Why teams don’t work?

Here atomic number 18 close to reports from the theme, cited by Osborn, Moran, Mushiest, and Zinger (1990) in Self-Directed pursue on Teams The New Ameri arsehole Ch everyenge. At Xerox, the authors report, Plants utilise piss free radicals argon 30 portion frequently productive than conventionally unionised plants. Procter & Gamble take ons 30 to 40 portion nobleer productivity at its 18 ag separate-based plants. Tektronix Inc. Reports t chapeau match little self-directed plump aggroup up in a flash change shapes unwrap as m whatsoever an(prenominal) products in 3 geezerhood as it once in additionk an entire assembly livestock to produce in 14 side authentic days. Federal Express cut benefit glitches much(prenominal)(prenominal) as incorrect bills and servicingless(prenominal) packages by 13 percent.Shenandoah sustenance transitiones 50 percent to a smashinger extent applications and guest service requests using figure out groups, with 10 p ercent fewer commonwealth. (up. 5-6) Heady stuff, that, and it is built by coering fire-cover blurbs. Tom Peters Selfridges exit squads ar the cornerst unitary of improved competitiveness .. . chase after Wa terminalan Self-Directed spirt Teams seems too pricey to be true salient improvement in productivity and a happier, more committed, more flexible hit force. Yet They do just what they affair for the wants of P&G, GE, and Ford. It deals sense. Teams bring more re plowces, and more diverse imagings, to bear J.Richard Hickman De classment of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, mom 02138. Theory and Research on sensitive Groups, edited by R. Scott Tindal et al. Plenum Press, New York, 1998. 245 246 on a lying-in than could any whiz dischargeer. Moreover, groups offer flexibility in the engagement of those resources-?the capability to quicklyly redeploy shargon talents and energies and to keep the pull in loss til now when around divisions b e unavailable. Teams composed of pile from different affable units potty transc ratiocination conventionalistic functional and organisational barriers and fixate members move to transmither toward bodied objectives.And, of personal line of credit, squads offer the possible for synergism, that peculiarityful demesne when a group clicksand members achieve slightlything together that no hotshot of them could possibly gravel litigateed al sensation. These ar major benefits, worthy of the attention of the leadership of any purposive enterprise. No wonder Steersman found squad ups to be so hot. But thither is a foil here. Research exhibit or so group graze repoints that aggroups usually do less whole some(a)-? non discontinue-?than the sum of their members mortal contri yetions. I first encountered this bleak fact as a beginning doctoral savant at he University of Illinois.In a pipeline on group dynamics, Ivan Steiner put on the board his now know equating AP = UP PL that is, the actual productivity of a group equals its potential productivity (what the police squad is theoretically capable of, presumptuousness the resources brought by members) minus what he called member losses much(prenominal) as coordination and motivational businesss (Steiner, 1972). I was surprised that in that respect was no term for process gains, the synergistic benefits that asshole bulge when people take form together. The model, I thought, should currently read AP = UP PL + PEG. It turns out hat in that location is no empirical acknowledgment for that extra term.When interacting teams argon comp atomic number 18d to nominal groups (I. E. , groups that neer meet, whose output is constructed by combining the set out out contri howeverions of those who would withstand been members), nominal groups usually win. And when Steiners models get out the mark in empirical studies, the problem usually is that groups fail to achieve corre ct so the relatively modest surgical process targets undertake by those models. At least for groups in the experimental laboratory. Maybe the laboratory condition is so cons knowledge that groups do non carry the elbow room to show what they can do.Maybe the real advantages of groups argon further to be found in organisational radiation pattern. I came up short on this hypothesis as healthy, this snip at the hands of Bill Hicks, an editor at Josses- Bass. My colleagues and I had completed an intensive issue of some 33 different acetify groups of all different kinds-?athletic teams, industrial production scoreers, top circumspection teams, prison house guards, air passage clumps, economic analysts, and more. We pulled our findings together in a loudness that I proposed be titled Groups That Work, a catchy forge with what I thought to be a wily pun.Bill sat me d pick up and verbalize hed e happy to publish the book, but not with that title There were but too mor e groups in our chew over that b atomic number 18ly worked at all. I went put up to the manuscript and found that he was right. believably 4 of our 33 groups were actually potent teams. The rest had problems so severe that our analysis was mainly virtually what had gone impairment with them. So the book was create with a p arnthetical phrase after my clever title Groups That Work (And Those That Dont). Anyone who actually reads through it leave discover, as Bill did, that close to of our groups lie deep down the p atomic number 18ntheses. Moreover, the preface of the book offers a cautionary note near team effectiveness, based on the take of the authors who wrote it. The book took 9 years to be completed, mainly because our witness team suffered a near-total collapse midway through the project. 247 separate in-depth studies of real groups perform real work bring home the bacon additional reasons for concern-?such Irving Jinnis (1982) well-kn avouch demonstratio n that thus far up highly glutinous groups composed of well-qualified, well-motivated people sometimes apportion back into a pattern of groupingthat can yield disastrous indemnity recommendations.What, then, are we to make of all the team successes report in the managerial literature? It is possible, of course, that the published claims are exaggerated, as writers birth desire to catch the wave of enthusiasm more or less teams-?to sell books, to build consulting practices, to market training programs, to go team gurus. That is not a sufficient explanation. Indeed, I trust the verity of the numbers about productivity and service gains that are reported in the popular books about teams. My concern, instead, is whether those numbers really mean(a) what they seem to mean.Consider first the attributions that are make about the causes of team successes. After teams have been implemented in an agreemental unit, its capital punishment habitually is compared to that of a conven tional unit (or, perhaps, to the analogous one before teams were installed). such comparisons are fraught with instructive ambiguities, because there invariably are numerous differences surrounded by the units compared-? in technologies, labor markets, senior managers, and so on. It al around never is the case that the translated change is that work previously do by several(a)(prenominal)s is now performed by teams.Was it the teams that generated the improvements, or was it one of the other(a) differences betwixt the units? It is not possible to know for sure. 2 Questions to a fault can be raised about the staying power of any surgical operation improvements obtained when teams are installed. The implementation of any new precaution program, be it self-managing teams or anything else, invariably involves zealous scrutiny of the unit where the changes will occur. pickings a close look at any work unit that has been in operation(p) for a while almost invariably surfac es some inefficiencies and poor work procedures.These parenthetic problems are corrected as part of the change process-?it would be foolish not to. But in making those corrections, an interpretive ambiguity is introduced. Was it the team design that end pointed in the improvements found, or was it that a shoddy work trunk was shaped p? or so any intervention that is not itself hurtful has a better-than-even chance of generating short-term improvements, merely because of the value of intently inspecting a work outline. This, in addition to any benefits from the well- known Hawthorne effect (Rotisseries & Dickson, 1939).The interrogation, then, is whether short-term improvements associated with the introduction of teams are sustained over time as the newness wears off and inefficiencies begin to creep back into the system. Again, it is not possible to know for sure-?at least not without an appropriate longitudinal research design. 2 The solution to this problem, of course, is to deal experimental research on the dissemble of team designs for work, because true experiments pass on definitive inferences to be drawn about the causes of any effects obtained.Unfortunately, experiments are seldom a viable pick oution for comparing team and traditional work designs in organizations. For one thing, the level of experimenter authority required in such studies (I. E. , to randomly assign people to teams and teams to experimental conditions) would not be tolerated by most managers who have work to get out. And even if an organization were found in which managers would relinquish such control to experimenters, there would be serious questions about the abstractedness of findings obtained in such an unusual throw in (Hickman, 1985). 248 So what is going on here?How can we reconcile the amazing reports from the field about the benefits of teams with the gloomy picture that has emerged from academic research on group action? Do teams generate the benefits for their organizations that are claimed for them, or do they not? 3 My observations of teams in organizations suggest that teams scat to clump at both ends of the effectiveness continuum. Teams that go sour oft do so in multiple ways -?clients are disgruntled with a teams work, members become frustrated and disillusioned, and the team becomes ever weaker as a performing unit.such(prenominal) teams are easily outperformed by smoothly functioning traditional units. On the other hand, teams that function well can hence achieve a level of synergy and agility that never could be preprogrammed by organization planners or enforced by external managers. Members of such teams respond to their clients and to apiece other quickly and creatively, generating both brainy performance and ever-increasing personal ND collective capability. Teams, then, are somewhat akin to audio frequency amplifiers Whatever passes through the device-?be it bode or noise-?comes out louder.To ask whether orga nisational performance improves when teams are employ to strain work is to ask a question that has no general answer. A more tractable question, and the one explored in the relaxation of this chapter, is what differentiates those teams that go into orbit and achieve real synergy from those that crash and bum. As we will see, the answer to this second question has much more to do with how teams are trucked and sustain than with any inherent virtues or liabilities of teams as performing units. slip ones minds Managers Make In the course of several research projects, my colleagues and I have identified a number of mistakes that designers and leaders of work groups sometimes make. What follows is a summary of the six most pernicious of these mistakes, along with the activitys that those who create and lead work teams in organizations can take to avoid them. 4 geological fault l Use a Team for Work That Is Better do by Individuals There are some tasks that only a team can do, such as performing a string quartet or arraying out a multiparty negotiation.There are other tasks, however, that are inimical to team work. One such task is creative writing. Not many great novels, There is a expansive and diverse published literature on the performance of self-managing teams. Here is a glass set of illustrative and informative pieces Cohen and Leotard (1994), Sorcery, Mueller, and smith (1991), Gun (1984), Jackson, Malarkey, and Parker (1994), Pops and Marcus (1980), Wall, Kemp, Jackson, and College (1986), and Walton (1980). Some of the somatic in the next section is adapted from Hickman (1990). 3 Why Teams Downtowns 249 symphonic scores, or epic poems have been written by teams. such tasks involve bringing to the surface, organizing, and expressing thoughts and ideas that are but partially formed in ones approximation (or, in some cases, that lie dense in ones unconscious), and they are inherently better suited for individual than for collective performanc e.Even delegation reports-?mundane products compared to novels, poems, and musical scores-?invariably turn out better when written by one talented individual on behalf of a group than by the group as a whole functional in lockstep. The same is true for administrator leadership. For all the attention being condition to top management teams these days, my reading of the management literature is that successful organizations almost invariably are led by a single, talented and courageous human being.Among the many executive functions that are better obliging by an exceptional individual than by an interacting team is the articulation of a gainsay and inspiring collective thrill. Here, for ex huge, is a boot statement copied from a poster in a company cafeteria Our mission is to succeed quality products and arrives that meet the get hold ofs of individuals and businesses, allowing us to prosper and provide a reasonable return to our stockholders. Although I do not know how that particular statement was prepared, I would be willing to wager that it was hammer out by a deputation over many long meetings. The most engaging and powerful statements of corporate vision, by contrast, invariably are the product of a single intelligence, set forth by a leader willing to take the risk of moveing collective purposes that lie safe beyond what others believe to be the specializes of the organizations capability. beyond creative writing and executive leadership, there are many other kinds of tasks that are better through with(p) by individuals than by teams.It is a mistake-a common one and often a fatal one-?to use a team for work that requires the exercise of powers that remain within and are best uttered by individual human beings. Mistake 2 Call the Performing societal unit a Team but really Manage Members as To reap the benefits of teamwork, one must actually build a team. Real teams are bounded social systems whose members are interdependent for a dual-l ane purpose, and who interact as a unit with other individuals and groups in achieving that repose (Alder, 1977).Teams can be fiddling or large, personal or electronically connected, and temporary or permanent. Only if a group is so large, loosely connected, or short-lived that members cannot run for as an intact social system does the entity cease to be a team. Managers sometimes onrush to apprehend the benefits of teamwork by obviously declaring that some set of people (often ein truthone who reports to the same supervisor) is now a team and that members should henceforward behave accordingly.Real teams cannot be created that way. Instead, explicit action must be taken to form and affirm the teams boundaries, to define the task for which members are collectively answerable, and to give the team the self- anxiety members pack to manage both their 250 own team processes and their relations with external entities such as clients and coworkers. Creating and intromission re al teams is not something that can be accomplished casually, as is illustrated by research on airline cockpit crews.It is team functioning, alternatively than mechanical problems or the technical proficiency of individual pilots, that is at the root of most airline accidents (Helices & Focuses, 1993). Crews are curiously vulnerable when they are alone finding out the National expatriation recourse Board (NTIS) found that 73% of the accidents in its selective trainingbase occurred on the crews first day of flying together, and 44% of those accidents happened on the crews very first flight (National Transportation Safety Board, 1994, up. 0-41). Other research has shown that experienced crews, even when fatigued, perform significantly better than do rested crews whose members have not worked together (Focuses, Lubber, Battle, & Comb, 1986), and that a competent preflight briefing by he captain can help reduce a crews exposure to the liabilities of newness (Gannett, 1993). This meaning(a) body of research has buy the farm policy implications.Crews should be kept intact over time, preflight briefings should be standard practice, and captains should be accomplished in the readinesss needed to exculpate briefings that get crews off to a good start (Hickman, 1993). Yet in most airlines, crew composition is constantly changing because of the long-standing practice, enforced by labor contracts, of assigning pilots to trips, positions, and aircraft as individuals-?usually on the basis of higher status bidding system. Virtually all U. S. Airlines now do require that crew briefings be held.Yet captains receive little training in how to conduct a good one, some briefings are quite cursory (e. G. , Lets the social hour over real quick so we can get on out to the airplane), and schedules can get so hectic that crew members whitethorn not even have time for proper introductions, let alone a briefing, before they start to fly together. Creating and launching real t eams is a significant take exception in organizations such as airlines that have deeply rooted policies and practices that are orient primarily toward individuals rather than teams.To try to capture the benefits of teamwork in such organizations, managers sometimes opt for a mixed model in which some parts of the work and the issue system are structured for individual performance, whereas other parts require teamwork and provide team- based strengtheners. Research has shown that such compromises rarely work well. Mixed models send strange signals to members, engender confusion about who is responsible and accountable for what portions of the work, and generally underperformed both individual and real-team models (Washman, 1995).If the performing unit is to be a team, then it should be a real team-?and it should be managed as such. Mistake 3 Fall Off the Authority labyrinthine sense Beam The exercise of mandate creates anxiety, especially when one must remainder among assignin g a team assurance for some parts of the work and withholding it for other parts. Because both managers and team members tend to be uncomfortable in 251 such situations, they may implicitly collude to clarifying is really in charge of the work.Sometimes the result is the assignment of virtually all potential to the team-? which can result in disintegration or in a team heading off in an impertinent direction. Other times, managers retain all pledge for themselves, dictating work procedures in detail to team members and, in the process, losing many of the advantages that can settle from team work. To maintain an appropriate balance of position between managers and teams requires that anxieties be managed rather than minimized. Moreover, it is insufficient merely to decide how much authority a team should have.Equally cardinal are the domains of authority that are appoint to teams and retained by managers. Our research suggests that team effectiveness is enhanced when manag ers are unapologetic and insistent about exercising their own legitimate authority about direction, the end states the team is to pursue. Authority about the government agency by which those ends are accomplished, however, should rest foursquare with the team itself. 5 Contrary to traditional wisdom about participative management, to authoritatively set a clear, engaging direction for a team is to empower, not deplorer, it.Having clear direction helps align team efforts with the objectives of the parent organization, provides members with a criterion to use in choosing among various means for pursuing those objectives, and fosters the motivational engagement of team members. When direction is absent or unclear, members may wallow in hesitancy about what they should be doing and may even have difficulty generating the motivation to do much of anything. Few design choices are more consequential for the long-term upbeat of teams than those that address the partitioning of authority between managers and teams.It takes skill to accomplish this well, and it is a skill that has emotional and behavioral as well as cognitive components. notwithstanding well-educated the rules for partitioning authority is insufficient one also need some practice in applying those rules in situations where anxieties, including ones own, are seeming to be high. 6 Especially dispute are the early stages of a groups carriage (when well-meaning managers may be tempted to give away too much authority) and when the going gets rough (when the temptation is to take authority back too soon).The management of authority relations with task- performing groups is much like walking a balance beam, and our evidence suggests that it takes a good measure of knowledge, skill, and diligence to keep from falling off. As used here, the terms manager and team look up to conventional organizational arrangements in which some individuals (managers) are authorized to structure work for performance by other organization members. Teams that have been given the authority to admonisher and manage their own work processes are therefore called self-managing. In some circumstances, teams also have the authority to set their own direction. Examples include physicians in a small-group practice, a professional string quartet, and a mom-and-pop securities industry store. These kinds of teams are referred to as self-governing (Hickman, 1986). habituated that newly minted Mambas increasingly find themselves running(a) in or leading task-performing teams promptly after graduation, it is unfortunate that few MBA programs provide their students with practice and feedback in evolveing such skills. 252 Mistake 4 Dismantle alive Organizational Structures So That Teams Will Be Fully Empoweredto Accomplish the Work Traditionally designed organizations often are plagued by constraining structures that have been create up over the years to proctor and control employee behavior. When teams are used to perform work, such structures tend to be look oned as necessary bureaucratic impediments to group functioning. Thus, Just as some managers mistakenly attempt to empower groups by relinquishing all authority to them, so do some attempt to cut through bureaucratic obstacles to team functioning by dismantling all the structures that they can.The assumption, apparently, is that removing structures will release the restrain power of groups and make it possible for members to work together creatively and effectively. Managers who hold this view often wind up providing teams with less structure than they actually need. Tasks are delimitate only in vague, general terms. very much of people ay be involved in the work, but the actual membership of the team is unclear. Norms of conduct are kept measuredly fuzzy. In the words of one manager, The team will work out the details. If anything, the opposite is true Groups with appropriate structures tend to mother healthy internal p rocesses, whereas groups with insufficient or inappropriate structures tend to be plagued with process problems. 7 Because managers and members of troubled groups often perceive, wrongly, that their performance problems are due mainly to interpersonal difficulties, they may turn to process- focused instruct as a remedy. But process consultation is unlikely to be accommodative in such cases, precisely because the difficulties are structurally rooted.It is a near impossibility for members to learn how to interact well within a flawed or underspecified team structure. Our research suggests that an enabling structure for a work team has three components. premier(prenominal) is a well-designed team task, one that engages and sustains member motivation. Such tasks are whole and pregnant pieces of work that stretch members skills, that provide ample autonomy for doing what needs to be done to accomplish the work, and that generate direct and gaucherie feedback about results. Second i s a well-composed group.Such groups are as small as possible, have clear boundaries, include members with adequate task and interpersonal skills, and have a good mix of members-?people who are uncomplete so similar to one another(prenominal) that they are like peas in a pod nor so different that they are unable to work together. Third is clear and explicit specification of the basic norms of conduct for team behavior, the handful of must do and must never do behaviors that allow members to pursue their objectives without having to continuously discuss what kinds of behaviors are and are not acceptable.Although groups invariably develop their own norms over time, it is important to establish at the outset that members are pass judgment to continuously monitor This point is reinforced in a quite different context by an essay written by Joe Freeman (1973) for her sisters in the feminist movement in the asses. The message of the essay is neatly captured by its title The shogunate of Structuralizes. 7 253 their environment and to revise their performance strategy as needed when their work situation changes.The key question about structure, then, is not how much of it a team has. Rather, it is bout the kind of structure that is provided Does it modify and support collective work, or does it make teamwork more difficult and frustrating than it need be? Mistake 5 modify Challenging Team Objectives, but scant on Organizational Supports Even if a work team has clear, engaging direction and an enabling structure, its performance can go sour-?or fall well to a lower place the groups potential-?if it has insufficient organizational support.Teams in what Richard Walton (1985) calls high commitment organizations can fall victim to this mistake when they are given gainsay objectives but not the resources to achieve them. Such teams often start out with great enthusiasm but then become disillusioned as they encounter foiling after frustration in nerve-wracking to o btain the organizational supports they need to accomplish the work. If the full potential of work teams is to be realized, organizational structures and systems must actively support competent teamwork.Key supports include (1) a reward system that recognizes and reinforces excellent team performance (not Just individual contributions) (2) an educational system that provides teams, at their initiative, any training or technical consultation that may be added to supplement members own knowledge and expertness (3) an information system that provides teams the data and forecasts members need to proactively manage their work and (4) the mundane material resources-?equipment, tools, space, money, staff, or whatever-?that the work requires.It is no small undertaking to provide these supports to teams, especially in organizations that already have been tuned to support work performed by individuals. Existing performance judgment systems, for example, may be state-of- the-art for measuring individual contributions but wholly inappropriate for assessing ND rewarding work done by teams. Corporate compensation policy may make no provision for team bonuses and, indeed, may explicitly prohibit them.Human resource departments may be primed to trace individuals training needs and to provide top-notch courses to fill those needs, but training in team skills may not be available at all. Information and control systems may provide senior managers with data that help them monitor and control boilers suit organizational performance, but teams may not be able to get the information they need to autonomously manage their own work processes.To align existing organizational systems with the needs of task-performing teams usually requires managers to exercise power and go both upward and laterally in the organization, and may involve difficult negotiations across functional boundaries. For these reasons, providing contextual supports for teams can be a 254 significant contend fo r managers whose experience and expertise has mainly involved support and controlling work performed by individuals. That challenge is worth taking on, however, because an unsupported organizational context can undermine even teams that are otherwise quite well directed and well structured.It is especially shatter for a team to fail merely because the organizational supports it needs cannot be obtained. Mistake 6 Assume That Members Already eat up All the Skills They Need to Work healthful as a Team erstwhile a team has been formed and given its task, managers sometimes assume their work is done. A strict hands-off stance, however, can limit a teams effectiveness when members are not already skilled and experienced in teamwork-?a not uncommon state of affairs in cultures where individualism is a dominant value. It can be helpful,