Wondering why your redesign and "self-managing" teams aren't delivering?
Many executives are thinking about streamlining their organizations by redesigning work processes and moving to self-managing work teams. But they're worried...
They are right to be worried and doubtful about redesigning their organization. They've heard of outright failures, partial successes, and pilot projects that never grew or flew far from their greenfield beginnings. They've also heard that work redesign can take years. Some are beginning to understand that bureaucratic structures, methods and designs are incapable of producing participative and democratic organizations. But there is good news.
The good news... Fred Emery, with Merrelyn Emery and colleagues, has developed an approach to redesign which circumvents all the key limitations of both earlier and currently practiced methods. This method has recently been introduced to the US following successes in other countries. It is called participative design (PD).
What is participative design and how's it different? Participative design is a process for moving from a bureaucratic structure to a self-managing, democratic structure. In comparison to other popular redesign or re-engineering methods participative design is unique because in it:
This is a profound change for organizations... This shift is the key to circumventing a whole set of problems inherent in the other approaches to redesigning for flatter, leaner, team-based organizations. At present, no other methods for redesigning work produce this change.
What are its benefits, its advantages?... The outcome of participative design is a highly flexible organization which will have the ability to learn itself into solutions continuously. And rapid organizational adaptiveness is now essential for organizations which wish to survive and thrive.
Participative design is enduring... This type of design is enduring because workers are provided with the skills and experience to respond and redesign their work systems to meet new, un-dreamt of conditions. Additional important advantages of participative design are:
Once the preparation work is done, it takes no more than two days for people to redesign their own section (a large organization can involve everyone in a total redesign in a matter of weeks, instead of months or years).
The expert (elite) design group - In North America today, a cornerstone to the STS process is establishing a small group from within the organization, to fill an expert role as the design team (re-engineering also borrows this format). There are a number of problems with this:
Ownership problems... A small select or elite internal team with an agenda for changing everyones job is rarely able to generate enough excitement and sense of ownership to drive adoption throughout an entire organization. Such design teams often become pariahs to employees fearful of losing their jobs.
"Fixing" part of the system, is unsystematic... Re-engineering initiatives that go in and tackle parts of the organization to make them leaner and meaner, without working with the whole can and do create more havoc than success.
Let us redesign your work, because we're the experts... When experts redraw work processes without changing from a bureaucratic to a democratic structure, the result inevitably comes back to haunt everyone.
A little bureaucaticism mixed in won't hurt, will it? The unanswered question for the consulting firms that have put re-engineering on the map is: how do you deal with using bureaucratic or autocratic means to create a flatter, team-oriented organization? Over time, this mixed mode leads to a reversion to bureaucratic structures. Neither STS nor re-engineering take into account the tremendous impact of the underlying organizational design principle. Mixed mode designs, although creating impressive short term improvements, dont produce long term competitive advantage.
How about large group STS? On the surface, large group STS looks like a better choice for sustainable change, since it involves more people in the redesign process. Although the analysis and redesign are fast, the usual lengthy and bureaucratic implementation is another matter. Because participants have no shared meaning of what it means to be participative or democratic, the resulting designs are often a confusing mixture of design principles. Thus, such designs are subject to the same long term consequences as are STS or re-engineering: as the marketplace changes, organization redesigned this way may be unable to adapt and change without going through another complicated and expensive process all over again. Ouch!
How about making supervisors into coaches to support a team concept? The most common mistake in North America is assuming that you can change a supervisors role from a policeman/boss to that of trainer, leader or coach. This approach fails because it leaves the underlying power structure unchanged. Relabeling, however well intentioned, does not change the location of responsibility for control and coordination of the work, so the very engine which drives the power of a self-managing teams productivity magic is never created.
Prework with senior management... One way to evaluate the effectiveness of participative design is to conduct a one to two day participative design workshop as a learning activity for the senior management team (using a modified design described later on). This allows them to experience its power and to directly assess the processs applicability. If they then decide to go forward, the participative design process has already begun.
Roles and responsibilities for the overall process...Participants in the overall process include a consultant who designs the specific participative design process in conjunction with management. The consultants orchestrate the individual workshops. Senior management commits to sponsoring overall process and supporting its outcomes.
Vision pre-requisite... Senior management must first clarify the challenges which confront the organization, and then must be able to say why participative design has compelling enough advantages for them to commit to it. Some typical challenges might include:
Core processes of a participative design workshop- Just as the self-managing team is the basic building block of a democratically structured organization, the participative design workshop is the cornerstone of the organizational redesign process to create such an organization. The mortar, if you will, that binds these blocks together is that people learn (during the workshop) how to use new tools to analyze their current work structure and they then redesign it.
Self-management begins with work that is self-designed...Participative design assumes that the most effective designs come from those whose work is under review. It is only from people pooling their diverse (often fragmented, but always detailed) knowledge that a comprehensive and stable design can emerge. The workshop creates a deep impression with participants because its democratic process is congruent and resonates with its democratic result people are immersed in it as they learn it and apply it.
Workshop structure... The workshop usually consists of a group of about two dozen people from the organization working in small groups. How these groups are selected and organized is a diagnostic question relating to strategic direction and the size and complexity of the section under redesign. Depending on the make-up of the small groups, the workshop lasts either one or two days.
Phases of the workshop... There are three phases to the participative design workshop:
To maximize learning the workshop must include the following:
Next, there is a presentation on bureaucratic design principles. The bureaucratic designs inverse relation to the six critical requirements of effective work (see the next figure) and to accessing peoples diverse talents is demonstrated. The presentation concludes with detailed instructions for creating and completing the critical human requirements matrix and skills matrix.
Characteristics of bureaucratic organizations... A discussion of the characteristics of bureaucratic organizations points out the easy familiarity people already have with its built-in shortcomings:
Presentation of this content appears to be most effective when it is simple, brief and visual. The basic concepts are readily grasped and clarification of the basic concepts is usually not necessary.
Six critical requirements of work... Years of research show that six human requirements must be satisfied before people can be expected to fully develop responsibility and commitment to their tasks. They are the building blocks for designing any effective organization and are at the heart of participative design.
The first three requirements refer to the content of any job. These needs are experienced differently from person to person. The second three requirements relate to the social climate of the workplace. The six critical human requirements are:
Meeting the needs of these six requirements means restructuring the workplace. This naturally happens when responsibility for interpersonal coordination and the control over effort and the quality of work is located with the people who are actually doing the work.
Working the critical requirements and skills matrices...Participants work in groups to analyze their jobs as they exist. They do this by completing two matrices. First, an analysis of their jobs related to the six critical requirements. Second, an analysis of the skills they possess.
These matrices show where the gaps exist in both critical work requirements and skills. It also demonstrates where individuals and the organization need to work to create a self-managing work environment.
Reports and diagnostics... Groups then report their findings from the matrix analysis. The pattern of scores are used as diagnostic tools immediately and are also taken into account later, during the redesign phase.
Phase two: redesign- There is a presentation introducing the principles of democratic design and its relation to the six criteria and skills. (If there is a need, this presentation will deal with the modified participative esign model which can be used when multiskilling is thought to be inappropriate). During the presentation the traits or characteristics of self-managing teamsand democratic structures are discussed.
The structure of a participatively designed organization...The structure of a participatively designed organization reflects the following principles:
Working on current structure and workflow... First groups lay out their current process or workflow on a chart. Then they draw up the current organizational structure as it is real jobs, real people. Now they go to that structure and start sorting out a redesign consistent with the new paradigm and the organizations vision. The new organizational chart will have to be absolutely clear about what the boundaries are around their groups what is in and what is out.
Presenting their design options...An interim session is held where groups present their design options and receive feedback and criticism from other groups. This is where significant unlearning can occur. It doesnt matter whether the learnings involved concern fundamental beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, values, corporate objectives, strategy, work organization or the like: the critical learning problems seem to lie in unlearning habits of thought and restructuring of what is already known. What individuals and the functional stovepipes of traditionally structured organizations can not achieve alone they can achieve in this format i.e. coming to accept that their pooled perceptions disconfirmed their assumptions and provided alternative conceptions of reality.
Phase three: implementation plan- Next each group works on setting a comprehensive and measurable set of goals for their work group. The topics covered at this point can include:
Setting goals... Each group must set its own goals: production, environment, human and technical. If the focus is on production goals only, the strong will chew up weaker ones and overall team performance will fail. After this first crack at their goals, they will still need to negotiate with someone, as they are self-managing not autonomous.
Performance appraisal issues in the new environment... A genuine self-managing group will move heaven and earth to meet its goals. In the new paradigm organization that achievement and pride is directly transferred to higher levels of base pay over time, usually in the form of a payment for skills held. In addition, many groups also choose some form of peer review process.
The appraisal and reward environment should support cooperation to meet goals that usually means no individual rewards or punishments. Instead of having fragmented, competitive roles, people now see their job within a much broader part of the work process. When it is all finished, you have mechanisms for coordination and control between groups, and up and down the hierarchy. The pivotal relationships of coordination and control are now between peers, rather than between supervisor and subordinate.
Skills training... The group will determine its training requirements from a careful examination of the skills matrix and assess who needs what training, for how long, whether it should occur on or off the job and to what levels. The groups also report on how their design will improve the scores on their matrix for the six critical requirements.
Group process and team training... The widely held notion that people have to learn how to work in groups is wrong. Participative design and the people who participate in this type of process create structures that allow them to function effectively as a group. Most people function well in groups naturally; and given a democratic environment, tend to work together even better. Participation design experience shows that it does not matter whether they are machine operators, engineers, computer scientists, accountants, underwriters or anybody else.
Final touchups to their designs and reports... After feedback from the larger group, each group fine tunes their redesign and gets as far as they can with the additional tasks finishing these in the workshop is not essential. It is important, however, that they get a feeling for the tasks which can be finished later and then negotiated with management. Final reports are then given and management is present to hear them: groups may give notice of significant needs, changes to existing goals and targets or ideas about the merging of existing sections.
All major quality approaches empower the line workers more and more, till they are self-managing, self improving, self automating and self planning. Bureaucratic structures hinder that process. That is why, I believe, there is a two thirds failure rate of total quality management implementations in the US. If you want the benefits of total quality you must change your design principles. Participative design is an effective and practical way to do just that.
If the goal is improved organizational performance... If the goal is to reorganize your organization for improved performance, do not use TQM alone. Use participative design to reorganize the workplace for improved performance and ongoing quality improvement efforts.
When the new design is in place people will actually care about productivity and quality. Of course, if you have an established TQM program a switch to participative design principles will accelerate your capacity to derive sustainable benefits from your TQM efforts.
Participative design is highly flexible and adaptable to the particular nuances of an organization, including its technology, strategy, internal culture, and current efforts to reform its relationship with its competitive environment. It is not possible to give a set of rules to guide every participative design process. For example, there are many grouping variations. You need training, apprenticeship and mentoring to deliver it effectively.
A word on pilot efforts- Imagine putting a fresh cucumber slice into a jar of aged pickles for a month. When you take it out and taste it, what is it? When you place a small participative system inside a large bureaucratic one, the smaller one almost inevitably takes on the flavor and substance of the larger system. The lesson: if you can't change the whole organization over at once, let other groups or divisions know when they will begin the same process.
A word on greenfield efforts- Greenfield sites are often designed with the best STS design principles and intentions prior to staffing them. What happens when the workers who did not participate in the design, even those designed and staffed to operate as democratic and participative organizations arrive? They bring with them the bureaucratic attitudes and practices they learned elsewhere. The lesson: if the new employees havent participated in designing the site and its work processes, begin a participative design process as quickly as possible.
One of the great strengths of the participative design method is that it is inherently simple and built around group task-oriented discussions. When you understand the design principles, you can make systems changes while avoiding inconsistencies and incompatible practices in your redesign process. A switch to the participative design principle means that you will see different patterns of communication, as well as new capacities for organizational learning, proactively meeting marketplace changes and a sustainability of productivity and quality gains.
Keep in mind that because self-managed groups are the building block of your overall organizational design, these selfmanaged groups can be put to work at a variety of levels. For example, this structure can operate as a workgroup, a whole unit running itself as a small business, a crossfunctional project team within the organization or including customers and suppliers as team members, or a collaborative venture with other companies. What you choose to do with it depends upon your unique circumstances, people and technology.
Perhaps most important of all, you will find that participative designs product really is not a single organizational redesign, but the installation of a process which will enable your teams and your organization to continue to evolve new designs on its own as your business environment continues to change.
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This article was originally published in the Journal for Quality and Participation and is copywritten by the Association for Quality and Participation, 801-B W. 8th St., Suite 501, Cincinnati, Ohio 45203, Tel: 513-381-1959, Fax 513-381-0070: all rights reserved. You may download and print it for your own personal use. If you wish to share it with others by photocopying, e-mail or by placing it on another online service; reprint it in a newsletter, or reprint all or a portion of it in a book for resale, or in a packet included in a course for fee you should contact Ned Hamson, editor at the address or numbers above or at ParteoKid@aol.com for permission.
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