Collaborative, High-Functioning Teams Start with Agile Managers
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2014, there were 23.8 million managers, supervisors, and administrators in the American workforce. That works out to one manager and administrator for every 4.7 employees.
On the surface, this may sound wasteful, considering we often assume that management is pure overhead and adds little value. But management is necessary for teams to be successful. Waste only happens when management takes on the form of bureaucracy, where rules are defined and enforced without considering context. Even though more people are working in bureaucratic organizations that ever before, bureaucracy is not inevitable.
Of all the challenges top-down teams can face, one of the biggest is ensuring that the people who know the answer are part of the decision-making process. There are some techniques leaders (by implication, managers) and team members can use to encourage the right amount of participation in decisions. Some are simple, like asking “Why?” when someone suggests an approach. But leaders also can create environments where influence in a decision can be based on who has experience, not simply on who has an influential role on the team.
The word you use for your working group can also matter. Jurgen Appelo suggests that using the term crew rather than team more effectively conveys the idea of collaboration and group identity. Crew also minimizes the sense of there being a manager, in favor of a group of people working together and acknowledging people’s expertise in appropriate contexts.
In the book Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, which is about creating an adaptable submarine crew, author L. David Marquet explains how he created a culture where delegation and trust was a primary part of the collaborative, high-functioning team dynamic. In particular, Marquet says he encouraged people to say “I intend to” rather than ask permission.
If it’s possible to have such empowerment and delegation on a combat submarine, it should also be possible to have it on a Scrum team building enterprise software. While just calling a group a crew rather than a team isn’t enough to cause change to happen, the right name can set up the right context.
Management isn’t necessarily bad. Teams sometimes need help creating environments where it’s easier to make the right decisions in a timely manner. This is most important for organizations that are transitioning from a command-and-control culture to a more self-organizing one.
As the team becomes more collaborative, the manager’s role becomes one where they fine-tune the process and listen more. That can be harder to do than the more traditional command-and-control posture, but it will make your team more effective.
