Maximizing the
Bottom-Line Impact of
Self-Directed Work Teams


by Michael Donovan, Ph.D.

Teams have the greatest impact
under conditions
of interdependence, autonomy and empowerment.

Lured by the promise of significant performance breakthroughs, managers are rushing to make self-directed work teams part of their organizational landscape. They are designating existing work groups as "teams" and investing time and money in training. In many cases, these organizations face two basic questions:
Is this work group really a team?
Is this unit designed to achieve the maximum benefit from teamwork?


Self-directed work teams can achieve significant results. But these results occur when, and only when, the system is designed to elicit, support and reward teamwork.

Imagine that your organization is an ocean-sailing yacht competing for the America's Cup. You want to be the person with the most influence over the yacht's performance. In what role do you see yourself?

People usually respond to this question with roles such as captain, navigator, crew selector, trainer or owner. None of these roles are correct. The person with the most influence over the yacht is the naval architect who designed it.

Organizational behavior is strongly influenced by the system within which it occurs. Therefore, the design of that system is critical for achieving high performance.

A well-designed yacht still needs an experienced and well-trained crew to achieve world-class performance. But without a well-designed craft, even the best-trained crew will fall short. Design is a limiting factor.

"Many organizations use teams as wallpaper," says Jeanne Wilson, a noted author on self-directed teams. "They cover over a dilapidated, decaying and flaking structure and then wonder why they don't get the results they seek."

An organization is a complex system composed of several elements that are in constant interrelation with each other. Changing one element affects the other elements. If Chicago's O'Hare Airport closes due to inclement weather, this affects air traffic all across the country. Achieving high performance requires a system where the elements are well-integrated and balanced. When one part of the system integrates poorly with others, it limits the potential for success.

In the case of the distribution center in Figure 1, the system's work management, appraisal and reward components are designed to promote and reward individual performance vs. teamwork. Grouping people into teams and investing in training without realigning these components will result in minimal gains, confusion and frustration.

Self-directed work teams realize their real potential under conditions of interdependence, autonomy and empowerment.

Interdependence
A work group needs a high degree of interdependence to obtain the maximum impact from teamwork. Interdependence is the "glue" needed for teamwork. Under conditions of high interdependence, members are acutely aware of how "tied together" they are and recognize the necessity and self-interest of cooperation and teamwork.

There are two kinds of interdependence. Task interdependence refers to the degree to which jobs are linked to create an overall result. This can be increased in a work group by:
Linking dependent tasks or tasks that require collaboration.
Creating task flexibility and back-up through "multiskilling."
Rotating jobs.
Encouraging peer appraisals.
Assigning team projects or responsibilities.


Outcome interdependence refers to establishing individual accountability for unit results. This can be increased by:
Creating units whose outcomes require collaboration.
Making individuals personally accountable for unit results.
Using customer ratings of the unit to evaluate each team member's performance.
Tying some compensation to achieving unit goals.
Involving unit members in regular goal setting, performance tracking, problem solving and process improvement.

Autonomy
By moving to self-directed work teams, an organization seeks to elicit new behaviors- increased ownership, responsibility, initiative, flexibility and creative problem solving. The real innovation is creating a shift in the depth of ownership and responsibility employees feel for their work. This requires creating conditions where employees become "franchise owners" of a core process.

Functional groupings diffuse responsibility for overall results and thereby foster competition and scapegoating. Teams with minimal outside dependencies can accept greater responsibility for overall results.

Organizing around processes often means linking unlike functions into units and creating outcome interdependence. Teams are held accountable for their results and establish inclusive measures and goals that reflect customer and stakeholder concerns.

Leaving the measurement system and critical functions and processes outside the unit limits the team's ability to own and manage the process. The challenge is to integrate, where possible and practical, close-in support functions. Organizations should look for places where a team is vulnerable to the poor or nonresponsive performance of others and then integrate those people or functions into the team. Then they should provide the team with the knowledge and skills to do all the work required to complete the process.

In a traditional brewery packaging line, operators run the equipment. If the equipment breaks, they call maintenance. Distribution employees move material to and from the line. Quality inspectors sample and inspect the work to determine if it can be shipped. The supervisor makes task assignments, coordinates with other departments, trouble-shoots problems and decides on corrective actions. These five groups share overall responsibility. Failing to meet the schedule results in blaming and justifying.

At Miller Brewing's Trenton Plant, the packaging team runs its equipment, fixes breakdowns, inspects its own work, moves material and does its own planning, control, coordination and improvement (see Figure 2). They possess the knowledge, skills and responsibility to run their line as if it were their own business.

Traditional organizations separate the actual work from the planning, control, coordination, administration and improvement functions. These functions are usually performed by supervisors or staff personnel. This separation of doing the work from managing the work undermines employee commitment. Empowerment refers to the transfer of these functions to the team, thereby reducing their dependency on a supervisor for the unit's day-to-day management.

The conditions of interdependence, autonomy and empowerment don't just happen, they are created through organizational design. Without proper design, team efforts can waste resources and cause frustration and internal conflict.

Elements of organization architecture
All too often, structure is the only element considered in organizational design. Structure refers to how people are grouped together into units, the responsibilities of each group and who reports to whom. When things go wrong, the first thing the traditional leader wants to do is change the structure-move the boxes around.

Unfortunately, problems often stem from deeper dynamics among many elements of an organization's architecture, of which structure is just one. When one part of the system doesn't integrate well with others, the potential for success is impaired, as in the case of the distribution center.

An organization is a system composed of many elements. Some elements organize the people. They include structure, job design and rewards (social elements). Other elements organize technology, equipment and space. They include work flow and physical layout (technical elements). An effective organizational design balances and integrates the system's social and technical elements (socio-technical design).

Figure 3 contrasts the traditional vs. the team-based principles of design. Traditional principles often work against teamwork, as in the distribution center case. Team-based principles seek to elicit, support and reward teamwork.

The challenge for any organization is to create conditions that will maximize their teams' impact. This can be achieved by applying the team-based principles to the design of organizational units. To keep teams from simply being "wallpaper," pay attention to whether the organization is designed to create the conditions for maximum bottom-line impact.

Case Study: Distribution Center

A large distribution center for a retail music chain wanted to implement self-directed work teams with their warehouse employees-order fillers, checkers and shipping and receiving clerks.

The mission of the warehouse operation is to fill the orders of the retail stores in a timely and accurate manner. One feature of their organization is an automated work management system that takes incoming orders and groups them into "work packages" that have an assigned point value. A "fair day's work" involves picking and packing 400 points' worth of orders. A good day is: coming to work, picking up a work package, filling the orders, completing the paperwork and then repeating the process until you get 400 points as quickly as you can so you can leave early.

The primary basis for evaluating and rewarding employees is productivity (number of points per day) with secondary emphasis on the accuracy of the work.

To implement teams, they grouped warehouse employees into three units or teams of eight to 10 members each and began training sessions. Let's listen in on some employee comments:

Calvin: "I don't really see the need to work together as a team; I just need people to leave me alone to fill my orders."

Billy: "Yeah, why do I have to get along with you, Calvin? I don't even like you-just kidding."

Sara: "How long is this meeting going to last? I've got to get back to work if I'm going to get my 400 today."

Their supervisor is concerned about the success of teams and the "bad attitude of several of his people." What's the problem here?


About the author

Michael Donovan, Ph.D., has been working with the concept of self-directed work teams since the late 1960s. After receiving his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University, he worked for several years with Procter & Gamble and then Honeywell before founding PDS in 1980.

Donovan's current clients include: Ford, Texas Instruments, Owens-Corning, GE, Miller Brewing, 3M and many others. He has written two books and more than 30 articles on teams. He has also written the Video 2000 productions titled Self Managed Work Teams and Managing Change.

Donovan was a founding member of the Association for Quality and Participation and has served on the association's national board of directors.

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