Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael M. Beyerlein is the director of the Center for the Study of Work Teams and professor of industrial/organizational psychology at the University of North Texas. He is the author and editor of numerous books including Beyond Teams: Building the Collaborative Organization (Pfeiffer).

Craig McGee is a consultant with more than twenty years experience in change management.and coauthor of Beyond Teams: Building the Collaborative Organization (Pfeiffer).

Gerald Klein is associate professor of organizational behavior and management in the College of Business Administration Behavior and Management in the College of Business Administration at Rider University.

Jill E. Nemiro is an assistant professor in the Behavioral Sciences Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Laurie Broedling is the vice chair of the California Team Excellence Award Council and the president of the LB Organizational Consulting.

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The Collaborative Work Systems Fieldbook is a comprehensive reference that offers practitioners a resource for dealing with the challenges of designing and implementing collaborative work systems in value chains, organizational networks, partnerships with stakeholders, web-based teams, cross-functional teams, strategic alliances, and team-based organizations. The Collaborative Work Systems Fieldbook is filled with ideas, examples, and tools and includes a wealth of matrices, margin notes, and symbols that make locating relevant information easy. Part of The Collaborative Work Systems series and based in part on principles introduced in the flagship book― Beyond Teams, This Fieldbook is written for change leaders, OD managers, steering team members, design team members, line managers, and functional leaders who need a hands-on resource for dealing with collaborative work systems issues.

Aus dem Klappentext

The Collaborative Work Systems Fieldbook is a comprehensive reference that offers practitioners a resource for dealing with the challenges of designing and implementing collaborative work systems in value chains, organizational networks, partnerships with stakeholders, web-based teams, cross-functional teams, strategic alliances, and team-based organizations. The Collaborative Work Systems Fieldbook is filled with ideas, examples, and tools and includes a wealth of matrices, margin notes, and symbols that make locating relevant information easy. Part of The Collaborative Work Systems series and based in part on principles introduced in the flagship book— Beyond Teams, This Fieldbook is written for change leaders, OD managers, steering team members, design team members, line managers, and functional leaders who need a hands-on resource for dealing with collaborative work systems issues.

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The Collaborative Work Systems Fieldbook

Jossey-Bass

Chapter One

A Top Ten List

Michael M. Beyerlein and Cheryl L. Harris

Over the last few decades, work teams have become a popular method for increasing speed, productivity, employee involvement, and collaboration in organizations. This increased use of work teams created the need for organizations to redesign themselves to support those teams. Afull redesign effort produces a team-based organization (TBO). However, that term connotes an ending point. The term "team-based organizing" represents continuous improvement and continuous reinvention. This chapter identifies the top ten principles of the design and implementation of team-based organizing in the form of critical success factors.

Our definition of team-based organizing applies to an organization that has the following in place:

Teams as the basic unit of accountability and work

Teams leading teams

An organizational design to support teams

The team-based organizing approach differs radically from the historically dominant approach that focuses on the individual as the unit of accountability, leadership, and support. Team-based organizing is NOT about teams; it is about the organization! Most publications and most examples focus on individual teams. The leap from team to team-based system of work is as large as the leap from individual work to team work. Redesign to a TBO demands redesign of the organization as a whole. The environment the teams work in is critical to their performance level, so redesigning the whole makes effectiveness possible at the lower level.

The goal of team-based organizing is to maximize the ability to cooperate and collaborate appropriately. Collaboration takes time, effort, and investment that working individually does not. Appropriate collaboration occurs when there is:

Need of diverse expertise;

Need to build commitment through participation; Need to create synergies with the expertise; and A supportive environment in place.

Collaborative work may not be the best approach when these factors are not present. Working solo is fine when it can achieve performance goals.

Each organization is unique, so there is no roadmap to follow. However, there are principles to guide the journey. Following are ten critical success factors (CSFs) to make appropriate collaboration successful. Please note that these CSFs are not the same as the principles of collaborative organization established in the first book in the Collaborative Work Systems series. However, the CSFs do not contradict the principles of collaborative organization, and do overlap somewhat. We believe that our CSFs warrant discussion in their own right, here in this chapter. Acomparison of the CSFs and principles of collaborative organization can be seen in Table 1.1.

CSF #1: Align the Organization in Multiple Ways

An organization consists of one system embedded in another, which is embedded in another, and so on, like a nesting dolls toy. Each subsystem is a component of the larger system it resides in and a context for its own components. The most familiar version of this complexity now is that of an ecosystem. And, like an ecosystem, there is interdependence between systems and levels. Alignment is a measure of how well those systems coordinate with each other.

Align Across Systems

Is alignment important? In an automobile traveling down the freeway at 70 miles per hour, a tiny misalignment of the front wheels is noticeable and potentially dangerous. In a company, misalignment also displays "wobbles" and pulls the operation toward the ditch. Alignment is crucial across systems of any organization; effectiveness is directly proportional to it. However, when implementing a major redesign effort such as an initiative to become team-based, alignment has added dimensions for concern. The focus on alignment should be one of the primary principles driving each decision of the redesign. Without such a focus, the following occurs: "These interventions were fragile, and were swamped within months or years by dominant organizational cultures that were static and hierarchical in nature.... where changes did result in productivity improvements, it was not long before these innovations gave way to more traditional work systems compatible with the dominant management mindsets" (Cordery, 2000).

Align Change Initiative with Vision

Returning to the auto on the highway again, the driver usually has a destination in mind. Staying on the road is partly a survival issue and partly about goal accomplishment. The vision may articulate that company destination. If the executive effort has been made to share that vision often, well, and widely, it generates an alignment of effort. Any change initiative that contradicts the shared vision will fail. Alignment of the teaming initiative with the vision is essential. An initiative gains acceptance, support, and commitment when alignment is visible.

Align Across Change Initiatives

Typically, companies have multiple change initiatives underway. Initiatives such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), business process reengineering (BPR), total quality management (TQM), lean manufacturing, and others may accompany TBO. The initiatives are typically handled as isolated islands of change, thought, and control and end up competing for resources. An integration of the initiatives through design and oversight, as with a cross-initiative committee, provides the opportunity for alignment.

Align Across Teams

Alignment across teams is crucial for performance leaps. After interviewing managers in major corporations, Steve Jones (1999) concluded that 80 percent of the payoff from using teams occurred between the teams. Improvements in the flow of work occurred because the teams aligned with each other through direct communications.

Align Support Systems and Teams

Most teams fail because of lack of alignment between support systems and teams (Beyerlein & Harris, 2001; Mohrman, Tenkasi, & Mohrman, 2000). Teams are social systems with a hunger for information and resources. When given what they need, the teams can excel. On the other hand, they are typically malnourished, trying to perform without the necessary inputs from support systems and support personnel, including managers, HR, IT, engineering, shipping, and others. However, recognize that achieving alignment between teams and support is likely to require overcoming significant barriers and inertia, including changes in assessment, evaluation, reward systems, and processes.

Align Across Subcultures

There are subgroups and subcultures within an organization. Schein (1996) suggests that the differences in culture between management, engineering, and production are so large that it is as if they were living in different countries. Another major gap is between union and nonunion employees. Alignment across these boundaries can be achieved through participation in the change initiative. Creating a steering team with a vertical slice of the organization as a membership criterion provides the opportunity for input from all the subgroups, so shared understanding can unite them across their current boundaries.

Align with Business Environment

Finally,...