Consultant Q&A
H. James Harrington Responds:
Team burnout is a real problem. Teams start out
strong; they identify many problems, some real and
others imaginary. The team members are learning new
skills and receiving additional responsibilities, but
after a time, “the cherries are all
picked” and the excitement of team activities
becomes old hat. This is the place where team
activities give way to teamwork. This is the point
where empowerment takes over in place of consensus.
This is the point where individuals have embraced the
problem solving tools and techniques to the point
that they are automatically used.
In this case the weekly team meetings
allow for discussions related to specific problems or
for implementation of specific improvement
opportunities. Frequently, the total team is not
involved, but only the people necessary to make the
change happen.
In addition, individuals are empowered
and encouraged to make decisions on their own without
management or other team members’ approval.
This is possible because the team experience has
prepared the individual to make much better decisions
and has provided them with an understanding of how
they interface and impact the other members of their
natural work team.
It is a lot like being promoted from grade school to
high school. It is not bad, but it is different, and
after you adjust, it is even more exciting and
rewarding. In this case, the old team meeting becomes
a lot like your homeroom in high school. It is a
place to come together for very short periods of time
(10-15 minutes) to be updated, get assignments and
share what is going on in the business.
In the teamwork environment, teams are
formed quickly based upon a specific need and
disbanded equally as fast. In today’s
environment these teams are often virtual and never
have the time to sit down in a meeting room together.
Many organizations have problems in shifting from the
team activities stage to the teamwork environment
stage. This usually occurs when the natural work team
did not start out by doing an area activity analysis.
A key part of the team activity phase is to define
the processes that the natural work team is
responsible for, then develop an efficiency and
effectiveness measurement and performance standard
for each of the processes. This is absolutely
essential in order to determine where the real
business improvement needs are and to establish a
real value proposition related to each problem
addressed. For example, in your case, one of the
processes would be filling orders. Two of the
efficiency measurements would be employee minutes to
fill an order and order fulfillment cycle time. Team
activities that focus on reducing either of these by
5-15 percent will usually be highly supported by
management. After four years of team activity, I
would expect that you would have a documented history
proving the team activity reduced both of these key
measurements a minimum of 25 percent. You need to use
this historical data with a firm commitment to reduce
them even further to convince management the time
spent in team/teamwork environments is not only
justified but a high priority.
H. JAMES HARRINGTON has
written seven books including the best-selling
“The Improvement Process,”
“Business Process Improvement,” and
“Total Improvement Management: The Next
Generation in Performance Management.”
Harrington is the CEO of The Performance Improvement
Network in Los Gatos, Calif. He is considered a
leading authority in process management.
W. Pearl Maxwell Responds
July 2001 News
for a Change Homepage
