How to Create Self-Organized Teams
How to Create Self-Organized Teams
How to Create Self-Organized Teams
Authored by Jagadesh Subash
29 October 2010
How to Create Self-Organized Teams
In response to marketplace, demands in dynamic and complex environments managers are finding creative ways to structure and organize work as self-organizing teams.
Leaders employ self-organizing teams to handle the complexity inherent in projects.
As a team opens to feedback from within and external to team, it generates new structures and patterns based on its own internal dynamics even evolving its own purpose and leadership as the team members interact. These processes are self-organizing.
Self-organizing teams are cross-functional and there is more flexibility across functional areas of expertise, which ensures maximum utilization of resources and improved learning through collaboration.
Self-organizing team members embrace continuous learning while effectively achieving team goals, which allows them to not only out-perform themselves but also find better and innovative ways of working. Team goals should have high priority than individual objectives.
The most important environmental factors include senior management support and customer involvement. Senior management must be able to provide freedom to the teams so that they can self-organize themselves.
The other important environmental factors include customer support. Customers must support the team members by being actively involved in the development process through providing regular requirements, clarifications, and feedback as required.
Team members have to build capacity to respond continuously to change. In these systems, Team members shall consider change as the organizing force, not a problematic intrusion. Accurately anticipate resistance to change. Adeptly overcome the resistance through endurance, skill, and determination. Changes are self-generated, not hierarchically driven. Role of senior executives is to remove obstacles hindering the organization's capacity to self-generate.
It is important to choose team members so that they complement each other's. The team members should be chosen based on technical, team, and leadership skills.
It is shown that autonomy together with communication and collaboration are the major components for building a self-organizing team. Team autonomy is a signicant factor for team effectiveness.
The degree of empowerment and authority that the team has in order to make decisions in self-organizing teams is greater than the regular teams. There are three levels of autonomy, which are external, internal, and individual, and autonomy at all the three levels shall be present in the team. The individuals spontaneously want to be involved; they are not there because of management decisions.
Redundancy is incorporate at the individual levels.
A self-organizing team requires a strong current goal or purpose. It requires continual feedback with its surrounding environment. It requires continual reference to a common set of values and dialoguing around these values. It requires continued and shared reflection around the business processes.
Shared leadership requires that all the team members actively participate into decision-making.
Instantiate creativity in the team members by defining the requirement for unpredictable shifts away from normal modes which results in self-organization.
To influence the conditions that determines the path and outcome of self-organizing in teams.
Differences in the team provide the potential for change.
Transforming exchanges connect across the differences in the team to realize that potential.
Containers hold the team together while change occurs.
The more constrained each of the conditions, the more predictable are the patterns. The less constrained, the less predictable are the patterns. Containers provide boundaries, center points, and connections. The process of team building also requires transforming exchanges that damp or amplify the differences to feed the process of self-organizing. These media for these connections can be face-to-face conversations, team meetings, email, interactive software, or voice and mail messages. All of the other important factors that affect a team's development are containers.
The manner in which team frames its purpose, its culture, and its processes provide multiple containers for its self-organizing activities.
Often in Self-Organizing teams emergent leadership is exhibited by group member emerges and maintains a leadership position. People are attuned to each other so well that, even when separate, they naturally act in harmony with each other and the goals of the enterprise results in collective leadership.
Why Self Defense Products Make Great Gifts Self Defense Products For Women From hunting to self defense: Boar spears, Assegai spears, and Samburu spears For women over 50, Stop Your Self-Sabotage in Your life after 50 Rent A Portable Camping Generator Familiarizing Yourself with Different Kinds of Software Organic Gardening: A Beginner's Guide Forex Trading for Beginners (forex mindset strategies) Ask Yourself Guides on Liposculpture Apple Has Not Outdone Itself Yet: Remote Desktop Software on the iPhone 5 Increase Traffic to Your Website and Boost Your Earnings for Beginners Walcott himself determined to World Cup campaign should be selected more than 4 years ago Personal Fitness: Know Thyself… The Key to Success in Fitness