What is different in effective teams? Ways to make autonomous teams and strategies for them

Why is that team so strong? What is an independent team?

The first company that I worked for was in the restaurant industry, and the manager at that store openly claimed that “a manager’s work is not to do any work.”

I believe that this means not that managers really shouldn’t do any work, but that a manager’s work is to set up the store so that it runs smoothly even if the manager is not there. Extending this perspective to include other industries as well, an effective team is certainly one that is independent and can discover, resolve and communicate problems by itself without instructions from a boss, so what is necessary to create a team like this?

Moreover, what specific structures would such a team have?

Structures and management scope of autonomous teams

Although both should be doing the same work, in some organizations, the boss is constantly running back and forth, while in others, the boss is sitting back casually. In the former, the boss always complains that their team doesn’t do any work, but how can the differences between these two organizations be shown?

The paper that I discuss today is a review article about team management, and the author presents team effectiveness as a diagram as follows.

If you have time, it would be interesting to look at the team you belong to and see what it has and what it lacks.

When a team does work, there are two things at the foundation: (1) the reward systems, education systems, and information systems that form the contextual basis for the work; and (2) the design of the group, i.e., what work the group is doing, who the members are, and what the norms of the group are.

In addition, to perform work effectively, synergy and eliminating waste are also important.

Synergy refers to the way that working as a team can produce multiplier effects so that the sum of the members’ efforts is greater than its parts, but having an environment where these multiplier effects can easily arise is also important and advance preparation may be necessary, meaning that excessively conservative organizations that rely on custom take more effort than is necessary to proceed with the same task. Because of this, eliminating waste when performing work is a key element of improving the efficiency of a team’s work.

Some factors that may be raised in relation to determining efficiency, based on these premises, include:

Putting it simply, working steadily by the correct method with sufficient knowledge and skills is a key element for improving work efficiency.

Further, having the necessary supplies is important for accelerating and reinforcing these processes.

With these various conditions, work can be performed efficiently, but the efficiency of work is not measured merely with output in the sense of how much was produced.

Work is not a once-off thing; rather, it is an ongoing process where various issues arise through the repetition of work and the issues are resolved. Because of this, the members’ feelings about the team and their reflection on results are also important.

Specifically, visualizing the results of work, strengthening the bonds between members through work, and synchronizing the feelings of individual members and those of the team as a whole so that the team enjoys its successes and regrets its failures are important.

In that case, what should the manager do to create a team like this?

The manager’s authority and the team’s authority

Anyone who is a boss thinks to some extent about how much work the manager should do and manage, which can be represented in a matrix as follows.

As the figure shows, in the first stage, the manager must manage everything other than direct work.

In other words, they must manage progress by seeing whether work is being done properly, design the team by deciding how to make what kind of team, and set up the work background by managing reward, education and information systems.

In the second stage, team members can manage their own work progress, reducing the manager’s job to designing the team and setting up the work background, and in the third stage, team members autonomously design the team by deciding who will do what work, making the manager’s job just setting up the work background.

How should managers delegate their authority?

Once team members do all sorts of things to do with work autonomously, it would make it easier for the manager, but this will not happen overnight.

In that case, what order should a manager follow to create the ideal team?

According to this paper, the first step is to:

• analyze what work needs to be done;
• calculate the costs for creating the team; and
• decide on which stage to conduct management up to.

It is not necessarily fine for the team to do all of the work autonomously, and some jobs will work out better and cheaper if they are carefully managed (while some jobs may not).

This close examination is necessary at the first stage.

The second stage is for creating a foundation for the team.

This means:

At the third stage, the manager encourages the team’s independence.

Specifically:

Once the team reaches this level, it will start working autonomously, so in the fourth stage, the manager supports the team to make it easy for the team to motivate and mobilize itself.

Specifically, the manager gives support to facilitate synergy between members through work and to allow the team to learn from experience.

In other words, having considered how autonomous to make their team, the managers gradually remove themselves from the equation and encourage the team to work effectively by providing support, depending on the circumstances.

Some teams may function better than others, but I thought that the sense that determines how well managers can launch their projects, how well they can step back from them, and how well they can step in again might be important for managers, and wondered whether managers could try too hard and hinder the team. Some say that “leaderless leadership” is the ideal, but overly outgoing personalities that are keen to stand out may not always benefit the creation of an independent team. What do you think?

Reference URL: The design of work teams