People and Teamwork

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People and Teamwork
Douglas M. Stewart, Ph.D. Anderson Schools of
Management University of New Mexico
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Importance of People

• The enduring source of competitive advantage
• U.S. under-investment in training
• Reasons
• Workplace mobility
• First to be cut
• Long term payback
• Substitution of technology for knowledge
• Use of contract workers

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Importance of People (2)

• Training often easy option for challenging
  problem
• Culture
• Management coordination
• Structure - teams

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3 Types of Teams

• Baseball Teams
• Football Teams
• Doubles Tennis Teams

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Baseball Team

• Fixed positions work alone
• Examples
• heart surgery
• assembly line

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Baseball Team (2)

• Each member separate
• Evaluation
• Goals
• Measures
• Can be quite large
• No need to adjust to rest of team
• Max personal potential
• No star conflict
• Inflexible works well in familiar invariant
  environments

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Football Team

• Fixed positions work together
• Examples
• Code blue
• Japanese design teams

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Football Team (2)

• All members coordinated
• Coachs word is law
• Detailed goal and game plan
• Recognition and reward from team
• Must fit in with team
• Stars play constrained role
• Greater flexibility

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Tennis Doubles Team

• Primary positions adjust to teammates
  weaknesses/strengths
• Examples
• developers of PC
• presidents office

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Tennis Doubles Team (2)

• Team must naturally coordinate
• Team performs members contribute
• Must be small
• Team must develop together
• Most flexibility

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Team Choice

• There is no universal best type of team
• Have different strengths and weaknesses
• Once developed cannot easily change focus

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Self Directed Work Teams (SDTs)

• SDTs are
• Ongoing
• Plan, perform and improve their work
• Without direct supervision
• Composed of all people in work area
• Led by elected
• Not STDs

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Self Directed Work Teams (SDTs)

• SDTs require
• Empowerment
• Authority (given to)
• Accountability (accepted by)
• Alignment (with organization)
• Ableness (developed by)
• Reinforcement
• Leadership
• Evolution

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Beginning SDTs

• Start many at once (ensure some success)
• No pilots (decision to go forward made up front)
• Support of support functions
• Update systems
• Celebrate success / learn from failure

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Teams and Creativity

• Most people strongly believe that teams are more
  creative than individuals, when in fact they
  arent
• Thompson, 2003

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Measuring Creativity

• The cardboard-box test
• Fluency how many different ideas
• Flexibility how many different types of idea
• Originality uniqueness of idea (5 or less of
  sample)
• Lesson Quantity often does breed quality

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Rules for Brainstorming

• No Criticism
• Freewheeling welcome
• Quantity desired
• Combining/improving ideas encouraged

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Threats to Team Creativity

• Social Loafing
• Conformity
• Production Blocking
• Downward Norm Setting

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Strategies to Build Creativity

• Diversify the Team
• Analogical Reasoning
• Brainwriting
• Nominal Group Technique
• Creating an Organizational Memory
• Trained Facilitators
• High Benchmarks
• Membership Change
• Electronic Brainstorming
• Build a Playground