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Chapter 26
The Myth of 'The More, the Merrier' on Teams

Some people think that the larger the team, the better the team.

Wrong.

* * *

OK, we'll elaborate a bit (although, a two-sentence chapter on knowing when to stop seems very zen or something).

There is a tendency by some executives to think of their entire organization as a team. This is an interesting expression, but not a useful one. Teams by their very nature can't be big. At some point they stop being teams and become mobs.

Team size is important. Smaller is much better than large. A team can be self-led, leader-led, formal or ad-hoc, but it can't be humongous.

A strategic business unit is usually not a team. SBUs can range from a score of people to several hundred, and they will be cross-functional as all get-out, and they will talk about themselves as a team -- "We've got the Eastman Kodak Unit A Injection Molding and Extrusion Team Spirit!" What they are is a self-contained network of teams.

Harvey was once called in to talk to an SBU. When he entered the room, he saw 74 people sitting in chairs, about eight rows deep. Harvey exhaled.

"OK," he said, "who here is on the team?" All 74 hands went up.

"Uh huh. If something goes wrong, how many people here get into trouble?" This time only about seven hands went up.

"OK. You people are the team. The rest of you are adjuncts. Go home."

For his part, Mike was ghosting a book about the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and had the opportunity to tour IBM Rochester, which had been touted as winning a giant proportion of points in its Baldrige scoring for its team orientation. The plant head had been quoted as saying that there were over 10,000 teams at the modest facility out on the Minnesota prairie.

So Mike drove to Rochester figuring he would walk down a lot of halls with rooms full of meeting teams. A city of teams. But after three hours of snooping around, he didn't see a single "team." The IBM Rochester definition of team was about as rigid as an amoeba. Whenever two people put their heads together on an ongoing basis, for a week or for a year, officially or unofficially, lean, mean, and transitory, that's a team.

Teams may sometimes seem larger than they are because of the adjuncts and resource personnel. These include:

v     core members -- the actual team, each one 100 percent dedicated to the team task

v     resource team member -- like the darting seagull, it drops its load and departs

v     support people -- people that help the core team get stuff done

v     team sponsor -- a manager the team can run to when it needs protection or direction

v     team champion -- this person created the team

v     facilitators -- outside people who help keep the team on track

This is not to say that an SBU or a department or division or even an entire division can't cultivate "team spirit." Heck, even a multinational corporation can call itself that if it wants to. It's a pleasant conceit, that sprawling, galactic, General Motors is simply "Team GM."

But ...

NOW AVAILABLE from from Berrett-Koehler Publishers (San Francisco) and Texere (UK)!

The New WHY TEAMS DON'T WORK
What Goes Wrong and How to Make It Right

"The American business approach to workplace teams is filled with powerful subtleties and is also quite different from the Japanese. The phrase, "How come all this quality stuff don't work," nicely sums up the challenge making teams work in America. Authors Robbins and Finley present practical solutions to the problems with and misconceptions about teams that will be valuable to any organization inclined to assign teams to work on legitimate operational issues. Pragmatic team tips covered here include team decision-making, communication skills with teams, reward and recognition ideas, the importance of effective team leadership, and the fundamental factor of organizational culture that could help or hinder team success. The authors swap narration of chapters, enlivening this useful handbook on how to make the commitment to teams a success. Serves well any manager's interest in maximizing productivity and quality improvement with teams. Recommended for all quality professionals." -- Quality World