My Kingdom For A Team
Of all the
innovations and movements in the world of quality and
organizational change, nothing has been so durable as
our interest in developing effective teams. The
durability of our interest in teams is actually quite
amazing. In fact, when I began consulting in 1966 (I
was seven years old), organizational development was
about two activities; individual training and
building teams. The first talk I ever gave at a
conference was about team building. And here we are,
decades later, still engaged in building teams,
understanding teams, agonizing over the lack of
teamwork and teaching about creating teams.
What is it about teams that is so engaging and
so beguiling? You would think that by now, working in
teams would be second nature and part of the
bloodstream of institutional life. After all, no one
argues against teams. We use teams in sports as
metaphors for how work should get done. What’s
the problem?
Partly the challenge of building teams is made
difficult by the highly individualistic nature of our
culture. We still think that excellent work is
performed and accomplished by individuals. In school
we still believe that student competition is
important for motivation and still call cooperation
cheating. We think we need to identify the best and
the brightest to decide who is worthy of more
societal investment at the higher levels of
education.
I also think there are political reasons why
we are reluctant to put all our eggs in the team
basket. There was a time in sea faring days that if
workers met among themselves and discussed improved
working conditions, it was called mutiny. Mutiny, in
a way, was an early form of
self-management.
Who is in Charge?
There is truth in the belief that when strong teams
form, they are harder to control. We have a deep
institutional fear that when subordinates come
together their cohesion might take on rebellious
forms. The union movement is an example where
organized workers successfully put restraints on the
freedoms of management. The restraints in most cases
were warranted and set limits on management abuses,
but Americans do like their freedom.
What teams stand for is the power of the small
group. I believe, as Margaret Mead is famous for
saying, that all social change begins with the action
of a small group. Strong individual leaders may speak
for a new world, and they may catalyze energy for
change, but no amount of individual effort or
greatness gains any power without a committed group
behind it. This is one of the reasons why training
individuals has little impact on changing
organizations. People can develop new skills and be
determined to live out a new vision. But on their
own, without the support of those around them, the
skills and determination decay.
My own observations of companies where real
change has occurred is that what drove the change was
a committed group of middle and upper middle managers
who were so fed up with the old way of operating,
that they pushed a shift in culture. This was almost
independent of what their top management wanted. When
the efforts of the small group of managers began to
be successful, top management got interested and got
behind the change. But the change was given life and
sustained by a small group. I have seen this happen
at Ford, Harley, Texas Instruments, Goodyear, the IRS
and many others, at least this is what was happening
when there were successful change efforts at these
places. The fact that we tend to credit great
leadership for changing organizations is more an
expression of our bias towards individual heroism
than an observation of how change takes place.
What this means is that when we continue to
train and reward individuals, we are choosing to
maintain the existing culture of an organization,
even though we are claiming to try to change it.
Granted there are places where teams are recognized
and rewarded, but even in these places, team
recognition pales in comparison to the individual pay
systems, individual training investments and the
power vested in individual leaders.
The Power of the Small Group
If our desire is to change organizations, then our
primary effort should be to focus on small groups.
Small groups are the unit of social change. This is
why it makes sense to break people in to small groups
when we bring people together to create a new future
for an organization. I used to be apologetic about
the fact that I was always breaking people into small
groups. Not any more.
It is in the small group where people overcome
their isolation. People discover they are not alone
in their view of the existing culture and in their
wish for an alternative future. A small group is
where interdependence can be fully acknowledged,
where fear is reduced and courage is born. Small
groups are the basis of social activism, which is
what is required for systems to change. We can
usefully think in terms of large system change, but
it is the actions of small systems joining forces
that cause large systems to change.
Investing in teams may seem slow, expensive
and counter to the individualistic instinct of the
culture, but what authentic change effort is not
slow, expensive and counter-cultural? The desire to
change systems quickly with the efficient stroke of a
change in structure, a new top-driven mission and
training new roles and behaviors results most often
in keeping the existing system in place. It is a
recipe for cosmetic change because it is not based on
collective action, it is based on the hope of a
collection of individual actions.
Leader as Convener
The challenge in more deeply investing in teams is
that they will care only about themselves and not act
in the interest of the larger organization. This is a
real concern, especially since the early life of a
small group can be very inwardly focused. (Us against
the world.) We have to invest in team to team work.
We need cross functional team to teams. Small groups
need to be linked together towards a larger purpose
and this is where leadership is essential. Leaders
become conveners of teams, bringing them together in
a big room to talk to each other, plan with each
other, and create a future with each other. This is
the power of large group methodologies.
If we can acknowledge the critical building
block role of the small group, then social change
becomes possible. This is especially needed in a
culture where electronic dialogue, shifting jobs and
part time workers make any kind of intimate, enduring
relationship more difficult. Viewing change as a form
of community organizing puts organizational
development in the business of social activism and
political reform inside our institutions. This kind
of frame is completely dependent on peer
relationships. I know these kinds of terms make us a
little uneasy, but this is what change most often
requires.
What a deeper commitment to teams requires is
the faith that when people come together in powerful
ways, even though mutiny may seem a possibility,
people in the end will choose for the well-being of
the institution. They will choose to build the larger
system because they have the support of those around
them and with that have the strength to claim the
institution as their own.
May
2001Homepage
My Kingdom
for a Team
