Managing the Transition to Self Managed Teams The transition to self-managed teams can be a subtle and demanding process. Mike Bell examines models for managing the transition and applies the notion of emotional intelligence to teamwork. Organisations I talk with which are thinking about self-managing teams, are often overwhelmed by the prospect.  How do we get there from here, they frequently ask.  Others I have worked with start down the path but encounter problems with managers and are not clear what has gone wrong. This paper considers transition and its management, and is based on experience with associates working with multinational organisations implementing self-managing teams.  It also draws on published data which sheds revealing light on this very complex area. Transition - from where to where? Beckhard and Harris (1987) argue that: "Any major organisational change involves three distinct conditions - the future state or where leadership wants the organisation to get to; the present state, where it currently is; and the transition state, the conditions and activities that must be moved through to reach the future." The process usually starts with a need or desire for a new future state, so initiative for self-managing teams usually comes from one of three sources: ·         A major shift in the external environment which forces the organisation to find faster, cheaper and better quality ways of meeting customer needs. ·         A change in technology or a new factory which provides opportunities for breaking with the past. A senior manager or executive team will introduce the concept, having discovered it elsewhere (Hirschorn 1984). The first two sources provide a valuable excuse for unfreezing the organisation and can lead to a rapid introduction of new working methods.  By their nature, however, they are reactive, involving the organisation in having to catch up.  The third approach may well be the most difficult because it is proactive, particularly so if there is no clear commercial imperative. Whatever the source or change imperative, the greater the clarity with which an organisation can describe its future and current states, the more successful will transition be managed. However, describing the desired future for self-managing teams is complex because it typically goes beyond prevailing management or work paradigms and requires the creation and sharing of some kind of vision for how the organisation will operate.  Leadership capability also has to keep this vision open and powerful to avoid obstacles, which have to be overcome if it is to be achieved, actually destroying it. Given these difficulties, two descriptions follow for how organisations have created pictures of the future state in ways that involve people and help them understand what will be involved. Team Performance Models Through a two-year Teamwork in Manufacturing project, supported by the UK's Department of Trade and Industry, the London-based Tavistock Institute has developed a guide to teamwork in manufacturing (Neumann, Holti and Standing, 1995). They define a model to help describe the future state by classifying levels of self-regulation in working groups, identifying three basic performance dimensions or key areas of competence within these: Managing core short-term responsibilities with a group area: Basic job competence. Group and individual motivation. Personnel administration. Special competences. Managing wider short-term responsibilities jointly with others: Co-ordination with like groups. Liaison with unlike groups. Setting targets for performance. Managing operational process and people development: Develop organisational process. Develop the work organisation. Develop individual people. The model, copyrighted with the Tavistock Institute, is then further developed to identify the levels of competence and performance using a scale ranging from skeletal to advanced.  Three stages of the model move a team from being focused and competent on internal operations through to managing ever more complex interactions with the organisational environment. A second model used by a number of organisations including Procter & Gamble and Motorola, which applies similar thinking to self-managing teams boundaries, is given in Figure 1. Here, the team's future work is described in terms of: Core skills, the basic doing, making or filling skills of getting tasks done. Support skills including, for example, maintenance skills which would previously be supplied by a support department. Boundary skills, or those needed to manage across team boundaries such as training, recruitment and production planning which are typically carried out by managers. The degree of self-management or team  autonomy will be limited by what management allows within a boundary and its capability to develop broader team member competencies. Exiting cultural and manager mindsets will expand or restrict the boundary accordingly. According to this model, team development over time is achieved by the addition of new skills, starting from the core and moving outwards towards the boundary.  Each new skill block comprises clearly defined competencies in technical, business and interpersonal team skills to ensure that the team is truly capable of self-management. Whilst both models above can enable organisations to develop rich pictures of how self-managing teams will operate, the next stage is to undertake a current state analysis so that gaps between present and future can be identified. Current state analysis Current state analysis should involve an honest appraisal of an organisation's readiness for changing to self-managing teams. Ray and Bronstein (1995) identify several positive and negative indicators: Positive A recent history of positive and improving labour relations. Management flexibility and willingness to implement empowerment processes. Management ability to stick with a process. A strong management team at local levels. An already functioning pay for performance or skill-based compensation system. A management group which has consistently involved the workforce in strategic planning, workplace training or multi-level problem solving. Negative A continuing history of management-labour strife. Recent downsizing. Top management inability to stay focused on a change process to see the results. Local top managers known by the workforce to be unsupportive of employee involvement. Strong objections by corporate headquarters to allocating full estimated resources. Weak or non-supportive human resource or labour relations departments. Once the desired future state and the current state have been identified, the transition becomes simpler, but not necessarily easier, because content and priorities of the transition plan will be specific to each organisation.  However, Tavistock's work, (Neumann, Holti and Standing 1995), has highlighted the interdependence of all major functions and the resulting need to change everything at once, as shown in Figure 2. The implementation of self-managing teams is likely to be more successful when this interconnectedness is acknowledged and is taken into account during initial planning stages. Managing the transition In my experience, the role of managers is one of the most under-estimated levers in successfully  implementing self-managing teams, yet the development of the former is often left as a last consideration, or is totally ignored.  This is a fundamental organisational flaw because creating this type of team involves a power shift from managers to teams. Unless managers are taken care of first, there will be concerted resistance to the point where the change process will be sabotaged or subverted by myriad conscious and unconscious actions. For success or eventual effectiveness, managers must be a positive force for change, letting go of their traditional sources of power - getting the information first, deciding who has access, making decisions, controlling, knowing best, applying rules and procedures, etc., - and developing higher level sources of power.  These will include coaching, training, delegating, managing processes, managing boundaries, working from principles, and values. This development process to help managers lead change and take on new management styles cannot be achieved by just developing more 'doing' skills, which is shown in Figure 3. Most management development, after all, focuses on 'doing', yet the majority of managers have to make a paradigm shift in order to change behaviours that have been encouraged and rewarded, often for as long as 30 years in some organisations.  This cannot be achieved easily. The need to develop 'being' skills has been long recognised, but cannot really be learnt and applied like budgeting or forecasting. Emotional IQ More light is shed on the concept of 'being' in a forthcoming book by Daniel Goleman (1996) who quotes work to demonstrate that IQ is very poor preparation for the 'turmoil, or opportunities, that life's vicissitudes bring'.  Goleman argues that a greater predictor of social competence, personal  effectiveness, self-assertion and coping with frustration is emotional intelligence. He sites the work of Peter Salovey at Yale who defines the five basic domains of emotional intelligence as: Knowing your emotions: an inability to notice personal emotions leaves individuals at other people's mercy. Self-management: people who can handle their feelings appropriately can bounce back much more quickly. Motivating oneself: those with a skill for delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness tend to be more highly productive and effective. Recognition of emotion in others: empathetic people are better managers. Handling relationships: managing emotions in others underpins popularity, leadership and personal effectiveness This definition has much in common with work conducted on a model to develop managers and team members for high performance work systems used in Procter & Gamble and other organisations.  Called a Continuum of Management Power and Influence, it has five elements: Discovering and managing self: including managing energy, thoughts, feelings, learning, career, commitment and motivation. Managing interactions with others: including self-observation, assertiveness, responsiveness, giving and receiving feedback, handling conflict, process observation and behaviour observation. Managing others and teams: including coaching, peer ranking, risk-taking, problem-solving, process interventions, managing process against vision, using models and concepts. Managing and leading an organisation: including working from principles and values, managing processes and context, developing culture, inspiring vision, managing resources and regeneration. Assessing and redesigning organisations: including assessing the organisation, strategies, culture and performance whilst redesigning the organisation to maintain a leading edge. Many organisations we have worked with  do see the value and potential contribution of managers and invest heavily in their development ahead of, and during, the implementation of self-managing teams. The process often requires up to six, one-week, highly experiential workshops over a 12-24 month period which enable managers to become aware of how their existing beliefs and values empower or disempower themselves or others.  Opportunities are also provided for managers to choose alternative beliefs and values to raise their effectiveness. The outcome is that they develop 'being' as well as 'doing' skills to contribute more meaningfully to the design and implementation of team transitions. Additionally, they develop skills to influence the behaviour of others in line with the organisation's needs. Only such development can enable managers to create and live vision and values that serve as a true basis for creating a high performance organisation fully meeting business needs as well as those of individuals.   References Beckhard, R., and Harris, R. T., Organizational Transitions, Addison-Wesley OD Series, 1987. Goleman, D., Emotional Intelligence, Bloomsbury, 1996. Hirschorn, L., Beyond Mechanization, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984. Neumann, J. E., Holti, R., and Standing, H., Change Everything at Once, Management Books 2000 Ltd., London, 1995. Ray, D., and Bronstein, H., Teaming Up, McGraw-Hill Inc., 1995.   Published in TEAMS - The Magazine for High Performance Organisations and Their Work Teams, Febuary 1996, IFS International. Top © The Wisdom Meme 2007