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Self-Directed Teams: Part II - Analysis

© Lincoln Bittner

In my previous article I presented a story about a manager that decided to turn his customer service department into a self-directed team. I asked you to attempt to identify what you would do differently, what tools you would use, and how you would introduce this change initiative to the staff. In this article I will explore the first three of the six areas that kept the initiative from succeeding for our new manager.

The sad reality is that many companies are initiating self-directed teams without properly researching the process or considering the impact of change on their organizations. The result in the companies that I have studied has been that managers are finding themselves working longer hours to cover the workload not being done by the employees to whom the tasks are assigned. This is because these employees are left to figure out for themselves what is happening, and how to go about accomplishing this new directive. In many of the cases that I have seen, the employees do not even believe that this change is permanent, and therefore don’t take it seriously.

In my example, the employees were spending an inordinate amount of time in meetings attempting to decide how to run their department. This was due to a lack of direction and preplanning by the organizer of the change initiative. The result of this lack of planning meant that the staff was not performing the duties they were hired to do, and confusion resulted because they had not agreed on the most efficient way to proceed. In short, there was no ownership of the process by all of the employees involved.

The reasons for the failure of the change initiative is that the new manager did not:

• Research and take into consideration the culture of the organization
• Take inventory of the strengths of each of the employees involved in the change
• Realize that changing one department is not the silver bullet that will affect all of the other departments
• Discuss the initiative with the members of the department before proceeding
• Clearly state the goals and positive results of reaching these goals
• Tie compensation to performance.

Culture

If you will recall, immediately after being introduced as the new general manager by the corporate officer, this new manager began to change the management structure by firing all of the managers over the various departments. He effectively removed the support structures that the staff had come to rely on without regard for the culture of the business. He finally discussed his plans with Julie, but as far as she knew he had not discussed them with anyone else. Everyone was feeling the anxiety created by this drastic process, but only Julie had heard the reasons for the changes.

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