Teamwork takes time and a lot of energy

HR Magazine, June, 1994 by William R. Coradetti

Going step by step and practicing the process is how to successfully change a department into a self-managed work team. Here's one HR manager's story.

At Perdue Farms, we have implemented team management with varying degrees of success throughout the organization since the mid-1980s. In this operation--a vertically integrated poultry processing complex made up of four operating units and about 850 associates (employees)--we realized in late 1992 that we had reached a stagnation point and were ready for the next level of team management.

Our senior quality improvement team decided it was time to venture into the most attractive area of employee involvement, self-managed work teams. As a believer in this concept, I eagerly volunteered to make my department the pilot for the complex's first team effort. The human resource department has nine associates, four exempt and five nonexempt. I set our goal to become a fully functioning self-managed work team in one year. The transition took much more time, effort and practice than we had estimated at the outset.

TEAM-MAKING NOT A FAST FIX

One of the major reasons organizations fail in implementing self-managed teams is impatience. The biggest obstacle to effective employee empowerment is operating managers who pride themselves in their ability to make quick decisions and get fast results. We've all heard about the company president who read about one organization's success with team management and announced to the staff that he wanted it in place in his organization "yesterday!"

I thought I had recognized this and that a year was plenty of time. But developing the ability to make team decisions and gain a small comfort level in doing this took us a good nine months. We have had some successes, but we have yet to reach that plateau where all members of the team are comfortable with the decision-making process.

Another mistake was in regarding our team approach as a program instead of a whole new way of operating. I did not realize that my team would have more difficulty accepting this new approach than I did. Training is not the sole answer; we did considerable training, as well as discussing and preparing for the change.

GETTING TEAM MEMBERS TO PARTICIPATE

The team's initial resistance was to participation. We were holding 30-minute team meetings twice a month. The format was largely one of information sharing, in which I did most of the talking, except for questions asked.

We realized early that the new approach would take more time. To allow for this, we replaced our weekly staff meetings with one-hour team meetings. The first several of these meetings were difficult, because the team was accustomed to having me dominate most of the time. Despite my pleas and the team's intentions, people simply were unaccustomed to and uncomfortable with active participation in running our department.

To overcome this reluctance, I required all team members to lead a five-minute discussion at each meeting on any topic related to work. Since the meetings were held on Monday mornings, each person was required to identify his or her topic by noon the preceding Friday. Failure to meet this deadline meant that I assigned a topic. Soon, team members realized it was more desirable to lead a discussion on their own selected topics than one assigned by me.

Around the beginning of the third month, the team members became comfortable, and productive, in this interaction and insisted that the predetermined agenda was no longer necessary. They felt there was plenty to discuss with everyone now participating, and we did not need to limit topics to five minutes. They were right. We now hold our team meetings in a much different format that is scientifically known as the "free for all." This at times can be difficult to control, and during some of our more lively discussions, the team leader is afforded little respect. But what's most important, this process is productive.

LEARNING TO MAKE TEAM DECISIONS

Doing away with the agenda was a major step for team members--this was their first unsolicited team decision. Getting the team to make decisions was the second major obstacle and was one of the toughest for us to conquer.

Making decisions is difficult for people who are not used to making them (or those who have never been allowed to make them). In the early months, my team would agonize over such decisions as setting up their own staggered lunch periods so that we would have full phone coverage in the department. As a manager with a busy schedule, it was immensely frustrating for me to listen to a 30-minute debate on who would go to lunch when.

The team, whether consciously or not, thought that if they stayed unproductive long enough, I would step in and make the decision for them. The training tip here is that the team must not be allowed to avoid making its own decisions. The team leader must force the team, if necessary, to make those first few decisions and continue to coach them during this adjustment phase, until team members begin to actively participate in the decision-making process.