A professional services group... A group in a large international consulting firm (based in the US) decided it wanted to restructure itself to be selfmanaging. Before the workshop began, management confirmed that the two supervisors compensation would not be lowered as their roles changed. During the workshop both supervisors chose to become peers in the group. Following that, one of them was asked by the group to take on the special role of group liaison with other groups. The groups performance shot up after the redesign. When this improvement was noticed they were asked to share their experience with other parts of the company.
An entire manufacturing facility... After a great deal of time and money had been spent on STS redesigns in several textile plants, the division general manager expressed frustration with the slow pace of change and sought another option. He had heard about participative design and encouraged one plant manager to go forward with it. The plants workers, management and the union jointly decided to switch from a bureaucratic to a democratic configuration. They understood that levels would disappear in the transition. Guarantees were given that forced reductions would not occur as a result of the redesign process and that there would be no going backwards in terms of pay. Assurances were made that alternatives would be found for the people whose jobs disappeared. A team of workers went out to other plants that had successfully completed an STS process to observe what a plant already organized around selfmanaging work groups was like. They were then able to communicate to their colleagues a clearer idea of the end result as they began the participative design process together.
Their participative design process was structured as follows:
After six weeks the participative design process was complete and people were settled into the new configuration of coordination and control.