September 2005
Vol. 3, No. 3
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From the Editor: A manager I know gave me a good laugh at the expense of human nature the other day. She has taken a job at a software company that, to be kind, does not yet understand that innovation and process can go together (see last month's issue). In short, their culture is actually anti-process, and people who come in from outside the company easily see the money this company bleeds away. Unfortunately, outsiders are rarely hired into the critical middle-management positions where this view could have the most impact.
Recently my friend and a manager a couple of levels above her had to drive, separately, to a location away from the office. He is a bright, likeable man who clearly wants to do well by his workers and customers. But I would guess that he hasn't received a lick of credible training about how to manage projects or people. His job role is the closest this company has to that of a senior project manager. His project took literally years longer than it probably should have, and from what I know of it, any reader of this newsletter could probably pick out a half-a-dozen reasons why.
Anyway, my friend had never been to this meeting place. So she wisely visited a couple of Internet mapping sites, and therefore managed to arrive stresslessly ten minutes early. He, on the other hand, showed up five minutes late and clearly in a state. When he told her the circuitous route he took it was obvious why, having taken him way off the proverbial straight line between the two points. To explain this he said, "Well, I had been here once, so I just came the same way I had before."
So my friend tells him the much shorter route she found. And he said, "I knew there was a more efficient way to get here!"
Let's recap: the woman who had never been to this place before takes a few minutes to seek advice on and plan the best route to get to the destination, and thus beats the deadline despite using less travel time, less stress, and undoubtedly less gas money. She also happens to "get it" when it comes to managing her work and her staff. Meanwhile, the man who is not skilled at managing projects cost-effectively fails to do any planning, instead repeating what he has done before despite knowing it was not the best way to reach his goal. And he ends up getting there late and stressed, after spending more time and money.
Do you see a parallel here?
P.S.: If you question this newsletter's emphasis on science, consider the City of New Orleans. No matter where you are in the world, you no doubt have heard that this city of 485,000 has been rendered uninhabitable for months by Hurricane Katrina. Some government officials have tried to claim that no one could have predicted or prepared for a disaster of this magnitude. But that simply isn't true. According to an article from Reuters via MSNBC, scientists predicted exactly the consequences that have occurred and met with government representatives about it—five years ago.
Do you keep doing things the same way despite thinking there has to be a better way? Stop wondering, and start improving. Contact me today to find out how.
Study: A two-day training seminar increased creative thinking among its participants in ensuing months, but it only increased creative action if teamwork skills and access to information were already in place, according to two management professors.
Aware that top managers in a city wanted their employees to take this training by an outside consultant, professors Dusya Vera of the Univ. of Houston and Mary Crossan of the Univ. of Western Ontario put together a questionnaire covering a range of team and team member characteristics. Employees who took the training (100 in 22 teams) answered the questionnaire before the training took place and two months afterward. For comparison, a "control group" of another 77 in 16 teams also completed the questionnaire. Job titles came from a wide range of departments in the unnamed city. The researchers also interviewed 20 people to fill in details.
The training focused on "improvisation," a skill from the theatre world that some companies have tried to translate to work teams. An improvisation troupe does not use scripts. Instead, the actors take suggestions from the audience and spontaneously create skits (if you watch U.S. or British television, think of "Who's Line is it Anyway?"). You can see how this skill might be helpful in the business world, where teams often face unpredictable events. Unfortunately, Vera and Crossan argue, improvisation trainers for business typically overlook the fact that there are rules and special acting skills for theatrical "improv" performances and that the actors practice improvising regularly. It is not just a matter of providing a few techniques in a training session and throwing people up on stage.
Their study results expose the problem plainly. A team was considered to have improvised when members said they were able to "think on their feet" and discover new work processes, while innovation was measured using items team supervisors answered regarding whether the team "introduces new product/service innovation" and does so quickly. Looking at the groups as a whole, those in the training were no more likely to use improvisation in their work over the following two months than were those not in the training. And there was no direct correlation between the use of improvisation and innovative solutions to problems, the ultimate point to the training.
That does not meant the training didn't work, however. Teams with high levels of the following factors translated the training into higher improvisation and higher innovation (the quotes are sample items from the questionnaire):
On the other hand, teams without these teamwork fundamentals in place were rated lower in innovation the more they improvised. One interviewed worker put it this way: "In this project we were all willing to achieve a common goal. We knew what the goal was… But when you see that the decisions are not made by the right people…or that somebody doesn't want to cooperate for any reason, then it is very difficult to think creatively and create something new."
One factor the scientists measured had no effect one way or the other: team memory, which related to the existence of written procedures, "records of past projects," and up-to-date information systems. Since other research has generally found team memory to be a positive for team performance, the researchers speculated that a city's need for much more complex rules and procedures than corporations need may limit improvisation. As one team member said, "You can't…not worry about legal liability and health and safety issues with the public…unless you go by policies and procedures…"
Application: I didn't know this would happen when I selected this study, but it illustrates perfectly the premise behind my SuddenTeams® Program. Isolating a specific part of teamwork without first putting the fundamentals in place is a waste of time, employee goodwill, and money. Teams could only take advantage of the improvisation training if they already had the right mix of skills, both technical and nontechnical; access to all the information they needed; and a sense that they were encouraged to make mistakes. Listen to these members of teams that improvised successfully:
The application of this study is my same old song. Unless your team only has one area to improve in, stop throwing it into disconnected trainings that emphasize one teamwork trait ("trust exercises") or skill ("conflict resolution"), because they will not improve performance over the long term, if at all. You must instead embark on a holistic approach to teamwork that builds all aspects of teamwork from the ground up. It will take more time. But ironically, because it actually brings measurable results, it will be the approach that brings you the financial and personal benefits you seek for your team.
Source: Vera, D., and M. Crossan (05), "Improvisation and Innovative Performance in Teams," Organization Science 16(3):203.
Study: Here's another of the apparent ironies of empowered teams: how do you balance giving individual workers freedom to do their jobs the way they see best against giving their teams the same freedom? If you tell the individuals they don't have to follow the dictates of anyone on certain work matters, that has to include the dictates of the team. But you can't give the team control over those matters if no one on the team has to cooperate with it. Scientists seem to agree that in most circumstances, giving employees "autonomy" improves employee performance versus employees without autonomy, and giving it to teams improves team performance compared to unempowered teams. Up until recently, though, no one appears to have compared the two, leaving managers little guidance for figuring out the best approach for their groups.
After reviewing earlier studies, business researcher Claus Langfred of Washington University thought the degree to which people must coordinate efforts to accomplish their daily work might be the key. He surveyed 89 teams averaging eight members each at two plants of "a manufacturer of personal care and household products" in the U.S. Most were manufacturing teams, but administrative and other teams were involved as well. The company calculates team performance every quarter using "several different measures of productivity (depending on the particular tasks of the team)…" and other factors such as maintenance, safety, mistakes, and absenteeism. This gave Langfred an objective way to compare the performance of the teams.
He compared individual and team autonomy directly by taking nine statements other researchers had used for the former and replacing "I" with "the team." For example, the workers rated how much they agreed with each of the following:
"Task interdependence" (cooperation needed) was measured based on statements such as, "Most of my work cannot be done unless other people do their work" and "We cannot complete a project unless everyone contributes." Putting these three measure together, Langfred found a strong pattern in the results:
Langfred points out that his study was only a snapshot of one point in time, so we can't really say the right combination of task interdependence and team and individual autonomy caused better performance. And he says there may yet be types of teams for which high levels of both are advantageous: "perhaps consulting teams or medical research teams." But his study certainly hints at a way out of the manager's dilemma of how best to go about improving a group's bottom line through freedom.
Application: For someone like me who has observed a lot of different kinds of teams in action, Langfred's findings make sense. Let's say you are a software developer on a team creating a new product. Either of these situations is going to make it hard for you to do a good job:
In theory, most developer teams I have observed fell in-between these extremes: the developers were supposed to coordinate tightly in the planning stages (including the planning of changes), but then be free to tackle their tasks as they saw fit within the team's guidelines. (In practice, unfortunately, that tight coordination is not enforced, and numerous problems crop up at the boundaries between workers.) Langfred's research suggests a two-phase level of autonomy to the manager of one of these teams. In the planning phases, give your team a lot of control over the plans to meet the goals you require of it, and make clear that individuals must put the team first. But also make clear to the team that once it has established its methods, tasks, and milestones, each assigned individual must be "left alone" to meet their deadlines.
From all the studies I've looked at, though, I'd say most teams require consistently high or low levels of cooperation to get their jobs done. If that's true of yours, start looking at ways to give either individual team members a lot of work freedom or the team as a whole that freedom. To do so, let either the individual worker or team do the following (taken from the scales Langfred used):
Source: Langfred, C. (05), "Autonomy and Performance in Teams: The Multilevel Moderating Effect of Task Interdependence," Journal of Management 31(4):513.
Study: One way to help teams that are spread across different locations overcome the handicap of distance is to encourage frequent informal contacts, according to management researchers Pamela Hinds of Stanford University and Mark Mortenson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Virtual teams have difficulty performing as well as "co-located" teams, those in which everyone is in the same location. As Hinds and Mortenson suggest, part of the reason is that it is much harder to build a shared team identity among people who only meet by weekly teleconference. It's also harder to make sure all members are getting the same information and using compatible processes (that is, to have "shared context"). Also, the trust built in part through regular informal contact helps teams manage conflict. These researchers speculated that virtual teams using "spontaneous communications" such as e-mails, phone calls or instant messages more frequently would have better context and identity. They put together a Web-based survey taking approximately 30 minutes to complete, and had 288 people on 43 teams filled them out. Half the teams were co-located and half had members at two or more locations (in two U.S. states or a European country). All were part of the research department of "a firm in the natural resources extraction and processing industry."
As expected, geographically distributed teams had more conflict over work tasks and personal issues than co-located teams. But high levels of shared context wiped out that difference: if it was high, virtual teams had no more task conflict than co-located ones, and actually had less personal conflict. Informal communications had a very similar pattern of results as shared context. Shared identity, however, had little or no effect on conflicts.
In this study, there was little relationship between any of the other factors and team performance, except the typical finding that task conflict was linked to lower performance. I suspect this is because the measurement of performance was weak: the manager of each team was asked to compare the team to their best teams ever on five factors like efficiency and quality, without defining those terms. The measure did not account for how objectively "good" that best team was, either, or biases the manager might have that influenced the ratings. The authors state that future researchers should use more objective metrics.
Application: If you are on and/or manage a virtual team, this study suggests two key applications, one well-understood by teamwork scientists, and the other fairly new (but logical). The first is that you can reduce the negative effects of virtualness by encouraging shared context—that is, by avoiding the following problems as much as possible (quoted from the survey questions):
The second, which was the point to this study, is that you need to make sure people on the team communicate regularly outside of your weekly team meetings, progress reviews, or other formal gatherings. Those are important, but try to get people talking on their own in between. If you're the manager, let them pick up the phone—emotion cannot be communicated, relationships cannot be built, and personal information cannot be as quickly exchanged by letters on a screen as they can through the tones and speed of voice. Actively encourage them to get to know each other as well. Resist the temptation to assign team tasks to subteams from the same location. Whether you're the manager or a member of the team, you can put work together subteams of people in different locations. And try to pair up different people on different tasks, so everyone gets to know each other across whatever boundaries you face.
Source: Hinds, P., and M. Mortensen (05), "Understanding Conflict in Geographically Distributed Teams: The Moderating Effects of Shared Identity, Shared Context, and Spontaneous Communication," Organization Science 16(3):290.
Article: Most teams are made up of whoever was in an existing work group or is available to work on a project. Sometimes a lucky manager gets to pick from among the better performers in the company. Only rarely are the "best of the best" brought together on what two researchers call "virtuoso" (not "virtual") teams. And when they are, Bill Fischer and Andy Boynton claim in Harvard Business Review, the rules for running the team change. Fischer is a professor of technology management in Switzerland and Boynton is the dean of Boston College's management school.
The two studied "several dozen high performance teams" and use three as examples of virtuoso teams:
Most teams, the authors say, are put together to do work, not come up with great ideas. "In virtuoso teams, thinking is more important than doing: Individual members are hired for their skills and their willingness to dive into big challenges." These members are not shy with their ideas, they like being pushed and pushing each other, and they will risk their careers for success. On these teams, there's little point in trying to balance member egos with teamwork, Fischer and Boynton write. The Shows team "engaged daily in high-energy contests." The West Side team "engaged in…nasty tugs-of-war with one another," and each Norsk team member "had a reputation for being egocentric and difficult."
The authors say the leaders succeeded with these groups by playing to the egos. The Norsk Hydro leader did so "by publicly celebrating the selected members and putting them squarely in the spotlight… Team members would have absolute top priority and access to any resources they required, their conclusions would be definitive, and there would be no second-guessing." The leader balanced these egos by pairing members off to work on part of the problem, giving each a piece of the puzzle to work through on their own that nonetheless required the other pieces for the project to succeed.
Virtuoso teams cannot be virtual, the authors write. "In virtuoso teams, individual players energize each other and stimulate ideas with frequent, intense, face-to-face conversations…" For the Shows team, the "tight work space and relentless deadlines created a cauldron of energy and a frenzy of ideas." On the other hand, despite working up to 90 hours a week together in the same space, in the Norsk team the "atmosphere was relaxed and informal, and the discussions that took place there were open, honest, and passionate." Virtuoso teams also push their customers, Fischer and Boynton say. West Side Story "was a huge challenge because most producers thought the project too risky, dealing as it did with themes of social consciousness and racial violence." The producer of Show of Shows said at the time, "'We take for granted…that the mass audience we're trying to reach isn't a dumb one.'"
As a result, the leaders pushed their experts far harder than most teams are driven. Jerome Robbins "pushed, prodded, embarrassed, and demanded excellence from his people…" Because the leader of the Norsk team kept presentations "to a strict limit of 15 minutes, members used their allotment to maximum effect." Sid Caeser, the performer who built Show of Shows, "kept the group focused on the goal: to produce the very best comedy possible for each show." As a result, his writers came to feel, as one said, "'He had total control, but we had total freedom…" Fischer and Boynton believe, "This statement goes to the very heart of what it means to lead a virtuoso team."
Application: Fischer and Boynton provide a list of ways to handle virtuoso teams that they say differ from how to handle traditional teams, among which are:
Here's my problem with their advice: While it is true that traditional teams are run the way they say, that doesn't mean those teams should be run that way. In fact, I think the research literature supports the idea that most of the ideas they list for virtuoso teams would work just as well for the ones you and I work with. And the biggest exception, regarding not "sparing feelings," is questionable without seeing the data behind it. The worst example of this, the Shows team, might have succeeded with some controls on personal attacks—the Norsk Hydro team apparently did—and the authors admit it had a very high turnover rate, which would be cost-prohibitive in most companies. In my experience, furthermore, merit and consensus are not incompatible. If a team uses disciplined decision-making, the solution with the most merit will be the one that gains the team's consensus support.
Also, I think every team deserves to be pushed hard, within the bounds of what is realistic. When I was an education beat reporter, I covered a speech by a successful school reformer. He told the story of a group of students kept together in a mathematics class because they had failing grades at general arithmetic that their peers had long ago mastered. Teachers kept teaching them basic math, perhaps making the biased assumption that lower-income African-Americans could do no better, and the students kept failing. Then a new teacher came in and told the students they were going to skip the basic stuff and learn algebra.
They all passed. This makes me wonder if having a virtuoso team is not so much a matter of collecting the kind of talent the authors reported on, and more a matter of treating an "ordinary" team as if it were a virtuoso one.
Source: Fischer, B., and A. Boynton (05), "Virtuoso Teams," Harvard Business Review Jul/Aug:117.
Article: An experiment with team-based pay at the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) found such pay effective, but many factors moderated the results, according to three consultants hired to run the project. A government agency, the NHS provides free medical care to all UK residents. Some of the improvements included:
The article is an example of why I caution readers about "success stories." It leaves out many details and any hard data, so I can't draw any conclusions about the validity of the findings or even describe how they came about. The 17 "teams" ranged from small groups to an entire 3,000-person hospital. Some rewards were paid as cash for meeting targets, some as funds teams could direct to work improvements, and some as a mix. There were no "control" groups (teams similar to those tested but not taking part) for comparison purposes. And lest this sound like I am criticizing them, to their credit the authors state up front that, "the aim was to make the pilots work, not to be dispassionate researchers." Specifically, they "supported internal project teams in clarifying team membership, designing targets and establishing metrics." They also conducted before-and-after surveys and focus groups to gauge attitude change.
The consultants claim that successes occurred in teams widely ranging in size, in job-related diversity (function, level in the company), age of team, and "collegiality." However, teams that lost a team leader, or worse, project manager were less likely to succeed, as were those who could not specify goals well or considered the goals that had been imposed on them to be unrealistic. "Some hospital administrators found it hard to specify output, let along outcome, measures," the consultants write. "For example, one site proposed using the proportion of performance assessments completed as a target, rather than the development actions arising from the appraisals or the benefits to the patients from having better trained staff." In other words, the focus was on work accomplished, not the value of that work. Setting good goals seemed to require a balance between the extremes of simply forcing them on the teams (presumably with little team input) and giving teams complete control over their goals. (This is consistent with my findings that the optimum method is for managers to impose high-level goals based on organizational strategy, but let workers determine the team-level targets for meeting those goals.)
The authors conclude that "beneficial results could be attributed to the team-based pay pilot. The key point was that having such a scheme generated processes that meant that outstanding issues got attention. These problems would probably have been resolved in due course, but team-based pay tackled them, and perhaps in a different way. Team-based pay pushed these problems to the head of the queue and mobilized resources to get them dealt with."
Application: The consultants' report is a good "view from the trenches" for anyone considering this type of project. Their suggestions fit with the findings of scientists:
Most teamwork experts recommend some form of team-based pay, ranging from bonuses for meeting targets to "gainsharing," getting a slice of any bottom-line improvements in the team's performance. This article points out that where such plans fail, it often is because the plan is improperly planned and/or implemented, not because the idea could not have worked. I can't summarize what you need to know about setting team targets any better than the authors do: "Those that are clear and simple, are easy to communicate and evaluate, relate to the work that employees do and are believed to be achievable and within their control will bring the best rewards for both parties."
To create these, upper managers first have to decide what they want the organization within which the team resides to accomplish, as measured by impact on the organization's customers (whether in or outside of the company). From that, determine what each team needs to achieve at minimum if the organization is to meet its goals. Then give the teams' enough meeting time to determine how to meet those targets, and whatever resources you can afford them to do so.
Source: Reilly, P., J. Phillipson, and P. Smith (05), "Team-Based Pay in the United Kingdom," Compensation & Benefits Review Jul/Aug:54.
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