April 2005
Vol. 2, No. 10
This newsletter is a basic HTML file, giving you control over the appearance through your Web browser's options and window controls.
From the Editor: As hinted at by my delay of last month's issue, I am going through the most difficult period of my life, dealing with at least four of the top stresses for people at once. The value of a more ancient form of teamwork has made itself clear in the reaction from friends and family members, who have rallied in support in extraordinary ways. Were it not for these members of my personal team, I frankly might not be writing you this month. They stepped up with material and emotional support and supplied everything within their power. Of course, as noted in one of the more philosophical reports I've written (see Team Ethics below), our social and kin teams were also our work teams for much of human existence. Group dynamics are exactly the same in each case. I can't help but wonder: How would your work life be different if everyone on your team were a relative? And what can you do today to reduce the difference? Who would you help to survive that might otherwise be forced out of your society (i.e., fired)?
Be grateful for your relationships, in and out of work. Contribute to the growth—or at least don't contribute to the suffering—of each of those people. I guarantee it will pay off in ways and circumstances you never thought possible.
You can have a team whose members are as important to each other as their friends without their even being friends. Contact me today to find out how.
Study: One linear model of team development took a beating in a Dutch study. The development cycle you hear most in America is, "Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing" (to which I add "Reforming" in the SuddenTeams® Program). In the Netherlands, it's: "Job Enlargement, Job Enrichment, Co-operation, and High Performance," with performance defined as problem-solving. Two Dutch professors, Ben Kuipers and Marco de Witte, studied 37 empowered teams at a Volvo plant in Sweden, using surveys spaced seven months apart. They found that "the teams seemed to develop (all four stages) at the same time and in no specific order. We believe that is is more appropriate to refer to them as dimensions…"
That said, development in the four areas (combined) explained 34.5% of quality improvement between the two surveys. The combination did not affect job satisfaction, but workers cross-trained to do their colleagues' jobs over that period ("Job Enlargement") were more satisfied. Kuipers and de Witte also analyzed the first set of surveys to look at the effect of relative levels of team development (comparing teams in a "snapshot" of time instead of changes between times). Again, teams with the highest levels of job enlargement and cooperation met their schedules better and were more productive than those with less. Job enlargement was related to job satisfaction, and both it and "Job Enrichment"—what U.S. researchers call "empowerment" or job control—were related to having greater commitment to the company (what Volvo terms "involvoment!").
Application: Teams that became more cross-functional, empowered, cooperative and able to solve problems produced better-quality truck cabs in a more timely manner than teams that did not develop in these areas. Although Kuipers and de Witte do not report on what made some teams develop more than others, previous studies reported in TeamResearch News suggest there are only two ways: teamwork training and active coaching by the manager.
Here's your challenge for today, as a manager or a team member:
In one single project you will have enhanced all four dimensions of teamwork from this study.
Source: Kuipers, B., and M. de Witte (05), "Teamwork: A Case Study on Development and Performance," International Journal of Human Resource Management 16(2):185.
Study: A few months ago I wrote about a study of why middle managers resist empowered teamwork. This month I found one on why employees resist it, and the results aren't encouraging. At the end of a survey about the transition to team-based organization at five British steel plants, the authors included the typical request for additional comments. Business professors Nicolas Bacon and Paul Blyton analyzed the nearly 300 thoughts volunteered about "teamworking."
"The majority of employees across these plants supported teamworking and realized it many prolong the survival of their plant…" the authors say. But almost all of the comments indicated a belief that managers had imposed teamworking for reasons other than helping the workers or company. To summarize, the authors write, "senior managers were seen to have introduced teamworking using the following rationale: in order to meet the concerns of shareholders the company embarked on a programme of job cuts; the careers of managers would benefit from delivering this programme and teamworking offered a popular recipe; when implementing teamworking alongside a job-cutting programme managers found it necessary to protect their own jobs; in order to secure the compliance of supervisors and team leaders (or other senior employees on the shopfloor) employees were selected for promotion who would accept and support the teamworking initiative."
The majority of commenters suggested political reasons for the change, as suggested by these quotations:
The theme of "us vs. them" showed up repeatedly. Among economic explanations by the workers were these:
Almost as common was the belief that job cuts were the hidden agenda: "Teamwork in theory is sound business sense and most people would agree in (the commenter's plant). The original worry was that teamwork…was designed as a vehicle for job reduction. This fear was denied…but has proved to be correct."
A hint on the way around this suspicion appears in the different results between most of the plants and the one in which managers' careers were not considered as strong of a motive. The authors write, "The future survival of the Shotten plant was in question at the time of the research…" Also, "the year before the survey the number of middle managers had fallen with technical and laboratory work subcontracted to other companies." In other words, employees knew the economic realities of the plant, and had seen managers hurt equally with workers in previous cuts.
Application: To some degree, the tendency to demonize managers is unavoidable. The authors point out that elsewhere in the survey workers reported an increase in skills and greater variety of work, "and commented on some (surveys) in a very positive fashion; however, they simply did not attribute them to management. It appears that management are easily blamed for the negative aspects of teamworking and not easily credited for the positive elements." They also note the tendency for free comments to be negative, but point to the consistency of the themes and earlier studies as evidence those comments reflect a much wider perception.
I think one way to short-circuit this kind of resistance is to let the workers themselves suggest it. If you're a manager thinking about increasing teaming, don't go to your employees and suggest teamwork. (Another theme in the comments was that teamwork was just the latest management fad.) If you're going to empower them, do it from the start. Take the problem you're trying to overcome to them and:
Then see what happens. My bet is that it will come out looking a lot like empowered teamwork without your ever having said the words.
Source: Bacon, N., and P. Blyton (05), "Worker Responses to Teamworking: Exploring Employee Attributions of Managerial Motives," International Journal of Human Resource Management 16(2):238.
Study: Can workers sense a difference between company support for them and team support for them—and in turn, in their support for the company versus the team? And does a feeling of support for each translate into higher support by the individual for those organizations? You're probably thinking these are "no-duh" questions, a study of which is a waste of time because the conclusions seem so obvious. But as I've written before, the "obvious" sometimes turns out to be wrong. For example, there was a time when a team in conflict was considered a team in trouble. It took "no-duh" studies to lead to our current understanding that in many circumstances, properly managed task conflicts are better for performance than tranquility.
A team of researchers looked at a fascinating cross-section of U.S. teams: highly empowered sewing teams from a clothing manufacturer in the South; teams of automotive air bag factory workers with far less job control, also in the South; temporary quality circles from a public sector organization in the Southwest; and lay workers and nuns at a Benedictine (Roman Catholic) community in the Midwest. More than 900 questionnaires were involved.
Indeed, the questions that represented the four types of support (from/for the team and from/for the company) tended to get answered the same way within a type. In other words, each question geared toward support from the company got roughly the same answer compared to the average answer given for the questions about support for the company, from the team, and for the team. So each factor was clearly different in the workers' minds. In the two factory groups, the researchers tested whether the types were related and indeed they were: respondents who perceived higher levels of support from their team and company were also more committed to the particular organization level.
Application: I suppose the practical applicability of this study is pretty low, but if you perform surveys of your employees, the findings indicate it is scientifically valid for you to measure team support as separate from company support, as well as individual commitment to both, if you wish. The finding that support from an organization leads to higher commitment to it is certainly nothing new. This is more of a general observation colored by the next report than a practical tip, but the more you can relate to your employees and colleagues as people instead of production units, the more supported they are likely to feel.
Source: Bishop, J., et al. (05), "A Construct Validity Study of Commitment and Perceived Support Variables: A Multifoci Approach Across the Different Team Environments," Group & Organization Management 30(2):158.
Article: I purposely keep an ethics journal on my list to review each month, but as best I can recall, the ethics of teamwork have never come up. Perhaps that's because the prevailing opinion is that teamwork is a good thing for people, and in fact, is our natural way of doing work. But a management professor from the University of Melbourne (Australia), Graham Sewell, has pointed out several problems with this assumption, starting with: "if it can be demonstrated that teamwork does indeed satisfy basic and universal human needs, then it is not too much of a leap to make the claim that it is not only technically superior but also morally superior to competing forms of work organization," Sewell writes. But that is a poor basis for teamwork ethics, he claims.
First off, there are those who say teamwork is not natural. He points out a couple of titles from popular literature, No More Teams and A Force of Ones. So any ethical code based on the idea would be questioned by those who disagree with the basis. Second, the argument some make—that because informal groups will form at work naturally, you might as well create formal ones—ignores the possibility that allowing the informal ones might meet your moral requirements without using formal teamwork. Also, if you make the argument that managers should form empowered teams, and members should be "good team players," because it is the morally right thing to do, you have to paint those people who do not do so as immoral.
Sewell does not necessarily disagree with those who claim teamwork is natural, but says it is open to questioning. He basically says it is beside the point: what he wants is to stimulate creation of teamwork ethics based on the practical needs of a team's members rather than some absolute moral position that can be debated. He proposes that team members take an open look at how different power levels develop even in a team in which everyone is supposedly equal. One problematic source, he cautions, is the power that supposedly "good" team players gain over supposedly "bad" ones based on the assumption that teamwork is morally right.
Second, Sewell recommends bearing in mind how this moral good/bad split affects "the development of procedures and norms that teams take on board, thereby shaping their members' behaviour as being correct, legitimate, and meaningful as opposed to being irrational, unacceptable, and beyond the pale." Finally, members must look at how this morality play affects us as individuals. "In other words we can say: 'Whatever is good for the organization is not necessarily good for us!'" After all, "If autonomy is anything other than yet one more management technique that is 'done' to others by a managerial elite ('Look, we're empowering you so be grateful!') then developing a practical ethics of teamwork has never been more crucial." Teamwork, like any other work activity, should be looked at not only for its financial impacts but also "in terms of…the moral obligations it places on team members."
Application: The evils done in the name of "teamwork" are legion. Enron and Worldcom fell in part because leaders were exhorted to "go along with the team." Software developers give up the balance of their daily lives because "everyone else is doing it." Those who question the traditional way of thinking are hit with that most dreaded of accusations, "you're not being a team player." If we no longer look at teamwork as a moral imperative, each of these situations look different. It becomes possible for the individual to still be seen as a moral actor as she takes a stand against groupthink.
Although I say in my teamwork talks that groups are the natural way of working, that is not the same thing as claiming that empowered work teams are natural. Throughout human history our work, family and social groups—the same set of individuals for most of that time—have almost always been directed by one or a few people. And my teamwork training recognizes that teams will fail if not provided with clear standards and boundaries by their managers. If anything, empowered teamwork—not just teamwork—is a step up in moral development from our natural inclinations, to where individuals at the line level are given nearly as much right to self-determination in their daily work as the company CEO.
So how to approach this? From the level of the individual team members, I suggest. Block off an hour of team meeting time soon to give everyone a shot at this question: "What drives you crazy about working in a team?" Then boil the answers down into a set of "Practical Values" and create a mechanism for questioning each other when someone thinks a value has been broken. This eliminates the question of moral right and wrong and takes team values instead to being a tool for effectively balancing the needs of the many with the needs of the one.
Source: Sewell, G. (05), "Doing What Comes Naturally? Why We Need a Practical Ethics of Teamwork, "International Journal of Human Resource Management 16(2):202.
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 TeamTrainersTM Consulting (www.suddenteams.com). Learn how to subscribe below and see the newsletter Web page for details about the newsletter, cautions about studies, and our privacy policy.
You may reprint any part of this newsletter at no charge in any electronic or print publication for which authors do not receive pay for individual articles, subject to the conditions below. This includes but is not limited to company and nonprofit organization newsletters, Web sites, intranets, etc. If authors are sometimes paid on a per-word or per-article basis, contact me to arrange reprint rights. The conditions for free publication are:
The right to reprint does not imply the granting of any other rights, and all copyrights remain the property of Jim Morgan.
Plain-text e-mail announcements are sent at no charge to subscribers whenever a new issue is posted, containing a list of that month's studies and articles and a link to the newsletter. To:
Your questions and suggestions are always welcome. Contact:
Jim Morgan
Head Coach, TeamTrainers Consulting
(425)
770-8595
jim@suddenteams.com
www.suddenteams.com
All content in this newsletter, including the title, is Copyright 2003-5 by Jim Morgan dba TeamTrainers Consulting. All rights reserved.
"SuddenTeams" is a registered trademark (US Trademark #2,456,849) and "TeamTrainers" and "The Science of Teams" are trademarks of Jim Morgan dba TeamTrainers Consulting.
TeamTrainers Consulting makes no guarantee or warranty regarding the use of information in this newsletter by individuals not employed by or under contract to TeamTrainers Consulting and performing official TeamTrainers business.