Dr Patrick Tissington,
Aston University
The
following article is based on a talk I gave at a meeting of the York
Group last year and is the result of several requests by people at
the meeting for something in writing to accompany the talk. My thesis
is that there are aspects of management practice which, when contextualised,
will apply to the education sector and are capable of not only improving
organisational effectiveness, but will also along the way improving
the experience of going to work.
Gobbledegook
and the Obvious
The
source for my recommendations is in part a very large management literature
which is alternately impenetrable formulaic gobbledegook and statements
of the “bleedin’ obvious” (to quote Basil Fawlty).
I have the dubious honour to be someone who spends their professional
life trawling through this literature and applying it through my consultancy
practice in all imaginable walks of life - computer software, car
manufacturing, local government, the NHS...
In
my discussions with many professionals at the York meeting I was being
told repeatedly that it was not particularly stressful dealing with
the young people – even those who have extraordinarily challenging
behaviour. The source of problems at work were either defined as being
“the management” or “the staff” depending
on what side of that particular fence my informant was sitting.
It
struck me how similar these comments were to many dozens of conversations
I have had whilst researching emergency teams. Fire crews told me
that whilst some incidents were distressing, they could cope with
this through the mutual support offered by the tightly knit watch
system. What they found difficult to cope with was the way in which
they were managed. On the other hand, their officers were telling
me again that the incidents were at worst something they could cope
with, but what was difficult was how to deal with their people.
More
recently I have found similar evidence in operating theatre teams
in Acute Trust hospitals. Colleagues at Aston University have similar
findings to report from very large research projects in the NHS as
a whole which shows that coping with patients – even difficult
ones – is a relatively easy part of most front line staff’s
work day. The difficult parts are things like bureaucracy, aloof management
and the “attitude” of colleagues and subordinates. Putting
it more technically, these become stressors and when subject to the
strain of these for extended periods of time, staff become stressed
and eventually ill.
Without
embarking on an excursion into the stress literature, it is perhaps
pertinent to underline that stress is a clinical condition which has
real physical symptoms and costs the United Kingdom (and all western
economies) 10% of its GDP. The solution to this type of stress is
not to learn relaxation techniques or to hire tougher people.aws
I
have formulated two rules of thumb relating to people at work which
I shall (with gross immodesty) call “Tissington’s Laws”.
The First Law states that:
“Almost
no-one goes to work with the intention of annoying their colleagues”.
(The
earlier version of this law omitted the word “almost”
but then I thought back to my Troop Sergeant Major in the army…)
The Second Law states that:
“Doing
a good job is inherently more satisfying than doing a poor job”.
Put
another way, the Second Law means that being forced to do a job which
is perceived to be substandard is inherently de-motivating.
Together,
Tissington’s Laws mean that people actually want to do a good
job and, in doing so, they also want to get on with their colleagues.
So, the fundamental role of managers is to create an environment where
people can get on with (a) doing a good job and (b) each other.
Anyone
who has experience of management knows these are far from easy things
to do and this might appear like a kind of management wish list. However,
there is a clear body of solid evidence which does show how to do
these things – and you don’t need to be some sort of charismatic
Gandhi figure to do it. The answer is in getting people to work in
teams. In fact this concept has its origins in Japanese manufacturing
and before you utter an expletive and click away from this article,
please bear with me whilst I explain the relevance to you and your
organisation.
Self
Managed Teams (SMT) evolved in the Toyoda Manufacturing Company which
makes Toyota cars amongst other things. The principles have now been
applied in practically every walk of life imaginable and I have personal
experience of successfully applying the principles of teams to heavy
industry, construction, sales, public libraries, NHS departments –
in fact pretty much everywhere apart from education so far in my career.
Self
Managed Team-working is built on the ideas of satisfaction in doing
a good job, and people enjoying a feeling of being in control of their
own work environment. Also, a very sensible view that problems are
best solved by those closest to them. The concept is to consider an
organisation to be constructed of small groups of individuals who
rely on each other to do the work they have to do and who are given
the power to make the vast majority of day-to-day decisions without
having to ask permission. They are (to borrow a rather dated phrase)
“empowered”, and at the same time are held collectively
responsible for achieving targets (service levels or production targets
of some sort) but they achieve these goals in ways decided on by the
teams themselves, supported by management.
The
results of SMT working have been shown to be lower staff turnover
rates (surely the biggest reducible HR cost), high levels of motivation,
high innovation and low stress. Perhaps most significantly though,
the overall result of devolving responsibility to teams is higher
performance levels. In short, team-based organisations outperform
those with more conventional organisational structure.
Defining
the Team
I
used a rather lengthy definition in my York talk and I will replicate
that here as it really says all you need to know about teams –
albeit in rather a lengthy way.
“A
team is a group of individuals who work together to produce products
or deliver services for which they are mutually accountable.
Team
members share goals and are mutually held accountable for meeting
them, they are interdependent in their accomplishment and they affect
the results through their interactions with one another.
Because
the team is collectively accountable, the work of integrating with
one another is included among the responsibilities of each member.”
Mohrman, Cohen, and Mohrman (1995)
So
there are some conditions which need to be met in order for you to
say that you have in the true sense got a team-based organisation:
1.
Mutual accountability : everyone in the team is accountable for the
performance of the team as a whole. This means every one in the team
has a personal stake in the achievement of objectives.
2. Team members depend upon each other to carry out their work : if
people are not dependent on each other, they aren’t really in
a team and some re-organisation is necessary to make this condition
met.
3. The team must manage itself : decide how often they are to meet,
the format of the meeting (in particular duration) and how decisions
made in meetings are implemented. Meetings set by managers outside
the team cannot be said to be team meetings.
4. The team must be able to face up to deal with conflict through
processes and conventions it decides on itself.
How
to do it
Whilst
the principles of team-working are simple, “doing teams”
well is difficult and sometimes costly. The main difficulty comes
from management being unwilling to let go and stand by as teams make
mistakes. Seeing a team make its first mistake is often when team-working
stops and managers start to command and control again.
However,
the enlightened manager realises that another name for making mistakes
is “learning” and provided teams are able to reflect on
what has occurred and respond accordingly, this is actually a strength.
There is also a performance cost to teams in that decisions must be
made collectively and this is a time-consuming business and can lead
to falling out amongst team members with different ideas. However,
the management of conflict is a key competence of team-working and
one of the first thing a team must do is work out mechanisms for dealing
with conflict and using disagreement as an opportunity to innovate.
There
are other costs to team-working. For a hundred years psychologists
have known that people try less hard in groups; this was discovered
by studying the strength of pull of tug-of-war teams as compared to
multiples of the individuals in it. That is to say, an eight person
team does not have the strength of pull of eight times the weakest
individual.
This
is usually attributed to “social loafing” where some team
members use meetings as a social event rather than as an arena solely
for problem-solving and dealing with issues. This is where the team
leader earns their pay in setting meaningful strategic goals, encouraging
participation and delivering resources to the team.
If
goals are seen as personally important to all team members, there
is a significantly increased likelihood of them being achieved. If
all team members participate in setting the goals and can see that
they are achievable, this is highly motivating. All of a sudden, staff
find that they are working to a pattern they themselves devise and,
particularly in the public sector, can find the only person to blame
for things not being as they might be is themselves. On the other
hand, the person praised when things go right is also the team itself.
Now there’s a motivator.
The
Rules
So
the rules to set team-working in place are :
1.
Allocate overall targets for groups.
2. Encourage them to meet and discuss how to achieve them.
3. Go to the first meeting and then only go if asked.
4. Emphasise that it is up to them how the targets are met.
5. Make sure the team agrees what the targets are : imposing them
just doesn’t work.
6. Ensure that the team has sufficient resources to achieve the target.
7. Let them get on with it, – except …
8. Challenge them.
So
there you have it : the ideal organisation in a nut shell. Of course
the practice is more difficult but the principles are simple. Most
of all, this works in practice. Team-based organisations are more
creative, more innovative and have less staff turnover and absenteeism.
Of course this means they are more cost-effective. Now there’s
a persuasive argument!
Bibliography
Mohrman,
S. A., Cohen, S.G. & Mohrman, A.M. (1995) Designing team based
organisations: new forms for knowledge work. San Francisco: Josey
Bass.
West,
M.A. (1994) Effective teamwork. Leicester: British Psychological Society
Dr
Pat Tissington is at Aston University’s Business School. He
has a particular research interest in team working and for 10 years
has carried out research and consultancy with teams in a diverse range
of organisations - everything from libraries to car manufacturing.
He can be contacted at p.a.tissington@aston.ac.uk
and would welcome feedback or comments on the article.
