As with its rarely seen cousins, the Unicorn and Jack-a-lope, many myths surround the self-organizing team. Some have posited that it is all a hoax fabricated by disgruntled knowledge workers in an effort to discredit the oft despised manager. Still others have suggested that they have such teams in their organization without realizing that their teams are only masquerading as self-organizing teams.
Perhaps the greatest myth is that self-organizing teams are naturally occurring organic entities. Because of our nature, the self-organizing team must be purposefully cultivated and care must be taken to ensure that appropriate environment is maintained. In truth, self-organizing teams are real, but can only exist in environments where the proper balance is struck among several different factors.
Teams need to be encouraged to design their own team. This is not intended to imply that the team should make all hiring and firing decisions. However, it does mean that the team should be the primary source for determining what additional resources are needed. The team should be the first to recognize that they don’t have enough of a certain resource type. The team should also identify when a team member is not “fitting”.
Often self-organizing is misconstrued as self-directed and not requiring a manager. Make no mistake… the team absolutely needs direction. They need a clear and unifying vision of where they need to go. It is true that the team should be consulted, but a leader is definitely required to ensure that the team direction is aligned with that of the organization.
The team must be the ones to make their own commitments. Not only does this make the commitments more realistic, but the team will also be more motivated to accomplish the task when they were the ones to set the due date. When commitments are made on behalf of the team, they will be questioned, resisted and regularly missed… assuming that they were realistic to begin with.
How the work is organized should also be the responsibility of the team. Leaders can and should be setting the rough framework and setting boundaries, but the team will figure out the best way that they work. The best leaders ask the right questions and coach their teams in improving the way that they do the work rather than directing, dictating or mandating.
Traditional managers are responsible to assign the work to each team member, ensuring that the respective team member is working on the right thing at the right time. For knowledge workers in particular, this can be de-motivating. The ideal is to allow teams to own a whole chunk of work or project and divvy out the work amongst themselves. This will result in a much higher motivation and commitment for both the individual as well as the team.
The final factor is probably the most critical… continuity. In the end, if you have correctly balanced all of the other factors, but the teams are in a constant state of flux, the self-organizing team will fail. Job changes and attrition happen, but mixing up teams for every new project or client requirement does not foster the type of environment that will produce effective teams.