Self Directed Team.doc

Whats Self Directed team?Self-directed teams comprise groups of employees who handle their day-to-day work with minimal direct supervisionA self-directed work team (SDWT) is a group of people, usually employees in a company, who combine different skills and talents to work without the usual managerial supervision toward a common purpose or goal. Typically, an SDWT has somewhere between two and 25 members. An optimal SDWT is said to be between five and nine members. An SDWT is similar to a skunk works except that an SDWT is not temporary and is not limited to a single project.SDWT members use their companys mission statement to develop their purpose, which must be meaningful and beneficial to the company. Purposes might include problem solving, increasing sales and productivity, career training, and product improvement.SDWT members must decide how they want to work together. Because a manager or boss does not lead, they must agree on the rules and deadlines for accomplishing their purpose. Some teams create a charter or set of rules that describe what is expected of each member. If a problem arises during the course of a project, the team members work together to provide a solution.In order for an SDWT to succeed, the company or organization must provide a meaningful mission statement to the team, empower the team to do what it needs to do including making important decisions, support the team, establish and provide the boundaries, rules, and company policies, and train the members with the skills and knowledge needed to accomplish their purpose. But, in the end, the team is held accountable for the success or failure of a project.自我管理团队（SDWT，self-directed work team）是不需通常的管理监督，使用不同技术和才能为着共同目标工作的一群人，通常是公司的职员。SDWT通常有2到25个成员，理想的SDWT是5到9人。SDWT相似于skunkworks，只是SDWT不是临时的，不局限于单个项目。 SDWT成员使用公司的任务声明来建立他们的目标，它必须是有意义且有利于公司的，目标可能包括解决问题、提高销售和生产能力、职业培训以及产品改进。 自我管理团队（SDWT）成员必须决定他们如何一起工作，因为没有经理或者老板的领导，他们必须遵守规则和期限以实现其目标。 为了SDWT的成功，公司或者组织必须向这个团队提供有意义的任务陈述，让他们进行所需要的一切工作，但是，团队要为项目的成功或者失败负责。What are the effects?Small numberClear goalFull participationTeam confidence and trustLike to take accountabilitiesAbility to learn, think and solve problemRight skill and knowledgePassion, empathy, sensitivityHow to build it?Establish urgency, demanding performance standards and directionSelect members for skill and skill potentialPay particular attention to first meetings and actionsSet some clear rules of behaviorSet and seize upon a few immediate performance oriented tasks and goalsChallenge the group regularly with fresh facts and informationSpend lots of time togetherExploit the power of positive feedback, recognition and reward.The secrets of leading self-directed work teams. Sharpen the leadership skills that make and keep companies competitive with this unique book, Leading Self-Directed Work Teams. Packed with eye-opening case studies of SDWTs at Kodak, Apple, Corning, Walmart, and other leading firms, Kim Fisher s thought-provoking book can help you increase cooperation and productivity in any dynamic environment. You ll discover how to: manage by flexible principles-not rote policies; coax teams into meeting tough cost, quality, and productivity goals; set priorities that evolve as your team evolves; resolve team conflicts with innovatiove nonautocratic methods; encourage members to express their own views-even as you foster team values and vision; handle peers and senior managers who resist change. A self-directed work team (SDWT) is a group of people, usually employees in a company, who combine different skills and talents to work without the usual managerial supervision toward a common purpose or goal. Typically, an SDWT has somewhere between two and 25 members. An optimal SDWT is said to be between five and nine members. An SDWT is similar to a skunkworks except that an SDWT is not temporary and is not limited to a single project.SDWT members use their companys mission statement to develop their purpose, which must be meaningful and beneficial to the company. Purposes might include problem solving, increasing sales and productivity, career training, and product improvement.SDWT members must decide how they want to work together. Because a manager or boss does not lead, they must agree on the rules and deadlines for accomplishing their purpose. Some teams create a charter or set of rules that describe what is expected of each member. If a problem arises during the course of a project, the team members work together to provide a solution.In order for an SDWT to succeed, the company or organization must provide a meaningful mission statement to the team, empower the team to do what it needs to do including making important decisions, support the team, establish and provide the boundaries, rules, and company policies, and train the members with the skills and knowledge needed to accomplish their purpose. But, in the end, the team is held accountable for the success or failure of a project.Federal Express is an example of a company that use self-directed work teams.自我管理团队（SDWT，self-directed work team）是不需通常的管理监督，使用不同技术和才能为着共同目标工作的一群人，通常是公司的职员。SDWT通常有2到25个成员，理想的SDWT是5到9人。SDWT相似于skunkworks，只是SDWT不是临时的，不局限于单个项目。 SDWT成员使用公司的任务声明来建立他们的目标，它必须是有意义且有利于公司的，目标可能包括解决问题、提高销售和生产能力、职业培训以及产品改进。 自我管理团队（SDWT）成员必须决定他们如何一起工作，因为没有经理或者老板的领导，他们必须遵守规则和期限以实现其目标。 为了SDWT的成功，公司或者组织必须向这个团队提供有意义的任务陈述，让他们进行所需要的一切工作，但是，团队要为项目的成功或者失败负责。Saturn以及联邦快递是采用自我管理团队的公司的实例。A cross-functional team is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal.1 It may include people from finance, marketing, operations, and human resources departments. Typically, it includes employees from all levels of an organization. Members may also come from outside an organization (in particular, from suppliers, key customers, or consultants).Cross-functional teams often function as self-directed teams responding to broad, but not specific directives. Decision making within a team may depend on consensus, but often is led by a manager/coach/team leader.A non-business, yet good example of cross-functional teams are music bands, where each element plays a different instrument (or has a different role). Songs are the result of collaboration and participation, and the goals are decided by consensus. Skills to play all the instruments involved are not required since music provides a standard language that everybody in the team can understand. In short, music bands are clear examples of how these teams work.A film production team is also a cross-functional team. The director actually is the team leader but if he said action and at the same time the sound manager found some distortion or noise or any thing which he is not convinced within his job, he can take the decision to stop until this problem is solved. Simply put, every expert is the leader or the manager of the whole operation when there is a problem related to his specialty.edit EffectsThe growth of self-directed cross-functional teams has influenced decision-making processes and organizational structures. Although management theory likes to propound that every type of organizational structure needs to make strategic, tactical, and operational decisions, new procedures have started to emerge that work best with teams.1) Less unidirectional - Up until recently, decision making flowed in one direction. Overall corporate-level objectives drove strategic business unit (SBU) objectives, and these in turn, drove functional level objectives. Today, organizations have flatter structures, companies diversify less, and functional departments have started to become less well-defined. The rise of self-directed teams reflects these trends. Intra-team dynamics tend to become multi-directional rather than hierarchical. Interactive processes encourage consensus within teams. Also the directives given to the team tend to become more general and less prescribed.2) Greater scope of information - Cross-functional teams require a wide range of information to reach their decisions. They need to draw on information from all parts of an organizations information base. This includes information from all functional departments. System integration becomes important because it makes all information accessible through a single interface.3) Greater depth of information - Cross-functional teams require information from all levels of management. The teams may have their origins in the perceived need to make primarily strategic decisions, tactical decisions, or operational decisions, but they will require all three types of information. Almost all self-directed teams will need information traditionally used in strategic, tactical, and operational decisions. For example, new product development traditionally ranks as a tactical procedure. It gets strategic direction from top management, and uses operational departments like engineering and marketing to perform its task. But a new product development team would consist of people from the operational departments and often someone from top management.In many cases, the team would make unstructured strategic decisionssuch as what markets to compete in, what new production technologies to invest in, and what return on investment to require; tactical decisions like whether to build a prototype, whether to concept-test, whether to test-market, and how much to produce; and structured operational decisions like production scheduling, inventory purchases, and media flightings. In other cases, the team would confine itself to tactical and operational decisions. In either case it would need information associated with all three levels.4) Greater range of users - Cross-functional teams consist of people from many parts of an organization. Information must take a form that all users understand. Not only engineers use technical data and not only accountants use financial data and not only human resources personnel use HR data. Modern organizations lack middle managers to combine, sort, and prioritize the data. Technical, financial, marketing, and all other types of information must come in a form that all members of a cross-functional team can understand. This involves reducing the amount of specialized jargon, sorting information based on importance, hiding complex statistical procedures from the users, giving interpretations of results, and providing clear explanations of difficult concepts. Slicing and dicing techniques may prove useful in providing different views of the information to different users. Data visualization systems can present complex results in an intuitive manner.5) Less teleological - Since the publication of Peter Druckers views on Management by objectives, business decisio