Self Managing Teams – What Do They Want If They Don’t Want Managing?

There seem to be some problems with the idea of leading a team that is meant to be managing itself. What is there left for the leadership to do? How do you balance the needs of direction with the principles of self management? What do they want if they don’t want management?The answers lie in recognising the difference between business strategy and management strategy. The former is the way the organisation generates wealth or viability and the latter the way that resources are organised to deliver the business strategy.Leadership, then, retains responsibility for the business itself, the direction and strategic intent of the organisation. The job of self managed teams is to take more charge of their management strategy; to have more say and accountability in how they organise themselves and their environment to more effectively deliver the business strategy.There is, of course, a matching process and iterations between the two. Capacity, for example, must be considered when developing business strategy and the job of providing capacity falls within the remit of management strategy. Capacity might be numbers of bodies, technology employed or the amount of skills and brainpower available for the job.But organisations should be absolutely clear that business strategy dominates. Failure to recognise the realities of this dominance is what, it seems, causes organisations to engage in lengthy and costly change initiatives at a purely management strategy level which must fail because they are not aligned with, or more accurately subservient to, the way the organisation generates wealth.Schemes to motivate and involve people in the business are not, of themselves, pointless. However, once they become (or if they were originally) disconnected from the business or distract from getting the business done, they seem to very soon arrive in the apparently pointless box and lose the explicit sponsorship or implicit support of top management.
A commercial organisation exists to create a sustainable existence which provides value to the stakeholders. Like it or not, the organisation’s primary purpose is not to create worthwhile and satisfying work for its employees. That purpose is secondary to wealth creation (or viability if the organisation is non-profit) and only exists in order to serve its value creation aims.
This is the curse of the HR department, so often either the authors of the people initiatives or the leadership’s new idea torch carriers, who develop a reputation for not understanding the business. Perhaps they do and perhaps they don’t understand the business – the problem is that the initiatives so often do not readily demonstrate a tangible benefit to the organisation’s primary purpose.Marketing departments can suffer from this too, and we have all experienced the bemused attitude of operational people to the latest marketing campaign which seems to be giving the stuff away or is engaged in arty-crafty pretty logos. Luckily for them they can point to research (where it exists) to show the reason for, and tangible results of, their efforts and thus re-connect to the wealth generation cause. If it doesn’t work then a new campaign or change of agency will cover the tracks and, (with the notable exception of Hoover and the travel tickets fiasco) corporate memory fades.Perhaps there also exists a level of recognition, even at the operational coal face, that marketing is necessary and does add to the value equation. In the end the product or service is being promoted and sold in one way or another and this means that some of the excesses of the marketing budget can be forgiven. HR, regrettably, may not be able to point to this valuable connection. If Marketing gets it right, things get tangibly better. If HR gets it right, it seems that things just stay the same or don’t get worse.
So what is it that self managed teams need if they are to get the leadership the business deserves? Mostly they need information to help their thinking and clarify their role. This can be described in seven areas:-1. How the business generates wealth (or viability)
2. Where they have a say
3. Which activities are worthwhile and valuable
4. What kind of teams the organisation needs
5. What skills or competencies are necessary
6. What information is there to help manage
7. What needs to change1. How the business generates wealth (or viability)
People in the organisation need to understand how the business makes money if they are to take responsibility for organising themselves. What, precisely, are the activities the organisation is engaged in for the purposes of wealth creation? If the organisation is not for profit then wealth could be rephrased as viability or continued growth.This is not to deny the existence of a higher purpose which underpins the creation and maintenance of the organisation and its values. This probably exists now or in the past. It may be explicit or implicit in the organisation’s day-to-day activities, but it is not in itself a useful tool for organising resources.So, what does the organisation concentrate on to generate and sustain the wealth and viability of the enterprise? What are the things it needs to be really good at to do that? Consider, for a few moments, Macdonalds and Microsoft. Even if you don’t know what their visions and missions are you could hazard a reasonably educated guess at what these activities are and thus sketch out at least some elements of their business strategies.
To help you, you might be able to include or eliminate some of the following from a possible list:-What are Microsoft or McDonalds engaged in?· Eradicating famine in the world
· Helping nations to communicate for world peace
· Satisfying appetites
· Developing software which installs itself and works without having to read the manual or be a computer graduate
· Making fast food readily available and affordable
· Creating the single standard for PC software for the general public
· Tying consumers in to regular upgrades which increases their spend
· Making computing readily available and affordable
· Creating new and interesting insights to international cuisine
· Developing applications which bring (and need) more computing power to the home and office desktop
· Encouraging the study and development of new programming languages for the betterment of mankind
· Clean, safe and entertaining environments for children and parents
· Raising the standards of nutrition and health in the familyInterestingly, you might also be motivated to work for them and help them achieve those strategies and still not know the higher purpose to which they aspire, if there is one. At the same time, of course, you could be vehemently opposed to what they stand for and the very reverse could be true. Nothing would make you work for them – and no HR or total quality initiative would make any difference to your motivation.Notice the distinct lack of vision and mission statements here. It could just be possible, but it rarely if ever is, that the vision and mission statements encompass these activities. The more frequent reality is that they end up sounding like a religious text crafted by the pilgrim fathers for the lasting benefit of humanityThey may truly speak from the hearts, minds and values of the organisation’s leaders but they are of little value in helping to organise people and machinery to get the work out. Too often though they become another form of PR or Marketing communication so they have to sound altruistic and create the illusion of the organisation only existing for the betterment of its customers and the world as a whole. They also carry the burden of all sounding the same and thus invoke the cynicism of middle management and the workforce who feel sure they’ve read that before somewhere. How many companies are apparently engaged in being number one choice, saving the world from global warming, being good neighbours, creating healthy citizens, delighting customers, exceeding expectations and inventing the future?The business leadership needs to spend more time on getting people and teams connected to a clear understanding of the business strategy and much, much less time creating poetry and artwork.2. Where they have a saySecondly, teams need to understand the boundaries of their authority and influence. What do they have a say in? On what subjects and topics do they have a vote and which ones do they not? There is a danger of confusion between involvement and participation here. There are some areas where they will not have a vote – they will simply have to live with the decisions of the leadership. Their level of involvement will be that they get to understand the reasons for a particular strategy’s existence but will not get to participate in the decision making process as to whether it’s a good one or not.We all live with a government speed limit – and show varying degrees of commitment to it – we may or may not know it was introduced on a temporary basis as a fuel saving measure and we may or may not agree with its continuance. The fact is it goes with the territory of driving, we actually don’t have a choice if we want to continue driving unhindered by the forces of law and order.Most employees in most commercial organisations don’t get a say in what the profit, return on investment, acquisition, divestment, dividends, advertising and promotion, levels of remuneration and location of the organisation are or will be in the future.Unpalatable as it may sometimes be, honesty seems to be the best policy. Being straight with teams on what they are not responsible for and where they don’t have a vote is vitally important. Without this, sometimes brutal, truth a corporate untruth emerges and people at first feel they have a say in everything and then feel righteous indignation or downright cynicism when they discover they’ve been tricked. In most cases, of course, they haven’t – but it doesn’t stop them feeling like they have.3. Which activities are worthwhile and valuable
Thirdly, they need to clearly understand which activities they need to engage in to add to the value creation and which activities are of less importance or may even detract from adding value. This might well lead to some disappointment. People may not be able to pursue their pet project or “change the world” innovation if the organisation needs to just get better at doing what it does and/or improve the margin on the products or services it delivers. There may well be improvements through innovation of the processes, but engaging in unofficial research into new products and markets could waste time and, in any case, be outside the team’s remit.
This does not necessarily mean banning the activities which don’t create immediate value. Rather it is about clearly defining the hierarchy of importance. First, these things need to be done because they directly contribute to the business aims. Second, these things could be done if there is spare time and resource.4. What kind of teams the organisation needsThe team needs to understand what it is about the nature of the team that makes it worthwhile having one and making it work. Another unpalatable truth emerges. Teams are hard work. Not always very hard work but always requiring a level of effort to make them consistently work effectively and maintain the best aspects of their co-operative endeavours for the organisation’s benefit.Performance is the cause and effect of teams (see The Power of Teams, Katzenbach and Smith). Their purpose is an output which can only be achieved through people working together in some fashion. That fashion or structure is determined by the required performance and output. Here again we have the relationship and hierarchy of business and management strategies. The business strategy defines what the performance requirement is and also defines by implication what the management strategy, the way the team is organised and structured – not the other way round.Some jobs, tasks and activities are not suited to interdependent teamwork. Some are best suited to individual endeavour and some are more fitting for groups of individuals with a level of information sharing and exchange. Sculptors and painters rarely work in teams, the nature of their work is individual. That distinction is fairly obvious. But organisations sometimes call collections of linked individuals “teams” and try to impose team-working disciplines on them which are inappropriate to their performance requirement.Sales teams for example are rarely, in fact, teams. They are united in a corporate endeavour and need to share information and market intelligence but often need to achieve as individuals within their prescribed geographical area or market segment. Further, they are often rewarded on an individual commission basis which must act against truly co-operative working. They may engage in productive meetings to share customer feedback, best practices and competitor knowledge but they are less likely to be interested in actively canvassing, cold calling and closing the sale for their colleague’s commission benefit. That is not what they are primarily paid for and the organisation would be foolhardy if it provided structures, resources, training and time to teach them coaching skills to try to make it happen. Better that the organisation uses its money to make the information sharing quick and effective and the reward systems conducive to getting out on the road and selling more.5. What skills or competencies are necessaryIf teams and individuals are to be able to perform to their potential they need to understand what skills and competencies are required and valued by the organisation. This is not an excuse for fine sounding words about “respect for the individual” etc. Setting out the behaviours and practices, skills and competencies which match with and thus help achieve the business strategy allows teams to examine their current and required capacity and make plans to fill the gap. Their job is the management strategy, the organisation and development of the resources required to deliver.The mention of job descriptions might send a shudder through the new age notion of self organising and self managing, but they are not incompatible. Systems and structures need organising principles in order to flourish, the alternative is chaos or, at best, development of areas which are inappropriate and wasteful. Organising principles are the key. This is not an exhaustive list of what gets done in what order and when, but the description of the bits of the job and skills or competencies which really matter.6. What information is there to help manageSources of information, expertise and feedback either exist or need to be developed to help the team members track their achievement and measure their progress. This may mean education in the hitherto mystical realms of the management accounts and nearly always results in recognising a need for less data but more information. When accounts were invented it was not with production in mind. The conventions of financial accounting are not immediately useful to a team with a particular focus on information which pertains to their area of activity. The accounts function may need to re-cut the data to make it meaningful and useful to the productive team. This is rarely a “right first time” activity. The team may not know what it wants or may think it needs everything because it must be useful if it’s there.Development of a self managing ethic does not mean the team is on its own and has to learn from bitter experience and mistakes. The organisation possesses skills, knowledge and experience which the team should have access to. How that resource is used needs to be defined and might involve the education or re-education of the manager or leader in the most appropriate training or coaching role to support the team in its learning rather than taking control back when the team doesn’t know how.7. What needs to changeIn all of the preceding items there may be a mixture of things which currently exist and those which don’t. The team will need to understand what needs to start, what needs to stop and what needs to be continued. This might be in their own area or in the role and responsibilities of other areas, teams and the management of the organisation. This should, in effect, be a summary of the other six areas and thus should not come as a surprise – it could even be said to be self-evident. However in times of change it is important for the leadership to spell it out unequivocally so that people have the greatest opportunity to get the message.So there is a job for the leadership after all, and it needs thought, planning and frequent revisiting to make it valuable. It’s a job which, if done well, creates the foundations for teams and people to take charge of their area of responsibility and make a difference. Not done well, or not done at all, teams can wander in the wilderness of self-management, not making the contribution the organisation expects and waiting for the inevitable and apparently totally justified pendulum swing return to top-down control because it appeared they couldn’t manage.