Companies across the country are looking for ways to tap the capabilities of employees more effectively. Many are employing methods such as
suggestion systems, improvement teams, and self-directed teams. If these methods are to
succeed in helping companies become more competitive, company leaders must plan the
strategy carefully. Company leaders should focus on what they hope to accomplish with
employee involvement (EI), and how EI fits into the company's overall vision and strategies for the future.
Competitiveness
The standards for competitiveness have changed. The old economy depended on mass
production and standardization of work as well as the goods and services produced. The old
economy benefited from the centralization of control at the top of a pyramid where a small
elite group of managers did the thinking for the entire organization. Many layers of
managers kept tight control over information flow in these standardized systems through
strict administrative procedures. These work methods and organizational standards are not
well-suited to the new economy in which consumers are demanding customized, high quality
products and services delivered to them quickly and conveniently. The organizational
pyramid is too unwieldy to accommodate these consumer demands. The
"high-performance" organization that is positioned to compete in the new economy
is organized for the maximum use of brain-power by redistributing decision-making
authority to those who actually make the product or deliver the service. These
"high-performance" organizations actually resemble a web more than a pyramid. In
the center of the web are people who manage ideas and bring together teams to identify and
solve problems. Organizations become networks of teams with small work groups as the basic
building blocks of the work organization. The "high-involvement" approach to
management requires that employees add value to products and services by thinking, solving problems, and managing themselves.
Background of Team Concept
The concept of teams comes from at least two related but distinct trends:
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Employee Involvement
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Total Quality Management
Employee Involvement began as long ago as the 1970's and has included suggestion systems, survey feedback processes, and employee
problem-solving teams. Most companies implement employee involvement in order to improve
the bottom line of the organization by increasing productivity, quality and employee motivation.
Total Quality Management includes such activities as direct employee exposure to customers, work simplification, and process
improvement teams. TQM and EI are both aimed at improving the bottom line; however, TQM
tends to focus on work simplification while EI focus more on the motivational system of
the organization and how work should be designed. TQM tends to be more
"top-down" than EI. Management's' role is more directive and employees tend to
have less control and discretion than in EI approaches.
Employee Empowerment can be achieved through either TQM or EI; however neither of these approaches guarantees
empowerment. Empowerment means passing on authority and responsibility. Empowerment occurs
when power is redistributed so that employees control their own work. Not all EI
approaches and TQM approaches to teams are empowering, nor does empowerment always occur
through teams. Individuals can be empowered to make decisions about their own work, while
teams may not be empowered to make decisions about their own work. For example, some teams
make recommendations but do not make decisions. Empowerment should be thought of on a
continuum involving levels of decision-making authority.
Classification of Teams
Teams are "small groups of people with complementary skills who are
committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals and approaches for which they hold
themselves accountable", according to Katzenbach and Smith in their book, The
Discipline of Teams. The key is a team holds itself as a group accountable for joint
activities and outcomes. There are three basic categories of teams:
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Teams that Recommend Things
e.g. task forces, project groups, quality and safety groups, such as quality circles. They are usually parallel to the
regular organizational structures, meaning that they aren't part of the day to day operations, and frequently are voluntary."
Critical Issues: getting off to fast and constructive start; and dealing with the hand-off to get recommendations implemented.
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Teams that Make or Do Things
e.g. responsible for making or delivering the product or service, such as natural work-teams. They have a great deal of
input into their work processes and their joint efforts accomplish more than individual
efforts. They do not, necessarily, however control their own work. They are frequently led
by a manager that solicits employee input and is committed to employee participation, yet maintains control.
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Teams that Run Things
e.g. empowered teams that make their own decisions and control their own work, such as clusters, and self-managed work teams.
Critical Issue: Will the sum of the individual "best performance" suffice, or will the group be required to deliver
substantial incremental performance requiring joint work-products.
Types of Teams
(Based on Peter Drucker's Categorizations)
Teams vary in composition and manner of functioning. For example, teams within companies
can be characterized with the following analogies:
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Baseball Team
Players play on the team not as a team. They have fixed positions that they never leave. They pass work from one team member to
the next, e.g. Henry Ford's assembly line.
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Football Team
Players have fixed positions but they play as a team. They work in parallel rather than in sequence, e.g. clusters or groups of
people drawn from different disciplines who work together on a semi-permanent basis).
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Tennis Doubles Team
Players have primary rather than fixed positions. They cover their teammates, adjusting to their strengths and weaknesses and the
changing rules of the game, e.g. self-regulated, multi-skilled work teams.
Discussion Questions
The following questions are offered to stimulate discussion and possible action.
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What does your company hope to accomplish through teams?
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To what degree do customer demands lead to the need to restructure the organization towards employee empowerment?
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What is your company's philosophy pertaining to teams? Is the focus primarily on simplifying work and improving processes or
is it also on motivating employees?
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What level of employee empowerment does your company want to include in its vision of the future?
