[From Bill Powers (941110.0740 MST)]
For those who know him: Bill Williams arrived last night for a visit.
To Greg Williams: Bill says he will be back in the middle of next week
(Thursday, approx).
Dag Forssell (941108.1145) --
I know you're citing Jim Soldani, but if you want a "sanity check" I
presume that includes your citations as well as direct writings. Jim
writes
Individuals in a team share a common goal. This goal is the
team's focal point. Many different types of goals can qualify
as a focal point: better service, better performance to
schedule, better efficiency, better quality.
I think it is a good idea to set achievable goals, not impossible ones.
The goal of producing continually "better" anything is an impossible
one, just as it is impossible to satisfy a craving for "more." If I had
written this piece, I would have said "customer satisfaction with our
services, performance to schedule, and quality of which we can be
proud." Such goals involve perceptions that can be defined and can be
achieved. Once reasonable definitions of these goals have been achieved
and sustained for a while, the goal-setters can make modest increases in
the settings -- if practical. But to set a positive first derivative as
a goal is a guarantee that the people seeking the goal will experience
continuous failure -- except during those rare moments when they get an
idea that will actually produce an increase in the controlled variable.
When they do, for a moment everything is wonderful: a feeling of
achievement, praise from colleagues and bosses, and a little bonus. And
the next day it's back to "what have you done for us lately?"
Jim could have thought through his list of team-goal qualities a little
better, too:
a) The goal must be very specific and capable of being
measured.
b) Each group member must internalize the goal; achieving the
goal must become a mission for each member of the team.
c) The goal must be such that the team cannot achieve it
without a contribution from every member who makes up the
team. This interdependency ties the individuals together
into a team.
I'll agree with a) but I think what he means is that the perception must
be capable of being measured: the goal must be expressed in terms of
something perceivable. Point b) is more a definition of what constitutes
a team: people who have made achievement of a common goal a personal
mission. If a person hasn't done so, telling him or her that he or she
"must" internalize the goal is not likely to cause it to be
internalized. And c) is much too limiting and vague. A given team member
might be told that the team would work better if this person took a bath
once in a while. This can be achieved without the whole team taking a
bath together.
The defect in the three points is that they are symptoms of good
teamwork, but they are not causes of good teamwork. You can't just tell
the people on a team "be interdependent." Interdependence grows out of
finding a job one can do well, and performing it consistently so others
come to rely on your doing it right. It comes from developing
perceptions of what other people do well and learning to respect their
right and ability to do it themselves, without your interference or
second-guessing. In a word, interdependence comes from trust, and trust
grows with experience with trustworthy people, and with trusting people.
This is what happens in a good team. But if it doesn't happen, you can't
fix the problem by describing the qualities of a good team; you have to
track down the source of the problem and try to deal with it.
It's not that I disagree with Jim. I think that in practice he uses PCT
and doesn't follow any slavish rituals. What I disagree with is this
general method of prescribing behavior. There is a list of the desirable
characteristics of teamwork, but the question of how to achieve these
characteristics if they are missing is mostly begged. The idea of having
brief daily "standup meetings" sounds good, but if the people in the
team don't have meetings -- even briefer but far more often --
spontaneously, there is something wrong, people are assuming too much.
Rituals are not the answer: understanding of principles is the answer.
And the overall goal of the team has to be broken down into more
detailed goals, not into more detailed actions.
If A and B aren't coordinating properly, you don't tell A and B to have
a meeting at 10:00 each morning for 7 minutes. You tell each of them
that it's important to know what the other is doing, and to make sure
they know. You explain how problems have arisen because of not knowing,
and how knowing will correct the error. If there have been no actual
problems of this kind, then having that daily meeting will only break up
the day and will improve nothing. As soon as you reduce the actions
needed to solve specific problems to daily rituals that are carried out
whether or not there is any need for them, you destroy their
significance. You're asking people to control output instead of input.
No control system can operate properly by using fixed actions, or even
fixed subordinate goals.
I think the reason that recommendations for human cooperation so often
come out like banal sermons is that nobody has known what actually
produces good cooperation. With PCT we can at least guess at what the
underlying problems are. The "quality time" idea sounds wonderful,
provided that the people can actually find some quality experiences they
both value, and that this mutual enjoyment has something to do with the
job. But if the problem is that they can't find any, then this ritual
won't work and you have to look more deeply into the problem. You always
end up dealing with individuals, not groups. And in doing that, it is
very helpful to have a theory of individual organization that works.
You say
Managing a large team this way requires a careful breakdown of the
focus goal into subgoals each team member can control and own.
Coordination takes time, and resolving countless conflicts requires
personal involvement.
Right, break it down into subgoals that can actually be achieved and
sustained. Don't break it down into magical rituals; allow even for
spontaneous changes in subgoals as required to achieve the overall goal.
And teach the people PCT, so they understand their own autonomy and that
of others.
The rest of the exposition is fine, except for
"when you understand the source of people's emotions SHE can show
associates how to change them." SHE??
If you desperately want to avoid sexist constructions, recast the
sentence without pronouns: through understanding of... a manager can
show associates how to change them.
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Best to all,
Bill P.