It is really hard to believe that we are basically half way
through the semester and turkey day and the rest of the holidays are peeking
their heads around the corner. Overall it was a fantastic week; I had to work
incredibly hard at it finding balance. My husband is doing much better after
his final procedure, which is fantastic, but the brain drain and schedule at
work has been dare I say, almost overwhelming. So many things to deal with and
fires to put out, that no matter how hard I worked and how many hours I put in,
it didn’t leave much energy in the hopper to finally feel caught up yet. Now with
my next class starting today, and I haven’t even reviewed more than the syllabus
to see the enormous and insurmountable amount of work required, I am about to
wave the white flag and call “uncle”. But like all things, I always seem to
figure out a way; I just don’t want to sell myself short on the gift of
knowledge that lay before me. I often wish I was one of those people who were
just taking classes for the sake of taking classes, but then I would miss out
on all sorts of cool ideas.
For example, we discussed and worked on a great deal of our
module on self-managing teams, TQM, and characteristics of successful leadership
and teams. One of the recurring themes I have definitely seen is the importance
of the strong partnerships and nurtured relationships for any and every level
of teams to exist. There has to be structure and culture supporting a team
atmosphere, which is blatantly obvious, but if leaders aren’t walking the walk
and providing the support and encouragement necessary for teams to bloom and
work autonomously to accomplish mutual goals, it really is just a waste of
peoples time and resources. I completely love the idea that teams should be
comprised of various areas to be most effective, but I realize that not
everyone shares the same notion.
Before I touch on some of the drawbacks, I have to say that one
of the best benefits in my mind is that a self-managing team has the diverse knowledge
and expertise behind their decision making process. More importantly, however,
is the added benefit that they have the “…formal responsibility and authority…”
(INSEAD, 2008) to make decisions on how they do
their work and what they need in order to make it happen. Normal supervisors
and management don’t exist; they are the ones showing us that the flatter organizational
structure can work. The coolest thing about them is the spirit and impact of
the leader doesn’t come from direction and delegation, but interaction and
innovation guidance to help the team achieve necessary benchmarks and obtain
the resources necessary to achieve common strategic goals for the benefit of
everyone.
I absolutely love the idea of managing work and not people, and I
love the idea of sharing best practices and problem solving, so working within
such a team sounds very exciting and like home to me. I love the premise behind
the team is inherently based upon mutual trust and goals, as well as a shared
emphasis on working collaboratively amongst the group to find the best outcome
that suits the entire organizational structure and goals, as well as become
masters at self-organizing their work and priorities as a united group. It is
also very exciting to think about the high level of leadership and trust required
in which these teams are able to perform autonomously; it seems to me that it
would be a great privilege to be able to be part of something so special. Clearly
it requires a great deal of “…unique strengths, roles, and responsibilities to
get to that point…” (INSEAD, 2008) and without effective and
supportive leadership, I don’t believe that the team could actually become a
reality in any organization.
I do realize, however, that this idea won’t work in every type
of organization and that various managers or even team members may have a very
different idea of what is and isn’t a top priority. Moreover, some of the best
workers I know are experts in their areas, but have rather poor performance
once placed in a group setting or on team projects. Most people don’t like
conflict and don’t like being told what to do and how to do it, especially if
they are seen as the experts, right? So, I can see how some really terrific
workers would be almost feeling punished by working on teams such as this.
For example, in healthcare, we have a great deal of compliance
and regulatory issues. So when nursing wants to change something, they cannot
just have a meeting and change something. It must be reviewed by the compliance
officer, nursing administration, risk management, quality, hospital administration,
legal, the union, and the list goes on and on. It wouldn’t matter if we had a
representative from each area on the actual team to say yes it sounds good and
make the change, as there are too many conservative external regulatory boards
that do not make changes an overnight success, regardless of how simple in
nature they may be at face value. As our readings this week pointed out, there
is no price you can put on when establishing a team that has the diversity
required and the authority needed in order to give the team “…the ability to move
around the bureaucratic organization and get the job done” (Brown, 2011, p. 349)
Some of the competencies needed to develop to be an effective
external manager of a self-managed work team would include ensuing that goals are
a critical starting point to establish any team and for any team to measure
success. Key points our reading demonstrated as well was the need for
developing strong partnerships between team members and management, sharing
information openly and quickly, and that the overall environment, culture, and “the
structure of the organization…is based on team concepts” (Brown, 2011, p. 350).
From a leadership perspective, I think that our video pointed
out that mature teams help others understand the goals in a visionary way that
excite everyone to contribute towards common efforts, even when failures take
place (INSEAD, 2008).
Team leaders must also feel secure
with the level of KSA’s that comprise the team as a whole; micro-management
would never work in a situation such as this (INSEAD, 2008) and would inherently go against building
team independence and natural dynamics. Additionally, flexibility and an
emphasis on developing high-quality working relationships in combination with
SMART goals allows for the team to work within boundaries without requiring
constant supervision and input from internal and external team leaders. Patience
and persistence appears that they would be a winning combination for these
teams; allow disagreements to happen, and allow others to find “authority
balance” to use interventions that allow for appropriate team development to
take place (INSEAD, 2008). Lastly, to find balance in
leadership; provide guidance, but respect individual contributions to encourage
reciprocation and growth towards new and exciting ideas (INSEAD, 2008).
Overall,
I found this chapter incredibly helpful, as our CM this week…although I usually
feel when mapping the chapters are a waste…it provided so many excellent bullet
points…I wouldn’t be able to just take one idea and run with it very far…and
they are all very interconnected as well. I am surely looking forward to our
next team assignment in module 5, as I think we have addressed several key
concerns, and I am anxiously waiting to see how far we have come in a short
amount of time.
Until
we blog again!
References
Brown, D. R. (2011). An Experiential Approach to
Organizational Development, Eighth Edition. Upper Saddle River: Prentice
Hall.
INSEAD. (2008, September 22). Self-managing teams:
debunking the leadership paradox. Retrieved from Youtube.com:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBnR00qgGgM
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