "Dialing the Stress-Meter
Down." Newsweek, 6 March 1995, p. 62.
Gordon, Jack. "Work Teams: How Far
Have They Come? " Training , October 1992, pp. 59-65.
Holpp, Lawrence. "Making choices:
Self-Directed Teams or Total Quality Management?" Training
, May 1992, pp. 69-76.
Jessup, Harlan. "New Roles in Team
Leadership." Training and Development Journal , November
1990, pp. 79-83.
Kirkpatrick, Don. "How Much Empowerment
Is Too Much or Not Enough?" Training and Development Journal
, September 1992, pp. 29-31.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding
Media. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964
McLuhan, Marshall. War and Peace
in the Global Village. New York: Bantam Books, 1968.
Peters, Tom. Liberation Management:
The Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties
(Video recording). Schaumburg, IL: Video Publishing House,
1993, one video cassette with training guide, VHS, 60 minutes
Sisco, Rebecca. "What To Teach Team
Leaders." Training , February 1993, pp. 62-67.
A Team Leader's Day (Video recording).
Philadelphia: Blue Sky Productions, 1990, VHS, 60 minutes.
Shot on video.
Wellins, Richard S. "Building a
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, December 1992, pp. 24-28.
Wellins, Richard S., William C. Byham,
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