A
Condensed Version of Robert P. Crosby�s Article
Robert P. Crosby is the author of� Walking the Empowerment Tightrope: Balancing Management
Authority & Employee Influence; Solving the Crosswork Puzzle: Succeeding
in the Modern Organization; and Living
With Purpose When the Gods Are Gone.
Condensed
by Ron Siddell, MA/ABS
In the 1970�s a
revolutionary event occurred in US business. An industrial plant opened with
no supervision, introducing autonomous or self-directed work teams. While
other organizations had attempted such work groups, no plant had been started
in this way. The Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) magnesium plant was
heralded as the �wave of the future.�
By 1990, the
plant was in serious trouble.
Then, in
November 1992, Metals Week dubbed
this plant as the �only ray of hope for US customers.� In mid-1993, the plant
was described as having boosted productivity by 72 percent. Metals Week cited the plant for �…groundbreaking
productivity.�
From
serious trouble to groundbreaking productivity?������������������
What happened?
Abdication
of leadership and responsibility was evident in the plant in late 1989.
Consensus was rampant, with almost everyone having the ability to veto or at
least slow down decision processes.
Eighty
percent of the employees had a dominant social style that emphasized
amiability, expressiveness and spontaneity. The culture rewarded such traits
so strongly that no one among the management had a style that emphasized a
primary concern for driving to bottom-line results! That is until Don Simonic
arrived as plant manager in mid-1990. His driving ability along with his
capacity to be truthful and to connect with employees was essential to the
plant turnaround, including the development of clarity about authority
throughout the system.
The
unspoken secret about self-directed groups got exposed: There is no such thing! If terms such as self-managed,
self-directed, or autonomous work teams are used to mean that there is no
foreman, supervisor or manager who is held accountable for the teams�
functioning, then that is an illusion. Whoever creates teams is accountable
and can eliminate teams, as well.
The
primary task was to get authority clarified and in place. Where the role and
authority of managers and supervisors isn�t clear, the authority of the
workers is also confused. Likewise, staff authority becomes confused; they
tend to be bossy to fill the authority vacuum. The psychological function of
authority is to define limits, thereby creating enough structure to allow
employees to feel safe. In the quagmire of an authority vacuum, a manager can
only micro-manage crises and abdicates the rest of the time.
Back to
the ALCOA plant and Don Simonic: He truly led, that is, he was clear about
where he was going, how we would get there and he was able to stay connected
to employees while staying the course against resistance.
Effective
management is an appropriate blend of thinking (which includes providing information
and listening), values (heart), emotions and intuition (gut feel), and
backbone (taking a stand against resistance).
No
organization can let a group function with poor productivity, quality, safety
or absenteeism and let it go on forever as an ineffective unit. Yet, such
groups may go on for years while managers frantically try �indirect� ways to
influence. Such an indirect way is to change personnel in the group. However,
once a �negative work culture is in place, new people usually get sucked in
unless they are unusually clear about their own personal authority and stand
up against norms that discourage diligence and commitment.
Think
of it this way: A self-managing team manages what it manages and doesn�t
manage what it doesn�t manage. Sound crazy?�
Stay with me.
Suppose
teams in any given organization are expected to manage safety, productivity,
quality, environmental matters, meetings and such disciplinary concerns as
tardiness and absenteeism. Will all of the teams manage all of the expectations
well? Probably not; it is more likely that the bell-shaped curve will apply,
as it does in any organization, whether traditionally managed or otherwise.
Some groups will do better than others, but most will congregate towards the
middle of the curve between well managed and poorly managed. No team will
manage perfectly.
So, who
manages what the teams are not managing well? This is the question that must
be addressed. It is a fundamental issue of modern organizations – balance in managing authority and
influence.
My answer
to the question is: A supervisor or equivalent has single-point
accountability and a goal to delegate managing to the team members so they
function on the �well� side of the bell-shaped curve. When the team does not
perform well, the supervisor has single-point accountability to step in and
say, �I need this project completed and ready to present by Friday at 9 a.m.
If not, I will manage it.�
Thus, a
team defines its degree of self-managing. In essence, the challenge is, �You
will determine the definition of your self-management by how much you
effectively self-manage.�
After a
honeymoon period, so-called self-management is very difficult. The larger the
group, the more difficult it becomes. Many teams look more like group tyrannies
after the honeymoon is over. Without clarity about authority and continuous
maintenance of work role relationships, groups will fail no matter what they
are called.
Self-management
is a method, not an end. The end is to achieve the organization�s values,
purpose and business objectives. The end is not to create teams.� In real life, we self-manage ourselves
within a framework of laws, and societal and organizational expectations.
Likewise, teams are created by some authority and therefore, can be disbanded
by that same authority. If organizations are to flourish, they must quit
pretending about the reality of and need for authority. Authority is not bad,
nor good. It just is.
Leaders must lead. It may be obvious to say that
the CEO, managers and supervisors must lead. In reality, many don�t. Leaders
must provide clear leadership while staying genuinely open to employee
influence. They must avoid the extremes of dictatorship or abdication.
Warren
Bennis (Why Leaders Can�t Lead,
Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 1989) writes about the �unconscious conspiracy
that prevents leaders from taking charge.� He writes, �When everyone is his
or her own boss, no one is in charge, and chaos takes over. Leaders are
needed to restore order, by which I mean not obedience but progress.�
To lead
means to �stay the course� in the face of resistance to change. Many give up,
go to consensus or authoritarian extremes, and hope for the best.
Organizations
live in much pretense about authority. Managers say, �We will decide,� when they mean, �We will decide unless I don�t
like that decision, then I will
decide.� Such pretense is destructive and disempowering in the workplace.
Just as children are not free to grow without clarity about structure and
authority, so work crews are not free to be appropriately empowered if the
authorities are unclear about who truly has authority to do what and decide
what. The fear of unjust authority encourages the flip to no clarity about
authority. Both extremes are equally disastrous.
Delegating
more is smart business. Most employees do want to influence many facets of
their work towards a more productive environment, such as work design and
processes, resources to excel and clarity about assignments.
Workers are not empowered
by self-directed fads that ignore decision clarity. Most empowerment and
autonomous-oriented programs leave them feeling disempowered and betrayed.
They know a lot about productivity and want to contribute positively at work.
They expect their leaders to lead. They will resist change (don�t we all?),
and they are ready to follow a leader who will tune in to them, take a stand,
tune in, and take a stand…. Such leadership transcends the imagined
polarities that have plagued us in this century.�