August 2004
Vol. 2, No. 2
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From the Editor: Newsletter guru Jessica Albon (The Write Exposure) recently suggested that editors like myself can add interest by including more of our personality in our work. I am skeptical that anyone wants to know anything about me, but her previous advice has always been right on target, so here goes. Recently I have found myself struggling personally with many of the issues business teams face: considering options, seeking the best solution, melding communication styles, and weighing values. The first precept of my philosophical tradition is "Do no harm."
But that isn't a simple thing. Sometimes the only realistic choices in life will cause some harm to someone (including yourself). Sometimes short-term harm is necessary to reduce long-term harm. And sometimes you cannot equally follow all of your harm-reducing values: compassion, patience, respect for different approaches and self-preservation. Often there must be tradeoffs.
I raise this here to make a simple point. Don't think business is about money or strategies or competition. A business is nothing more than a group of people trying to achieve their personal goals through, ideally, a shared few. And your biggest job as a team member or team leader is to manage the relationships that requires, just like you do at home, among your friends, and in your community. People are not "the most important asset of the business"; people are the business.
Need content for your company or organization newsletter? You can reprint anything you find in TeamResearch News from any month. See the new Reprinting Articles section for details, and contact Jim if you would like a longer article on any teamwork-related topic.
Study: Real-world studies of virtual teams seem to be a growing trend. In this one, researchers followed six virtual project teams from start to finish. A major food-service firm created the teams to help with various aspects of its effort to merge with several recently acquired companies, and the researchers were allowed to survey and interview members throughout the teams' entire eight-month life cycles. Though primarily virtual, the teams met face-to-face at four times roughly corresponding to the oft-quoted stages of team development: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. At the end, team performance was judged by a panel of the company's top executives and the teams' program administrators on the quality of the teams' analyses, recommendations, and final presentations.
In the Forming stage, the teams reported no differences in their commitment to and availability for the project, or in their confidence the goals could be met. One typical comment was, "'I believe we have a great team and will work well together. We all understand the importance of the project and intend to take it seriously.'"
Two months later some of the teams were Storming. Problem issues included "establishing leadership roles, setting direction, coordinating work, and building commitment to the task." Lack of support from team project sponsors and the failure or inability of members to dedicate significant time to the project were major factors. Comments included:
About halfway through the projects, "most teams recognized the need for reaching agreement on how they would operate going forward"—for Norming, in other words. "Teams also expressed some regret about their initial passivity, lack of initiative, and delays in collecting information." There now were big differences among the teams in their opinions of their "levels of trust, sponsor support, and team performance." Note that teams saying they were making progress at this stage had reported higher levels of communication, knowledge sharing, commitment, and accountability for assigned tasks during the Storming phase. Quotes included:
However, by the Norming phase, it was too late to effect final performance. Ratings by the evaluators at the end of the project were not related to how the teams differed by the Norming phase: the damage was done earlier. Teams that had "greater mission clarity, more time to examine work process effectiveness, and higher perceived levels of sponsor support" in earlier phases did better in the final analysis.
Application: The authors provide a laundry list of "interventions" that virtual team managers should implement to ensure success, broken down by phase:
Source: Furst, S., et al. (04), "Managing the Life Cycle of Virtual Teams," Academy of Management Executive 18(2):6.
Study: Despite the "'overwhelming' factual evidence that 'progressive' HR practices are associated with improvements in organizational effectiveness or business performance," companies continue to resist adopting them, according to this study. Among 237 companies surveyed earlier in the United Kingdom about 18 such practices, "Only one percent used more than three-quarters of the practices, 25 percent used more than half and 20 percent used fewer than a quarter." Why?
This survey of 98 high-level HR professionals (also in the UK), followed by interviews with 24 of them, tried to answer that simple question. One fact leaps out of the data: the six of 12 people-oriented practices these HR professionals considered least important were the ones they said their companies had made the most progress on! In fact, the correlation was perfect—number 7 in importance was number 1 in progress, importance 8 was progress 2, and so on.
Of course, the researcher points out, those six were also the easiest to implement. For example, improving communications with employees requires a a lower commitment of energy and resources than eliminating management layers. Other obstacles to the "high commitment" practices mentioned in the interviews included upper management and union resistance, and lack of money. But the author also concludes that the HR people themselves were part of the problem—that they were stuck in a view of HR as an administrative function rather than one that could be part of the company's strategic efforts. "It is perhaps no surprise then," he wrote, "that most of the interviewees struggled to provide convincing examples of 'high commitment' HR practices or (metrics) of the impact of HR on organisational performance or effectiveness." Without the ability to do so, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when the HR professional cannot convince managers and employees of the value of these practices.
As for the directly team-related results, "Encouraging team working and co-operation across internal organisational boundaries" was rated as number 4 in importance out of the 18, but only 42% of respondents said their companies had made substantial progress in implementing this. Four obstacles were mentioned:
Application: My friends in the HR world may find these results uncomfortable, but will also recognize them as an addition to a debate that has nearly consumed the HR world. My regular reading of HR sources tells me many HR professionals fear HR is under threat of decentralization and outsourcing because. Part of the problem, they say, is that HR managers resist learning how to put what they do into financial terms that upper managers will respond to and hard evidence of improved job satisfaction that employees will want for themselves. Although my teamwork advocacy does not make me an HR professional, I have taken heed of these warnings. For me, developing the methods to more easily put "high-commitment" HR practices based on teams into action is no more important than publicizing the evidence that it works, for managers and workers alike. If you'd like to help within your company or professional organizations, contact me.
Source: Caldwell, R. (04), "Rhetoric, Facts and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Exploring Practitioners' Perceptions of Progress in Implementing HRM," Industrial Relations Journal 35(3):196.
Study: Little research has been done into the "demand side" of knowledge management. KM is the practice of communicating, as defined for this study, "expertise, opinions, insights, and experience" (as opposed to mere facts; "knowledge" has also been described as "facts in context"). Getting people to share knowledge—the "supply side"—has been the focus of research so far. The presumption, according to two business professors, has been that KM is always valuable for everyone on the receiving end.
What science does best is question assumptions, and this study is an example. Using surveys from 313 employees of a mid-sized technology manufacturer, the researchers concluded that only workers with mentally demanding jobs—complex, nonroutine jobs that required high levels of cooperation with coworkers—gained much from seeking company knowledge. The reason, the authors suggest, is that people with routine jobs just don't have as much to learn over the course of time. Fortunately, people with complex jobs were also more likely to seek out knowledge.
That latter point raised a finding that seems to go against common sense at first: people who by personality were more prone to seek out knowledge actually got less out of the effort. That is, when someone who normally resisted learning did seek knowledge, they got more out of what they learned than did someone who sought knowledge all the time. But this makes sense when you dig further. Someone who knows a lot already is not as likely to come across new information that will help them move forward. (It seems to me that further research would show a similar effect by topic. I don't seek knowledge about Spanish as often as I would like, so when I make the time for some self-study I obviously get more impact than would a linguist—who by the same token would get more impact than I from an hour dedicated to team-related reading.)
Application: Although this study is not directly related to teamwork, teams do work better if members seek out each others' experience. This study suggests that, as the authors wrote, "blanket efforts to increase the overall level of knowledge (seeking) may well be wasted on some employees." For example, making knowledge seeking part of everyone's performance goals means people "who are unlikely to benefit" will spend their effort on that when that time and energy could be better focused elsewhere.
In or outside of a team-based workplace, this might mean giving experienced folks a greater incentive to share knowledge than to seek it. Also, focusing on other skill sets might make more sense for workers doing more routine tasks. I'll also note that the complex, demanding work in which KM is more beneficial are also the ones research shows to benefit more from being true teams instead of work groups.
Source: Gray, P., and D. Meister (04), "Knowledge Sourcing Effectiveness," Management Science 50(6):821.
Study: Since this study will seem an odd inclusion for TeamResearch News, it needs a brief introduction. Based on my readings, conversations with line workers, and work experiences, I believe the vast majority of teams and team members suffer because they:
Since all animals are inherently goal-oriented, I have assumed that means most people just fall back on their personal goals, which could be anything from becoming top managers to keeping their jobs and staying out of trouble. But this study suggests something called "goal contagion"—the unconcious adoption of another person's goals—could alter a worker's behavior.
Some Dutch researchers created a series of six computer-based lab studies in which the person would read about someone's behavior. Then the reader would be asked to do an apparently unrelated task such as provide feedback on the study or clear the screen in time to do a task for which they could earn some money. Small changes in the stories affected the readers' task performances, in some cases based on the readers' real-life situations. For example, after reading otherwise identical stories in which the main character either got a job or did volunteer work before a long trip, people who needed money were more likely to try to earn it through the study if the character got a job.
The rest of the studies involved college males seeking sex, but stick with me anyway. The results:
However, if the guy in the bar sought sex and was in a committed relationship—that is, if his behavior was likely unacceptable to some readers—as a group they:
compared to when the bar guy was not involved with someone else or did not seek sex.
Application: Since all of the studies involved college students and the goals weren't work-related, they may seem of little relevance. But this line of research raised questions for me. In the absence of a clearly stated and mutually understood set of goals, or a known plan for achieving them that directs work activity, do some workers adopt the acceptable goals they perceive other workers to have? Does goal contagion explain why some groups perform reasonably well anyway? Does misperception of a manager's goals explain why groups will think they are doing fine, only to find out the manager considers them unsuccessful? And what effect does correct perception of a manager's unstated goal that the team considers unacceptable have?
Regardless, it's logical to assume (and supported by other research) that a team will improve its performance if the team's goals are clearly stated and aligned with the organization's goals. Want to test your team's goal understanding? At the next meeting, stand up at the white board, turn your back to everyone with marker raised, and ask: "Okay, altogether now: what are this team's goals?"
Source: Aarts, H., P. Gollwitzer, and R. Hassin (04), "Goal Contagion: Perceiving is for Pursuing," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87(1):23.
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.
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