SIX
Widen the Boundaries to Promote Greater Freedom for Action

As the team moves forward and encounters frustration, it is easy for team members and leaders to lose sight of the vision of a Next Level Team and how it contributes to getting great results. They tend to see only the problems of taking on more responsibility and forget about the rewards of involvement and ownership. At this point, teams need to be reminded what Next Level Teams do and to be inspired by their benefits. This is the time to review the team’s goals. Organizational goals—even department goals—can be too broad for practical use by most teams and their members. Such broad goals must be converted into images more directly related to the team’s work.

Well-defined team goals help define boundaries and reenergize the team, especially if the goals are developed in a collaborative manner. With more information, team members can see the need for goals that yield important results, fix problems, create innovations, or move projects along. By being involved in a collaborative process of setting clear team goals, people begin to feel a real sense of freedom and responsibility that translates into a feeling of ownership for accomplishing tasks in an efficient manner.68

EXAMPLES

Setting team goals

An information services company took a rather bold step at this stage of the process. Senior leadership took the position that employees with increased information at their disposal could now identify and define some of their own goals in collaboration with their leaders. Of the five to eight performance goals that were typical for teams, the leaders instructed members to try to develop three to four of those goals themselves.

At first, team members were confused, but they quickly came to like the idea, since it used their input and gave them a sense of ownership and power to affect results. The team leaders liked it as well, because it helped team members share the responsibility of identifying and defining the goals that were critical to the performance of the business unit. What followed was a collaborative discussion among team members during which team goals were refined to be what they called “POWER goals,” that is, goals that are Pinpointed, Owned, Well-defined, Energizing, and Resourced.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TEAM GOALS

As this example suggests, team goals are important because they engage team members and team leaders in a dialogue that not only establishes the goals but also helps build the team as a unit. Most people have had far more experience with individual goals than with team goals as work has tended to be built around individual responsibility. By asking team members to focus on their team’s performance and determine where performance improvement goals should be set, team leaders gain valuable insight from many sets of eyes, rather than just their own. At this stage of the change process, it is appropriate to ask teams to think of ways they can better contribute to working more efficiently and effectively. Now that the teams have access to critical organizational information, clearer goals can be set. 69

As a team sets goals, it is critical to create goals that are truly useful, meaningful, and motivating. To work well for a team, the goals need to be POWER goals—that is, goals that provide answers to five key questions:

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Setting team goals

Think about your team and the kinds of tasks for which you are responsible. Now think about the information your team has at hand that could help you focus on some challenges and opportunities for the team. What are some new areas of focus for which your team could begin to set POWER goals and take responsibility for achieving them? 70

WIDENING BOUNDARIES BY SETTING PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS

In addition to setting performance goals, teams can also focus on skill development and career enhancement goals. Next Level Teams nurture the development of new skills and abilities so that the team can tackle critical goals and make team decisions that generate great results. At the same time, Next Level Teams offer people exciting opportunities for personal growth and development that can positively impact their careers.

For example, people who aspire to positions of greater responsibility may need to develop leadership skills, presentation skills, conflict management skills, or decision-making skills. In Next Level Teams, people can find opportunities to use and master these kinds of skills. In a Next Level Team, it is important to determine what skills you need to develop, not only to help the team perform, but also to help you succeed in your career.

EXAMPLES

Values as goals

One interesting case in point on goal setting comes from a company whose leaders wanted people to focus attention not only on performance goals but also on goals related to values. Realizing that goals are set but values are lived, the leaders wanted to ensure that people kept values in mind as they worked together on meaningful goals. For example, if one value is “better relationships between departments,” people might set a goal around the question, “What am I going to do this year to improve the relationships between my department and others?” Or if a value is for people to “grow in skills and abilities,” a goal might be, “What new skill am I going to learn this year, and how will I demonstrate the new skill?” 71

The leaders found that focusing on such goals gave people real clarity and accountability about what to accomplish (performance goals) and how to work together (values goals). When coupled with an expectation that leaders would coach and help people achieve their goals, these teams were able to work together in new ways that made better use of their talents, energy, and motivation.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Personal development goals

Think for a moment about your own personal development and your career aspirations. What are some areas of your work where you would like to learn new skills? Are there some goals that would be valuable to your team that also relate to how you work together?

WIDENING THE BOUNDARIES TO
INCLUDE ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES

Another way to turn a team’s frustration into action during step 2 of the change process is to expand the range of decisions the team can make to include organizational issues. This expansion of opportunity sends a clear signal of support and encouragement for the team to continue moving toward the Next Level. When people feel their ideas count and they have responsibility for significant decisions, they feel valued, which turns discouragement into development. 72

During step 1, the purpose of boundaries was to create a focus for the action of team members. The goal was to start teams making decisions that were not too complex but that could be used to help team members and leaders understand the power of focusing action through boundaries. Now it is time for the team to begin making decisions that can have a greater impact on organizational results. Examples of such critical decisions are

• Determining training needs
• Scheduling and controlling production
• Managing suppliers

During this process, teams may find that some organizational systems operate more like barbed wire—holding people in—rather than expanding like rubber bands as people grow in Next Level Team skills.

Let’s be bold and consider one of the most critical organizational decision issues that often derails Next Level Teams. Performance appraisals and the way they are managed clearly affect the way people behave in an organization. It is not unusual to find inconsistencies between the existing appraisal procedures and the kind of performance appraisal process that would support Next Level Teams. When team members have more access to information, they will no doubt recognize the inconsistencies.

Some important questions can be asked about the performance appraisal system to stimulate thinking about needed changes:

• How do people—both leaders and team members—
• like the existing process? 73
• How many people dread the time when appraisals take place?
• Does the process punish or develop people?
• Is the appraisal a partnership between leaders and team members?
• Does the process support a focus on team goals and team performance?

In most organizations, we have found that people answer these questions negatively. The performance appraisal form used in most organizations is disliked and seen as punitive. People dread performance evaluation time since it is full of unpleasant surprises. The process focuses on evaluating individuals for pay decisions and does not focus on team performance. While such a system may have worked in an organization run like a management hierarchy, it will not work with Next Level Teams. Something has got to change.

EXAMPLES

The utility company and team appraisals

In one southeastern utility company that wanted to implement reliance on self-directed teams, training was begun to help everyone understand the new direction. The management team provided strong support for giving the teams more information and the authority to make critical business decisions. Everything appeared to be moving ahead quite well until it came time for annual performance appraisals.

One day during a training session, one of the workers said to the instructor, “Have you ever seen our performance appraisal forms?” A bit surprised, the instructor responded that he had not. The team member said, “Well, it contradicts everything you are teaching us and what we are trying to do!” 74

The ensuing discussion revealed that the performance appraisal form was a list of items about each person that the supervisor was to check off using a five-point scale. The items included (1) Has a positive work attitude, (2) Completes work in a timely fashion, (3) Responds well to requests from supervisors, and (4) Is cooperative with others. But the real kicker was that after rating each person in a work group, the supervisor had to rank the people from best to worst in the group—so much for teamwork. This appraisal format had been used for a number of years. At worst, it created unnecessary competition among team members if the supervisor took it seriously. At best, the supervisor ignored the ranking and everyone viewed the process as a joke. It did nothing to support teams that made decisions and took responsibility for accomplishing goals.

Fortunately, when the senior vice president of the division was presented with this information, he made sure the process was altered to exclude the ranking and to include both team and individual assessments.

“BUT OUR TEAM CAN’T AFFECT ORGANIZATIONAL POLICY!”

At this point, you might be thinking that your team has no ability to affect the organizations policies. Management must set policies and procedures. Let’s return to the central theme of the previous chapter—information sharing, including information sharing from employees to management. Frequently, managers in an organization are unaware that policies are inconsistent with an effort to change the organization. In the case above, the leaders were oblivious to the fact that the performance appraisal process promoted competition among team members rather than focusing on teamwork. Only when people on the teams brought it to management’s attention was the process changed. 75

Moving to Next Level Teams means that everyone is responsible for outcomes. Team members need to recognize and expose processes and policies that get in the way of progress. When an organization is truly moving toward Next Level Teams, open dialogue and questioning of procedures and processes are welcome and invited. Teams have more power than they realize. Many times we have seen teams affect policies and processes, usually when they provide a solid analysis and effective presentation of the problem. The message to team members at this point in the change process is to always be vigilant for things that are blocking progress.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Problems with organizational systems

Think about your organization’s policies and procedures, especially those that relate to team performance. Which policies and procedures do you feel need to be changed to better support the principles of Next Level Teams—involvement, empowerment, collaboration, and team responsibility?

WIDER BOUNDARIES TURN DISCOURAGEMENT INTO DEVELOPMENT

The valley of discouragement through which all teams must pass on the journey to the Next Level can be a difficult stage. It is somewhat paradoxical that by giving people more responsibility—by widening and deepening the boundaries—this discouragement can be converted into the development of the team. Giving responsibility works because it addresses the underlying key concern of both managers and team members. 76

Deep down, managers fear that teams will not be able to reach the Next Level, where they can really impact results. And team members fear either that they will not be successful as Next Level Teams or that management will stop this change before positive results are achieved.

By expanding the boundaries just a little—and then some more—during this second step of change, leaders as well as team members are given the chance to see positive results without stretching either party beyond what they can yet handle.

Of course we all have our limits, but how can you
possibly find your boundaries unless you explore
as far and as wide as you possibly can? I would
rather fail in an attempt at something new and
uncharted than safely succeed in a repeat of
something I have done.

A. E. HOTCHNER