A635.7.3.RB
INSEAD
Reflection
In light of the video found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBnR00qgGgM
and the readings from Brown’s text, “An
Experimental Approach to Organization Development” I am asked to answer
these three questions:
- What do you see as some of the major benefits and drawbacks of self-managed teams?
- Would
you like to work within such a team?
- What
competencies would you need to develop to be an effective external manager
of a self-managed work team?
According
to Brown, “A self-managed work team is an autonomous group whose members decide
how to handle their task. 26 The task of the team is an identifiable task, service,
or product. The group may be a permanent work team or a temporary team brought
together to solve a problem or develop a new product. Often teams are composed
of people from different parts of the organization, with different skills and
backgrounds. Authority has been vested in the teams by upper management to
manage their group processes, including production and personnel matters, in
or-der to accomplish their objectives. The diversified background of members
and the necessary authority gives the teams the ability to move around the
bureaucratic organization and get the job done.” (Brown, 2011)
In
my current position as a secondary education teacher, I am constantly assigning
tasks and assignments to teams of Cadets.
Our classes are modeled after the US Army with each period being a
Platoon, the first four and last four periods being Companies and collectively
being a Battalion. In this culture, they
self-manage. It’s amazing. I constantly have other teachers come and ask
me how it is done. I will only become involved when a Cadets have
questions that Senior Cadets cannot answer.
According
to Professor Paul Tesluk of the University of Maryland, “Self-managing teams
are not as rare phenomena as what they used to be. You know by definition, a self-managing team is
a team of that has formal responsibility and authority for making their own
decisions about how they organize their work and how they decide. Now, they're going to get their work done so
instead of the formal supervisor having that responsibility it's really up to
the team to decide how they structure themselves and how they go about
organizing their workflow and process. And now in the knowledge-based economy,
you see much more of that happening then what you use to with flatter
organizational structures as well. So
leaders don't have the ability to focus on a certain select number of teams. With
a flatter organizational structure there's more emphasis on teams being more self-managing
but it is a contradiction in some ways. It's a bit of a paradox of how do you
lead teams to lead themselves. But at
least in our research what we find is that it's a very important element for
external leaders to be able to do successfully because the type of leadership
style is very different from a self-managing team than from one that's more
leader managed and led.” (INSEAD, 2008)
I
am of the opinion that there is both good and bad in self-managing teams. If you give these teams too much autonomy,
they can run amuck. And since my brain
is wired differently due to my 27-year Army career, I live by the fact that if
you are a leader, you are responsible for everything that happens and fails to
happen in your organization. So, with
that said, there must be over-watch without micromanagement. Lines of communication between the leader and
the team must be wide open. However,
self-managed teams striving for excellence has been my experience. These teams want to please the boss. They want autonomy. They learn from their successes and failures
more often because they were the ones who succeeded or failed without a manager
or leader breathing down their necks.
As
a younger Soldier, once I proved to my leadership that I was capable of
accomplishing tasks that had been giving me, the leader backed off. From the previously mentioned Army model,
Soldiers in my same position worked together and essentially self-managed. So, with that said, I have worked within a
self-managed team and enjoyed it!
The
only competency I would need to develop to be an effective external manager of
a self-managed work team is to abate my extreme desire to be a
micromanager. As a retired Senior
Noncommissioned Officer being extremely hands on is well embedded in me.
References
Brown, D.R. (2011). Experiential approach to
organization development. (8th Ed). Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall
INSEAD. (2008, September 22). Self-managing teams: debunking the leadership paradox. [Video
File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBnR00qgGgM
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