Developing
Emergency
Creative Teams
by Alexander Watson Hiam
Most businesses today are limited by the inability to break through periodic
performance bottlenecks. These bottlenecks take many forms: a marketing
group struggles to find a new way to position a product; a factory manager
searches for a way to reduce machine downtime; a human resource department
confronts a specific, hard-to-fill position. Add to this mix the dozens
of urgent issues that pop up on voice-mail and the in-box-not to mention
those chronic irritants and profit-sinks that nobody gets around to fixing-and
most managers wonder when they will ever have the time to be creative and
address the root causes of lackluster performance.
Wouldn't it be nice to just pick up the "bat phone" and have some
super heroes rush in to solve your problem? (And then rush out to leave
you in peace.) But instead, you must either do it yourself or (heaven forbid)
spend tens of thousands on a consultant who wants to take months to solve
your problem, instead of hours.
But you don't have to choose between two marginally acceptable options in
that familiar, "either-or" manner. Consider creating the capacity
within your organization to send in a team with a fresh perspective-trained
in creative problem solving, prepared with some consulting skills, deployable
in a short time frame and at minimal cost-to tackle just the kinds of performance
bottlenecks you would most like to resolve.
Going beyond the "either-or" dilemma
It may seem like the alternative to not spending a bundle on a consultant
is to continue to live with the problem. One way out of this disheartening
rut is the emergency creative team. The ECT is analogous to the on-call
paramedics used by small towns for their flexibility and low cost. Normally,
ECT members do their regular jobs. But when a manager or team encounters
a logjam, they can send for the on-call members of the ECT-who then rush
to pick up their briefcases of problem-solving and creative-thinking tools
and go to the aid of those who rang the alarm.
Developing ECTs means gaining an internal capacity to perform short-term,
problem-specific consultations completed by a multifunction team of staff
members familiar with the business, its mission and customers, and its culture.
This team is trained to bring both creative problem-solving expertise and
a much-needed fresh perspective to performance bottlenecks and administrative
logjams.
Using a selection process that combines volunteer initiative, preliminary
skill assessment and complimentary functional specialization, ECTs will
be able to deliver several results to your organization:
An expanded "solution set"- The first problem to overcome in
solving organizational performance problems is to stop using old solutions.
The comfort and predictability of tried-and-true solutions are generally
a big point in their favor and also the source of their limited results.
ECTs can break this barrier with new eyes, new questions and a new way of
thinking about persistent bottlenecks.
Faster dissemination of organizational learning- The second problem to
overcome in solving organizational performance problems is the slow speed
at which innovation spreads. Due to their multifunction composition and
their roving nature, ECTs will forge new neural pathways in the organization's
brain along which new perspectives and new skills can travel-as well as
the enthusiasm that accompanies such events!
Increased collaboration and cooperation for better productivity and profitability-All
the current clich& eacute's, like "doing more with less" and "working
smarter, not harder," promote an organizational environment characterized
by collaboration and cooperation. And performance innovations and improvements
are products of creative human beings, not fancy computer programs or new
machinery. ECTs will provide a live model of cross-functional collaboration,
and other organization members will spontaneously follow this lead.
In addition to building new skills in organization members and creating
new ways of using the most talented people, ECTs can be used to address
any urgent management problems. And they can help your managers and project
teams achieve breakthroughs like these:
Developing new product ideas
Identifying new market segments
Developing productivity improvements
Cutting red tape in complex admini- strative processes
Resolving persistent quality problems
Finding new best practices against which to benchmark organizational performance
Finding cost-saving strategies to reduce
overhead
Increasing customer satisfaction with
products and services
Enhancing worker and workplace safety
Implementing ECTs
Establishing ECTs begins with specifying the process for identifying members,
training the team, facilitating them through their first "client"
engagement as a key feature of learning and demonstrating the use of these
teams. It also includes evaluating the results with the client and perhaps
other organization members.
Membership on creative problem-solving teams should be voluntary, and organization
staff members at any level and from any function should be free to volunteer.
The resulting team will have a multidisciplinary or "cross-functional"
composition.
ECT training should cover interpersonal and group process skills, "conceptual
maps" and other tools that facilitate creative problem solving and
critical thinking, and managing a client engagement. The training requires
about five working days.
Managing the ECT is initially accomplished in a joint fashion between an
ECT consultant and an internal senior manager. The manager trains with the
team members and receives assistance from the consultant in team-management
issues, so that the ECT consultant can exit the loop.
Testing and applying the model occurs with the identification of an actual
performance or policy problem presently experienced and unresolved in a
unit or team of the organization; the fledgling ECT conducts an internal
consultation with this volunteer group under the consultant's management
and facilitation. This part of the process is used to apply the skills in
a "real world" setting and to teach the group-process component
of client engagement.
A detailed debriefing follows the conclusion of the client engagement.
This feature of the overall consultation is used to assess the results of
the effort and identify any needed modifications or improvements in the
team's training and skill building. This feature may also assess what follow-up
support the creative team needs, either from top management, human resources
or the consultant.
Managing the innovation
To gain credibility, the ECT needs to become part of the organization and
needs to have some visibility and accountability. Visibility is developed
and maintained by satisfying ECT customers and by providing updates to the
top management team, which should receive reports of the ECT's progress
and accomplishments. Process accountability is established through the reporting
link with the senior management staffer who deploys and oversees the team's
work and projects. This individual will have ongoing access to the consultant
for any needed assistance.
Ongoing evaluation of the innovation occurs through brief written evaluations
and comment sheets completed by unit members with whom the team consults.
The team's specific "work product"-whether it be an idea, a strategy,
a redesigned policy or process-can be monitored to assess the quality of
its impact on unit performance.
The ECT becomes an internal resource that is responsive and accountable,
capable of providing applied creativity on a moment's notice. And ECT membership
creates a new development path for future managers.
A positive approach
Healthy, vital and prosperous organizations that deliver value to customers
take risks, make decisions, try new approaches. The ECT concept invites
an organization to increase its ability to learn and innovate. This will
enable the organization to chart its own course in response to a dynamic
environment.
The best way to undertake such an effort is to invite organization members
to participate in an experiment that may make a significant contribution
to overall organizational performance. And experimenting is a good analogy.
Experiments are carefully developed, creatively implemented strategies designed
to test a new concept in a thoughtful way, using the best learnings from
previous experience coupled with a willingness to leap off into unknown
territory.
Experimenting presumes the use of previous knowledge applied in new ways,
which may generate unpredictable results. Experimenting suggests that the
risk takers will come up with something wonderful, mediocre or not very
useful. In any case, the risk takers have the freedom to risk and the permission
to be wrong sometimes. Asking ECTs to be bold risk takers only works if
they are allowed a learning curve and some promising misfires.
An ECT case history
Plant Manager Alice James is working on next year's budget and plan. But
she keeps coming back to a key problem-the company has asked all plants
to achieve 5-percent to 7-percent productivity improvements per year, but
the productivity growth rate at her plant is 2 percent to 3 percent per
year. To make the required profit goals next year, James must either boost
productivity dramatically or make some big cost cuts-probably through a
15-percent downsizing of her payroll. Yet that would add to her labor problems-she
knows she'll have a tough time renegotiating the union contract when the
present agreement expires next summer.
So James is stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place, unwilling
to commit on paper to bigger productivity gains than last year and also
unwilling to adopt a destructive downsizing strategy. What to do? She is
about to send in an unrealistic plan in a futile effort to postpone the
decision, when she remembers the new ECT program that recently came out
of headquarters.
The ECT of five employees arrives the next morning and takes over the best
conference room. One of them, someone considerably her junior at the company,
demands that she hold all calls and spend the entire morning with them.
She wonders if this is going to work.
By mid-afternoon, James is considerably more enthusiastic about the ECT-and
about next year's budget as well. With the team's help, she has in hand
three new creative strategies, at least one of which she hopes will do the
trick.
The "end run"-After some persistent questioning, the ECT discovers
significant loss at the plant due to incorrect orders for raw materials
and supplies. Fixing this would result in a sizable cost savings over the
year, and the ECT helps her sketch out a plan to overhaul her present order-triggering
and product "spec" processes.
The "cooperation strategy"-The ECT discovers that vacation absences
around national holidays like Memorial Day and the 4th of July seem to be
linked to overtime generation in order to meet stiff production deadlines.
They propose a fair and easy-to-track process to prevent such staffing problems
and the accompanying overtime costs. They suggest a cooperative approach
to this problem in which union officials are asked to select a solution
such as a lottery system for the most desirable vacation slots. They also
point out that the sales force could easily adopt a variable-lead-time approach
to customer orders so as not to commit to unrealistic delivery dates around
holiday times, reducing pressure on production costs and requirements from
both directions.
The "problem redefinition"-An ECT member points out that the
plant stores large piles of parts and finished goods-some of them unusable
because of quality problems or product-line changes. The ECT calculates
that a 50-percent cut in inventories next year would have the same practical
impact as a 6-percent boost in labor productivity. They recommend forming
an inventory reduction team composed of production-floor staff, a manager
and a representative from the plant's biggest parts supplier.
When Alice James sits back down at her desk to write next year's plans,
she feels much better. Now she can sketch out several proactive strategies
to cut costs and increase productivity. Then she can create reasonable projections
for the resultant gains, which could be sufficient to close her budget gap
without any layoffs. The following week, when James hears about an experimental
manager's ECT, she is quick to volunteer.
About the author . . .
Alexander Watson Hiam is president of Alexander Hiam & Associates,
an Amherst, Massachusetts-based consulting firm. Hiam served on the faculty
of American International College and Western New England College before
joining the faculty of the School of Management at University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. He is currently researching new approaches to change management,
team development and leadership. He thanks Pat Meny of The Industrial Services
Program (in Boston) for her help in developing the ECT concept.
Hiam's books include: The Vest-Pocket CEO: Decision-Making Tools for
Executives, The Portable MBA in Marketing, Closing the Quality Gap and
his latest, The Portable Conference on Change Management.
Hiam is currently testing the ECT concept in organizations and welcomes
feedback from readers. Contact Alexander Hiam & Associates at (413)
253-3658 or fax (413) 256-8960.
