On the subject of self-organizing teams, John espouses that as a 'natural'
tendency for people to achieve their common goals. Robert agrees, but has
seen too many teams self-destruct due to personality conflicts, hidden
agendas, and so forth.
I question self-organizing teams on a number of counts. Nature is full of
examples of self-organizing organisms, almost all of them extinct. The
only reason self-organizing works for nature is that she has forever to
experiment, and she does not need many successes in that time-frame for
the over-all direction to be positive.
I think both John and Robert describe some of the negative consequences of
naturally self-organizing teams, but the causes are more than just hidden
agendas, personality conflicts, and so forth. These, too, are factors,
but the bigger issue is that by and large, the localized, self-organizing
team does not have -- and cannot have -- perfect information about the
happenings beyond their own boundaries. They do not know what is
happening 'out there' that is going to cause them to self-destruct. This
is the reason most organisms in nature are extinct. They are not able to
prepare themselves for an environment that is coming upon them, but which
they cannot yet see.
You know, senior management is slowly learning the "counter-intuitive"
lesson that they need to involve others in decision-making and
prioritizing. I think that cuts both ways, and localized teams need to
seek out and get sponsorship from senior management, even though this,
too, may seem counter-intuitive.
The reasons are as follows. Generally, management has a farther-reaching
vision of the external circumstances than do internal teams. Senior
managers can therefore help teams avoid some of the pitfalls. Second,
many times, members of teams are working on a problem for conflicting
reasons or the wrong reasons, perhaps desiring different outcomes. This
leads to the charges of hidden agendas, but is in reality the old problem
of different people touching different parts of the elephant. Third, most
problems require some resources to resolve, even if it is only people's
time. In a world of scarce resources, teams need support from senior
management to get needed resources.
In the absence of sponsorship from senior management, people can still
self-organize to attempt to solve a problem. However, they should not be
surprised if their effort does not bear fruit. That is the normal outcome
for self-organizing teams.
--Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>