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Articles from The Business Forum Journal

ORGANIZED CHANGE
By  David G. Chaudron

Diagnosing Teamwork Problems

Almost all of us belong in some form of team, and at times all of us feel frustrated with them.  Unfortunately, many of us are untrained in diagnosing what is going wrong in a group. All we know is that it isn't working well.  Is that sick feeling is from the Stewed Tomato Surprise you had last night, or that disastrous meeting this morning?

To properly diagnose what is happening in a team, we start like a doctor -  with symptoms. Once we can describe what is going wrong, we look for causes, and recommend a prescription for what ails us. The first part of this article will deal with symptoms, the second with causes, and the third with prescriptions for what ails teams.

Symptoms

Drops, Plops, Pinches and Abilenes

One symptom to look for is perhaps the most obvious: a drop in productivity or quality. If a group has had a sudden drop in productivity, or a gradual decline over time, it usually means a team's ability to get along is either a cause or is suffering as well. Imagine this scenario:

A manager is called into her director's office. This guy has her group's productivity charts on the wall, which show a bumpy but significant decline. He blasts her group, asking her who the problem is, and if she doesn't shape up soon, he will find another manager for the group. “Someone,” he says, “to make the tough decisions.” This was not the first time he had acted this way. He had spoken things like this to all group members.

Relations within the group have deteriorated as well. What was cooperation and hard work has turned into competition and blame. What the director did not realize is that he was the initial cause of the group's decline in productivity. Instead of encouraging the group, and giving them the help they needed, he instead looked for a scapegoat. This negative behavior caused bad feelings in the group, which in turn caused their productivity to decline further. Which, by the way, made the director angrier than ever. These kind of vicious cycles are often seen by outsiders, but rarely by those caught in them.

Plops happen when usually quiet or new members bring up an idea or concern, and the reaction is deadly silence. Perhaps their idea touched a sacred cow, or maybe they have low status in the group. This happens occasionally in any group, but if it consistently happens when a topic is brought up, or consistently to a person, it gives the message that new ideas are unwelcome and people should “keep their place.” This stifling of ideas will cut off creativity from all but a powerful few.

Pinches are the hurt feelings and frustrations that members feel when their expectations aren't met. Perhaps they didn't get on the project they wanted to, their roles are not as powerful as they wished, they didn't agree with the orders from on high, or perhaps management said one thing and did something else. In groups without open communication, these pinches accumulate, until finally there comes a “crunch.”  Crunches can be emotional blowups on trivial decisions, people leaving the group, and tasks being sabotaged. Unfortunately, if groups ignore pinches, they ignore crunches too: After an awkward silence, someone moves the topic to a different subject, cracks a joke, or suggests the meeting be adjourned. Because these pinches and crunches aren't dealt with, they will happen more and more. One of the more nasty pinches is the blaming of other people for failure.

Dr. Jerry Harvey tells of a group that went to Abilene Texas. Called the Abilene Paradox, group members thought everyone else wanted to go there, even though they personally did not. More generally, groups often undertake actions and achieve progress on goals on which no group member agreed. This problem occurs when group members poorly communicate their wishes, and are not encouraged to do so. The group also may have no open forum for creating a consensus. As a result, the group can devote significant time and effort to something that serves no purpose. As described in the Abilene Paradox by Harvey, this "un-communication" about goals and objectives can lead to much wasted time and effort.

Draggers, Assassins, and the G.T.'s

How a group manages agreement is often the stickiest point in group life. All of a group's strengths, weaknesses and foibles come together whenever a decision needs to be made.

Imagine this:

The group had been meeting for two hours every week for the last month. No one really seemed to have a handle on the problem, much less an answer. George Godzilla suddenly raises his voice and says, “ I'm tired of all this talk. We keep going around in circles. We need to do something now! I say we just reduce everybody's budgets by 10%. That ought to get them off of our back. ” After about 10 seconds, some in the group nod yes, and George says, “All right, it's agreed then. Turn in your budgets by Monday 7am.” Signs of either disquiet or relief come from the rest of the group. This sign of dominance by a few members reduces participation by others, stifles new ideas, and creates the illusion of consensus. The group is dragged along by a few powerful, vocal advocates. Without full consensus, commitment to the decision will not be there, and people will tend to miss deadlines, “forget” tasks, and may deliberately block others' actions. When the leader of the group is one of the draggers, this sends signals to others that this is OK behavior in the groups they lead.

Not all groups are even this open. Cliques inside groups form, advancing their ideas at the expense of others. There are plots, assassins, coups and counter-coups. To some extent, this happens in all groups, but the problem comes when the victory of one clique comes at the expense of the whole group, or even the whole organization. This “sub-optimizing” with its veil of smiles and nodding of heads can destroy group health more subtly than any attack by competitors or declining productivity.

The G.T.s, or groupthink, is an embarrassing symptom for a group to have. It's like bad breath: Everyone else knows it except for you. Groupthink is where group members feel invulnerable to error, rarely admit to mistakes, and actively discourage disagreement among themselves and others. This blindness, as Dr. Irving Janis described in Decision Making, led to such wonderful decisions as Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler; the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba; and Johnson's escalation of war in Vietnam. Groups often do not realize they have these symptoms because admitting such would contradict the invulnerability they feel. In The Palace Guard, which details events that lead up to Watergate, Nixon's White House staff often exhibited symptoms of groupthink.

Causes

Now that you are a complete hypochondriac, let's talk about causes of these symptoms.

Goals, Roles and Relationships

Much of the trouble people have from groups comes from either what goals, roles and relationships should be in a group, or what agreement exists on these topics.

The usual problem with goals is they are not specific enough. Such goals as “reduce costs by 10%”, “improve quality”, and “get a better attitude” may be good to hear but meaningless until we agree on what costs, what measure of quality, and what behaviors constitute an attitude.

Roles play a complex part in how a group lives. First of all, roles have to do with who will do what task. Let's face it - some tasks give us more exposure to the big bosses, others let us appear to be working hard, and other tasks we would never do. Those we delegate to others.

Secondly, roles deal with power. Roles define who can make what decisions, with or without someone else's OK, who we have to report to, and who we can safely ignore. Power is the central issue in participative management, self-directed work groups, and employee involvement efforts.

One example of role confusion happened with the staff of a vice president who was considering reorganization. They believed they were empowered to make changes, and barring any significant technical problems, the vice president would go along with them. In this light, they proceeded to remove supervisors from their organizations, and replace them with “team leaders.” In addition, they removed one organization from directly reporting to the vice president. When it came time to present the new organization charts, the vice president disagreed, and stated that neither action would happen. Stunned silence ensued. Authority had not been discussed beforehand: They assumed one role, the vice president assumed another.

Thirdly, roles have to do with behavior. Who will play the jokster, and who the heavy? Who is perpetually typecast, and who is mercurial and a “loose cannon?” Is the manager good at giving feedback and encouraging group members to contribute?

These goals and roles play a significant role in we deal with others in the group. When we agree with someone on what they should be, they become part of our clique; if they don't, they may become an enemy. Our experience with group members outside the group and in the past combine with these goals and roles to create “personality” conflicts, sharp clashes of opinion, and in well functioning groups, greater effectiveness and creativity. These actions then influence the goals and roles in the group.

The Bigger Picture

As with a patient, a group's surroundings and reactions with others can greatly affect whether we get a disease, if we recognize it, and how quickly we recover. With groups, the organization they are a part of plays that role. Such factors as performance appraisals encourage individual achievement or teamwork, and whether groups instead of individuals are financially rewarded can either reinforce or tear apart a group's attempt at teamwork.

Suppose employees whose loyalties and rewards are tied to their “functional stovepipes” ( finance, production, human resources, etc.) are thrown together onto a team supposed to reduce waste across your organization. Do you seriously think their chances of success are great when major sacrifices by their own functions are necessary? Wouldn't their ideas to eliminate these stovepipes be quashed by the very people who gave them the task? As all of you know, one of the most frustrating things is to be given responsibility without authority.

The information system surrounding the group also has a significant effect. The natural flows of information come from the organizational structure of which it is a part, the computer system that partly delivers it, and the friendships and other relationships that are formed over time. If the information system does not allow people to collaborate effectively, they will continue to remain isolated despite the best organizational charts and teambuilding available.

About the Author:

Dr. David Chaudron is a Fellow of The Business Forum Association.  He is the managing partner for Organized Change™ Consultancy, brings over 20 years of experience assisting firms in their efforts to improve effectiveness, quality, and employee involvement. His efforts have included practical designs for major change efforts, strategic planning, re-engineering, survey development, team building, Total Quality Management, one-on-one coaching, and employee selection systems.

David has worked with manufacturing, financial services, banking, electronics, petrochemical as well as government and international organizations. His experience includes: Developing and managing implementation strategies for major organizations. Assessing organizational climate, group climate and management style as a prelude to a Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) initiative. Designing and managing the processes to implement a BPR initiative. Designing, developing, and delivering materials for training Total Quality Management (TQM) advisors. Conducting team building and cross-national teambuilding sessions with middle and upper management using the problem-solving model. Coaching senior management on management style and interpersonal relations with subordinates. Developing processes to assess company progress toward the Malcolm Baldridge Award. Developing and enhancing processes for selection and recruitment. Conducting job analyses to define career paths necessary aligned to company vision.

Dr. Chaudron has published many articles on teams, Business Process Reengineering, employee surveys, Total Quality Management, and organization change. He also is a speaker on an internationally televised videoconference seen by over 35,000 people in over 16 countries.

David's academic achievements include:  Ph.D., Industrial/Organizational Psychology, United States International University.  M.S., Industrial/Organizational Psychology, California State University, Long Beach.  B.A., Psychology, University of Arizona.  Advanced facilitator training, American Productivity and Quality Center

Previous articles by David Chaudron:

A Tale of Three Villages: Implementing Organizational Change
Master of all you Survey: Planning and Analyzing Employee Surveys

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