INSEAD Reflection

A635.7.3

• 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?

Self Managed Teams (SMT), according to Ethan Berstein, John Bunch, Niko Canner, and Michael Lee (2016) is a group of employees where, “Members share accountability for the work, authority over how goals are met, discretion over resource use, and ownership of information and knowledge related to the work.” These teams typically consist of experienced and highly technical members that can perform a wide range of tasks that were reserved for specialty departments and supervisors in a traditional organizational structure. Brown (2011) notes:

Work teams are assigned a wide range of tasks, including setting work schedules, budgeting, making job assignments, developing performance goals, hiring and selecting team members, assessing job performance of fellow members, purchasing equipment, and controlling quality.

A significant advantage of the SMT is the versatility and capabilities the team provides. The team’s specialty is not nested in one area or field, it has the ability to employ their expertise in various environments and situations. Another advantage of the SMT is that the team is accountable to each other and provides greater ownership with what they do and how they do it. In such teams, roles and responsibilities can and do rotate among its members, which creates a rich developmental (learning environment) and empowering experience. “In self-managed organizations, leadership is distributed among roles, not individuals (people usually hold multiple roles, on various teams). Leadership responsibilities continually shift as the work changes and as teams create and define new roles” (Berstein et al., 2016). Lastly, an important advantage in today’s dynamic environment is have the ability to be agile. SMT are designed to reduce “red tape” that is well known in large organizations.  “Self-management aims to reduce the red tape and endless sign-offs usually needed to make decisions in bureaucracies” Berstein etal., 2016).

Some of the disadvantages is of cohesive groups like SMT is falling into the trap of what Brown (2011) labels as groupthinking, which “refers to “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ striving for unanimity overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” (p. 268). Another disadvantage would be not having a designated leader of the team to hold others accountable and make decision that prevent the team from moving forward. This reminds me of a saying in the military, “If everyone is in charge, no one is in charge.”

I believe that working in a SMT would be a valuable experience. I enjoy having the ability to have great control of work flow, priorities, and measures of effectiveness. Moreover, a key factor in this environment is being partnered with equally driven, mature, and capable team members with various skills. Thus, I would look forward to not only contributing, but learning new skills from other team members.

Being an external leader/manager of a SMT, I believe greater patience would something I would have to actively manage because I tend to be more of a hands-on leader. I believe it is important to empower others to perform their duties and grow. Thus, exercising patience and focus on shaping the conditions and building their capabilities would be the priority. According to Paul Tesluk (2008), “When self managing teams leaders need to intervene is when teams are experiencing novel events. A disruption in work flow or some kind of emergency that they hadn’t anticipated. That’s where external leaders need to step-in, to help the team make sense of the situation… We like to call it the authority balance beam” (6:05).

References

Bernstein, E., Bunch, J., Canner, N., & Lee, M. (2016). Beyond the Holacracy Hype. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/07/beyond-the-holacracy-hype.

Brown, D. Experiential Approach to Organization Development. Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Tesluk, P. (2008). Self-managing teams: Debunking the leadership paradox. INSEAD. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBnR00qgGgM.