Discussion
When complementary skills are not fully understood at an early stage, misunderstandings can readily arise leading to wasted time and lower productivity. But if mental models, learning style, and KSAs are shared, our experience suggests that teams are more productive and more effective in drawing on their skill reservoir to create a better solution. (Lake,2004)
Finally, learning teams require extraordinary communication and process skills. Unfortunately, most traditional management-related communication tools -- focus groups, attitude surveys, management by walking around -inhibit rather than enhance the type of communication and knowledge building that is necessary for learning teams. As Chris Argyris notes, while these established approaches prove useful for routine issues, they do not generate true reflection on work-related behaviors and processes, do not encourage individual or team accountability, and do not stimulate the kinds of deep, potentially threatening or embarrassing issues that ultimately motivate learning.
Team Learning
For team learning to occur, a foundation of common experience and common meaning that goes beyond the KSA inventory must be developed and built upon. As such, effective communication processes -- in terms of the ability to listen as well as to create shared meanings -- provide this foundation. As our DEC experience suggests, the resultant common data base of knowledge can be added to and maneuvered in ways that encourage proactive strategic thinking, systems-oriented thinking, and creative problem solving. An underlying key is for team members to realize ultimately that true meaning lies in their teammates rather than in words per se. These outcomes require ongoing attention to both encoding and decoding intra~ and inter-team communications, the processes associated with giving and receiving feedback, and the development of anticipatory behaviors that seek mutually rewarding solutions to conflicts and confrontations. The basic mentality within the team should be, "how can I use my teammates' knowledge and ideas to create a better solution?"
Listening Ability
The ability to listen to others and create shared meaning is extremely important because it provides the environment for sharing data and experiences and for creating a common base of knowledge. Knowledge is crystallized at the team level through dialogue, discussion, observations and experience sharing. Our experience in helping to develop learning teams in a number of industries indicates that team members must internalize the concept that meaning is in people and not in words. Words often mean different things to different people given their experiences and perceptual sets. Thus, team members must have the patience, ability, and willingness to seek sufficient feedback to ensure that their words -- their arguments, recommendations, concerns and so forth -- are understood as intended. This process also requires norms that facilitate inquiry into each other's assumptions, data, experience, and thinking, which closes the loop and returns us to the first requirement of creating a leamingoriented culture.
Barriers to Effective Team
The spreading use of cross-functional teams in industrial companies has produced some cynical attitudes about the effectiveness of teams and even the motives of executives who mandate the formation of such teams. Consider these three people from my organisation:
Dan: "Boy, was I naïve. Here we were, assigned the job of shaving 90 days off the new product development cycle, and we couldn't even get the engineers to talk to us, they were so angry. Nobody told us this was being shoved down their throats; we thought they knew we'd be working together and had already bought into the change."
Margaret: "When I was assigned to this work team, I felt honored. I mean, we were chosen to help remap our company's future. Then we sat there and realized we didn't have any defined goals. We had no leadership. We didn't have any idea how to work together as a team. We were just supposed to come together and magically create solutions(and do it all on top of our own workload) yeah, right."
1. Andy: "I'm sorry, but these systems are not compatible and no amount of teamwork, brainstorming, number crunching, or management pep talks will change that. Still, they're determined to assign this to a team so they don't have to take responsibility when it fails. I think they've already made the decision, and they want us to prove they were right."
2. Responsibility without authority... accountability without information... the landmine of hidden agendas: These are common laments in many businesses today. Increasingly, these are also becoming team laments.
3. Cross-functional teams, the new corporate workhorses of flattened organizations, are springing up in a multitude of configurations: self-directed, problem-solving, autonomous, cross-functional, off-line project teams, on-line project teams. There are long-term teams, crisis teams, intradepartmental teams--the list is as varied as the need.
But many of these groups will never develop into teams. Others will never learn that there's a critical distinction between teams and teamwork. Left unsupported, many teams will not achieve the levels of interdependence and trust necessary to achieve dynamic results.
And that's too bad, because no one can ignore the potential improvements that teams can produce in quality, innovation, managing change, service, and other strategic initiatives.
Anyone who's ever been on a team knows there are many barriers to effective team development. Some of those barriers are obvious and can be anticipated. In other cases, the barriers take the team by surprise. Whatever form the barriers take, they generally originate from three sources: (1) the organization, (2) the team leader, and (3) the team members. Regardless of source, the net effect is the same: dashed expectations, toxic relationships, and nonproductive results. But, it doesn't have to be that way.
A variety of surveys and studies have pinpointed some of the most common barriers to effective teams. These include supervisory resistance (what Dan encountered in our examples), inadequate training (Margaret's complaint), and incompatible systems accompanied by hidden agendas (Andy's experience). Teams aren't even appropriate for some tasks; in some situations, there isn't time to develop a team. In other cases, the existing departmental or corporate culture doesn't require that people work together--independence is more effective. Teams also are useless when the decision has already been made, as in Andy's case.
It's management's responsibility to know the appropriate applications for teams. And that sets up the first critical barrier: If there's a lack of clarity in the organizational vision, it will show up in the team. The same is true of organizational expectations for the team. These areas must be defined. Once defined, the organization must commit to providing the team with resources, including time, money, and personnel. Organizational procedures that emphasize performance, evaluations, and recognition must be developed. If the organization is unwilling to share information, the team can't be held accountable for results.
Worse yet, within teams, ineffective leaders can create barriers. The leader must align team goals with organizational goals. The team leader must also be able to change his/her behavior as the team and the team members grow and change. Some effective individuals make poor leaders because they are unable to coordinate group efforts.
Another problem: Assigned team leaders also may lack the ability or desire to achieve consensus. Dynamic leaders must take risks, share information, create liaisons--or bridges--with others throughout the organization and, ultimately, allow the team to share leadership.
Team members themselves create the third source of barriers. Problem: Team members are competitive rather than collaborative. Some of these same individuals may show intolerance for the differences among team members. Each team member must stand up for his or her beliefs: To demonstrate the courage to disagree, but to do so in a supportive way. Significant breakthrough can occur when this willingness is evident.
Likewise, team members must be able to give and receive feedback. In effective teams, promises and commitments are honored. Otherwise, trust is compromised. Finally, team members must have the discipline to work independently, after initial leadership, relationship, and method standards have been set in place.
While all team members must have the opportunity to lead, they do not have the obligation to do so. Some team members won't accept this responsibility; others may not have the capacity to lead. They are still valuable team members. Whatever the reason, it is as wrong to assume that everyone must lead as it is to assume that everyone must have an equal share when leading.
A final key point: The rewards of team development justify working to overcome its obstacles. As Franklin Roosevelt said, "People acting together as a team can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could ever hope to bring about."
Conclusion
Our DEC experience underscores the importance of this step. Several international cross functional teams were created as part of a strategy to generate more revenue. The basic goal of these teams was to improve their understanding of their customer's business and industry and the ways in which they could further support their customer's needs. The teams met initially at Insead in France to get further information on the target industry and also management training in entrepreneurship and the development of core competencies. Only one of the teams took the time and effort to develop an inventory of skills -- and with striking results. The team that generated an understanding of its members' KSAs also generated a 56% increase in revenue within a four-month period, far exceeding the performance of the other teams. Team members reported that the skills inventory was a significant factor, allowing them to know who to go to for specific needs and facilitating their understanding of the different functions needed for the best solutions to their customers' needs.
References
George, J. A. (1996), "Virtual Best Practice," Teams Magazine, November 1996, pp.38-45.
Lake, A. "Flexibility: The Interactive Forum on New Ways of Working. Retrieved from http://www.flexibility.co.uk on May 5, 2004.
Lipnack, J. and J. Stamps. (1996) Virtual Teams: Reaching Across Space, Time, and Organizations with Technology.
John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1997. Lotus. "Lotus Notes Network." Retrieved from http://www.lotus.com on May 5, 2004.
Mohrman, S., Cohen, S., & Mohrman, A., Jr (1995). Designing Team-Based Organizations: New Forms for Knowledge Work. Jossey-Bass Publishers.