What True Teams Accomplish

University studies and numerous publications by business professionals have shown that properly formed "empowered" or "self-directed" work teams are more productive than units focused on the actions of individual employees. This has been true in virtually ever type of organization and industry, from the board room to the factory floor. Here are just a few examples we came across (or had a hand in) while developing the SuddenTeams® Program.

At a Green Giant plant in Illinois, a line-employee team reduced average machine changeover time by more than half, realizing $793,000 in downtime and inventory savings.

A Quaker Oats team formed with union assistance rescued a plant in Illinois from probable closure and went on to achieve recognition as an "America's Best Plant."

A team of "petroleum engineers from Amoco… cut its time to forecast remaining oil and gas reserves from 119 person-days to 29 person-days; a test and assembly team from Texas Instruments… reduced its manufacturing cycle time 42 percent on one of the company's major products" (from "Breakthrough Teamwork" by D. Romig).

The graphics department in Palm Beach County (FL) formed a self-directed team by splitting half of the former supervisor's pay among the team members in exchange for taking over the supervisor's duties. Within a year the team created a 21% increase in revenues—while saving the taxpayers the other half of the supervisor's pay!

At the federal government's Los Alamos National Laboratory:

• In the six months after a switch to self-directed work teams, the package delivery group increased same-day deliveries to partial addresses by 186%; decreased total incorrect deliveries by 68%; and reduced sick-leave absences by 43%.
• Self-directed work teams were chiefly responsible for a rise in the Lab's property management system ratings by outside auditors from 45 (out of 100) to 87 in just two years.
• After four months as a self-directed team, three technical communicators were doing as much work as the group had done before with five people—including a team leader—yet reported no sense of overload.

A self-directed team at Tektronix was able to produce in just three days the same number of units formerly produced in 14.

As reported in a PBS series called "Learning in America," faculty members were teamed with principals or students to turn around four poor-performing schools around the country with disadvantaged student populations. Sample results from different schools include:

• Attendance rising from chronically low to a rate of 98 percent.
• Sixth-grade standardized scores going from the 44th percentile to the 97th.
• The percentage of students scoring at or above grade level in math growing from only half to more than 90 percent.

A General Electric plant in North Carolina "now runs without supervisors and has reduced costs by more than 30 percent, shortened delivery cycles from three weeks to three days, and reduced customer complaints by a factor of ten" (from "The Wisdom of Teams" by J. Katzenbach and D. Smith).