Managing the Transition to Self Managed Teams
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
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