![[PHOTO] Light streaming through a key hole illuminating an old iron key.](../images/ph_findings.jpg)
(Excerpts from a Moravec and Associates Executive Briefing)
Increasingly self-directing and self-managing work teams are core work units in high-performing businesses. They do real work. These are:
Top management increasingly turns to these vehicles to:
The performance team described in these findings is a small number of people, with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, outcomes and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
Team names include Self-Managing, Self-Sufficient, Self-Reliant, Self-Directed Work, Self-Moderating, Self-Regulating, Autonomous, Empowered, High-Engagement, High-Involvement, Real Teams.
The case studies, surveys and lessons learned come from going inside teams to learn how employees feel about working in these organizational teams. All participants in the survey and interviews are members of self-managing work teams.
Those with personal discomfort with self-managing teams most often mention the team approach being too time consuming, too uncertain or too risky.
The majority of self-managing team members believe their teams are very successful in achieving results. This success, however, they say is contingent upon several factors, including a strong commitment to a methodology - self-managing team basics - from top management through team leaders and members.
In achieving their goals, team members struggle with a host of problems. The discipline that self-managing teams require and inefficient meetings top the list, followed by inadequate resources and performance problems among team members. Respondents generally overestimate the leader's role and create unrealistic expectations for team leadership. Over 70% of those who overestimate the leader's responsibilities continue to confuse the leader's tasks with leadership in general.
Almost all recognized the benefits of teamwork values and the potentially useful performance impact of teams. Although 85 percent of team members reported they have received training in how to work on single-leader teams, two-thirds of them claimed the training was inadequate for the unique demands of self-managing teams. Perhaps not surprisingly, those team members who have received adequate coaching from advisors in self-managing team basics are significantly more successful in achieving their objectives than those who have not received the appropriate development.
Teams in service and process industries and small companies are more likely to experience problems than are teams in large companies and industrial settings. This difference probably results from several factors.
Organizational changes such as renewal and rightsizing and the increased use of contract workers affect teams, but not always in a negative way. In the view of respondents, for example, organization renewal and reductions in force actually increased the efficiency of team members, and the presence of temporary workers on teams has enhanced productivity and team success.
Self-managing teams in which participation is voluntary achieve significantly greater overall success than those teams where participation is required. Yet more than three quarters of those team members surveyed are required by management to participate on teams.
One telling part of the one-on-one interviews came in the form of responses to the open-ended question, "What one thing has surprised you most about working on a self-managing team?" Responses ranged across the board, from the positive aspects of achieving new heights in productivity, innovation, accountability and performance, to the more negative issues of leaders and members not receiving on-going coaching on self-managing basics of teams , loosing 'the line of sight' to deliverables and lack of trust among team members and hidden agendas.
The worst times to start self-managing teams, according to the VP Operations of a leading oil company