TeamResearch News

December 2003
Vol. 1, No. 6

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From the Editor: A recent visit to Philadelphia, birthplace of the United States, served to remind me why I help companies give more decision-making power to their teams. It isn't for the financial gains those companies get. It's because people are happier when they have more control over their lives. That pleasure is contagious; happier workers make for happier bosses, colleagues, customers, families and friends. I hope that whatever this time of year means to you, it causes you to ask why you do what you do—and I hope you will like your answer as much as I do mine.

Contents

Studies and Articles

• Delta Air Survives by Involving Employees
• Subteams and Shared Workloads Improve Team Learning
• Workplace Helping Creates More Helping
• Trust, Courage, and Empathy Improve Team Learning
• Toyota Shows Japanese-Style Management Still Works

Involve Employees to Increase Company Success

Newsletter Information

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• Contact the Editor

Delta Air Survives by Involving Employees

Study: A large number of studies show that company performance improves as employee involvement in decision-making goes up. But detailed case studies are rare, so an economics professor spent six years observing operations and conducting interviews at Delta Air Lines. Delta includes employees in decision-making at all levels of the company.

The Delta Board Council, a formal team with a mission statement and bylaws that is made up of employees "peer-selected through a multi-step interview process…" has five jobs:

1. "Give top executives a candid, unfiltered report on the 'pulse of the company' from the front line" and help communicate top-level changes back to line workers.
2. "Represent the interests and perspective of employees to top management."
3. Serve as a "consultant to management," providing input on program or policy changes that could affect employees and on messages to employees. Members attend top management and board meetings for this purpose.
4. "Work on special projects," such as partnering with the management team in developing a new annual compensation review process.
5. "Conduct 1-2 day site visits at Delta facilities…getting feedback on the state of operations and employee relations."

Division and Base Employee councils include corporate-wide function-based groups and employee groups at the regional or local levels. These, too, are peer-selected and propose solutions to on-the-job issues independently of (but with regular input from) management.

The program is costly, given the demand on management and employee time, infrastructure costs, and training needs. "It is naive to think that front-line employees can suddenly understand balance sheets, have the social graces to interact with executives and board members, or know how to write up a business case," the author writes, and managers also need new skills.

But the program helps:

• Energize the Employees—"a successful EI model…unleashes a wave of energy that propels the company forward."
• Organizational Alignment/Coordination—EI in company operations improves the odds that "everyone pulls in the same direction" and helps solve front-line coordination problems quickly by empowering front-line workers to solve them.
• Production Efficiency/Quality—Delta's results include a "one-third productivity advantage it reputedly enjoys in airplane maintenance."
• Communication/Information Flow—"A major benefit of the Delta EI program is that it gives executive decision-makers more accurate, real-time information on the internal state of the company." This gets around the usual filtering of information that happens because, as one Board Council member put it, "'Nobody wants to look bad, or pass on bad news.'"

Delta was one of the few major airlines that did not respond to the post-9/11 downturn by laying people off, instead creating a voluntary leave program with the councils. Other airlines avoided Delta's short-term losses, but each "also got…a demoralized, angry, and insecure workforce and a business operation that a year later had badly deteriorated," the author asserts.

Application: If your company could use any of the benefits listed, approach your top management team about establishing at least the equivalent of the high-level Delta Board Council. Don't ignore the up front costs, of course, but outline the many benefits and point out the broader scientific context for the approach.

Make clear that as at Delta, employment issues (compensation, job security, etc.) should not be part of the council's purview, and if you have unions, involve them from the very beginning. Once the council is formed, take the time to create a clear mission statement, measurable goals, team rules and procedures, and a work plan before beginning operations.

Subteams and Shared Workloads Improve Team Learning

Study: You are on a military team that must defend its base against incursions by enemy vehicles without destroying your own vehicles. In the midst of battle four types of unknown airplanes enter your zone of defense. How do you, as a team, learn to recognize which are enemies and, of those, which are the biggest threat and therefore highest priority?

That's the scenario presented to 109 groups of undergraduates in four-person teams fighting a computer-game battle. Researchers manipulated the simulation so that on some teams one person had more work than other members, and on others the workload was more evenly distributed. They also organized the teams three ways, with:

• each member controlling one type of vehicle (tanks, jets, etc.);
• each member controlling four vehicles, one of each type; or
• a subteam arrangement where two members jointly controlled two types of vehicles.

Teams with evenly distributed workloads won more mock battles. Teams with members who were more "agreeable" did not perform better, as you might expect—these people can be less willing to risk team conflict by sharing ideas. Finally, teams broken into equal-power subteams were more effective than those with individual specialists or generalists.

Application: To increase the speed with which your project teams learn, be sure to:

• Ensure that workloads are evenly distributed.
• Try to include at least a couple of people willing to challenge ideas without stifling the perspectives of others.
• Encourage the use of subteams to do much of the detail work, but have them report on their findings and progress regularly.

Workplace Helping Creates More Helping

Study: A key element in teamwork is "helping behaviors," defined in a recent study as "voluntary behaviors that promote interpersonal harmony and help coworkers solve or avoid work-related problems…These include employee acts of altruism, peacekeeping, cheerleading, courtesy and other small demonstrations of consideration and cooperation." In the past five years a number of studies have tried to find out what factors increase helping behaviors in a group. A research team decided to test scientifically whether being helped at work makes a person more likely to help others. Although this seems like common sense, common wisdom has at times turned out to be wrong when put to the test.

The researchers sent questionnaires to supervisors, two each: one for the supervisor, one for an employee who would return it separately. The questions measured helping behaviors and two other actions a person might take in response to receiving help: speaking up in ways that help the company, such as expressing "out-of-the-box" ideas; and performing job tasks better. The study also checked other factors that might affect a worker's willingness to help.

Sure enough, people who had received helping behaviors were more likely to respond by helping others. There are two points to this: those who were helped then helped back, and they did that instead of just speaking up or doing their basic jobs better. Only one other factor increased helping behaviors: the level of control workers felt they had over their work.

Application: Being alumni of a small private college, the study group was far more female (81%) and white (98%) than your employees. But this study is in line with others. Supervisors who go out of their way to help employees and colleagues will increase the amount of help given to them personally and exchanged within their organizations. If people don't seem to help each other in your company, look into how much managers helps others "beyond the call" of the manager's normal tasks.

The article points out an important warning, however: "Some business commentators have proposed the adoption of a 'Platinum Rule,' a revision of the Golden Rule whereby the other person is treated not how you would want to be treated, but rather with consideration of how he/she would want to be treated." I have witnessed the negative effects of helping people in ways they do not want to be helped, and will keep an eye out for future research along those lines.

Source: Deckop, J., C. Cirka, and L. Andersson (03), "Doing Unto Others: The Reciprocity of Helping Behavior in Organizations," Journal of Business Ethics 47:101.

Trust, Courage, and Empathy Improve Team Learning

Study: Two researchers in Spain wanted to know what characteristics increased learning and sharing of knowledge within teams, and in turn, what companies did to instill those characteristics. They studied 363 people in self-managed teams—those without managers involved in their daily operations—in 12 companies.

Three characteristics helped learning, listed below. After each, you'll find the company action that most enhanced that characteristic:

• "Mutual trust and access to help in the work team"—"Leader or coordinator involved with the work team"; this refers to a facilitator, not a traditional supervisor.
• "Courage of the members of the work team"—"Training to work in a team."
• "Active empathy and lenience in judgement in the work team"—"Social events in the company."

Application: The researchers openly admit their results aren't strong enough to explain the causes of team learning. The finding that training a team to be a team is important does fit earlier research, however. The other findings are too preliminary to make a fair judgement.

An early study on any topic, such as this one, is like the rough draft of a document you write. By building on what you learn each time you do an editing pass, and letting other people review it, you end up with a more accurate document. So more good studies will be needed before we know the full story.

Toyota Shows Japanese-Style Management Still Works

Article: A recent article in Business Week about the rapid growth of Toyota illustrated points backed by research. Compared to Nissan, Honda, and the U.S. automakers, Toyota has by far the lowest defects per 100 vehicles, largest operating profit, and a market value twice that of the U.S. manufacturers combined. Its profit margin is more than 8% now, up from just 2% ten years ago.

Three of the concepts mentioned as important to this success are relevant to teamwork. One is, of course, kaizen, which is translated as "continuous improvement." The article notes, "Employees are given cash rewards for ferreting out glitches in production and devising solutions." The second concept is a decision-making model that emphasizes planning before taking action and checking early results to refine the approach.

The last is a point researchers make regularly but most managers of virtual teams—those made up of people in various locations—try to ignore: that these teams cannot communicate by electronics alone and excel. Company President Fujio Cho required cross-functional teams to return to meeting face-to-face at times, in a process Toyota calls obeya—literally 'big room.'" These meetings include "designers, engineers, product planners, workers, and suppliers," and resulted in reducing model design time for the 2003 Solara to 19 months from 22 months for the previous model or 26 months for other models.

Application: Although some people have tried to paint Japan's economic downturn as proof that the concepts in this article are outdated, Toyota's success is not unique. Both Nissan and Honda also had bigger profits and took less time to produce each car, yet had fewer defects, than the U.S. carmakers. Although Japanese companies have had to adjust to the times like others around the world, don't let anyone tell you Japanese-style management has failed.

The other "take away" from this article is that without exception, every study or article I've read over the years says virtual teams must meet face-to-face on occasion to perform at the highest level. Based on this research, the SuddenTeams Program recommends a minimum of once every six months even for teams scattered around the world.

Source: Bremner, B., and C. Dawson (03), "Can Anything Stop Toyota?" Business Week 11/17/03:114.

Involve Employees to Increase Company Success

Involving employees in decision-making at every level of the company will make for better decisions and build commitment to company goals. Let TeamTrainers help you bring the benefits of this proven best practice to your company.

About This Newsletter

TeamResearch News summarizes the latest information from studies or articles on business teams, along with guidance on how to apply that research in your workplace. It is published the first full weekend of each month as a free service from TeamTrainers^TM Consulting (www.suddenteams.com). Plain-text e-mail announcements are mailed to subscribers whenever a new issue is posted, containing a list of that month's studies and articles and a link to the newsletter. See our newsletter page for details about the newsletter, cautions about studies, and our privacy policy.

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Contact the Editor

Your questions and suggestions are always welcome. Contact:

Jim Morgan
Head Coach, TeamTrainers Consulting
(425) 823-5082
jim@suddenteams.com
www.suddenteams.com