NINE
Replace Boundaries with Vision and Values

Now that your team has the information to drive results, your journey to becoming a successful Next Level Team needs to focus on shifting the boundaries of behavior so they come from within the team members. The intent is to incorporate boundaries into the belief systems of team members so they can exercise good judgment and make decisions that support and uphold the organization’s vision, mission, and values.

This is not to imply that direction and boundaries are not needed from the leadership. It is to suggest that the broad boundaries that guide team member behavior need to be moved as much as possible into the hearts and minds of the team members. Full Steam Ahead! Unleash the Power of Vision in Your Company and Your Life by Ken Blanchard and Jesse Stoner provides an excellent framework for organizing your vision, mission, and values.

MAKING THE “RIGHT” DECISION

The decisions that we make each day in our personal and professional lives are determined by those values and beliefs that we have acquired since birth, plus additional operating values that we have learned in our organizations. These values help us determine what we believe to be right or wrong, good or bad, and normal or not normal. These values are a key factor in any decision-making process. 102

While personal and organizational values provide a moral and ethical foundation for decision making, the vision provides direction. When team members can see the vision and understand the basic operating values of their organization, decision making becomes far easier and more productive. For example,

• When faced with a decision that requires us to choose between satisfying a customer or upholding a company policy, what should we do?
• If maintaining a production schedule means sacrificing quality, should we do it?
• If a call from a customer exceeds the organizations guideline of two minutes, should we hang up or continue our efforts to meet the customer’s need?
• If we see a way to improve our team’s effectiveness, do we take time away from production to work on it?

These are just a few of the many questions that face team members each day. Since it is impossible for leadership to deal with such a volume of situations, team members can greatly enhance organizational effectiveness and efficiency if they are able to act on their own to resolve questions such as these. In fact, this is perhaps the greatest benefit of moving to Next Level Teams—the ability of team members to deal with complex day-to-day issues in a responsible and timely manner.

The key, however, is making sure that team members understand the direction and beliefs or vision and values of the organization so that responsible, informed decisions can be made. 103

WIDENING BOUNDARIES TO ENHANCE TEAM CONTRIBUTION

A great visual analogy that we use in our work with companies is to have people think of the sidelines of a football field and then ask them, “Who has the widest playing field (boundaries) in the company?” In a hierarchy it is clearly the CEO, and each level of management down the hierarchy has a smaller playing field. By the time you get to the frontline people, the playing field can be very narrow indeed.

In a Next Level Team environment, these boundaries are gradually widened as people learn to act with responsibility and use their skills to get the work done. By this final step along the journey, the boundaries may still not be as wide as those for the CEO, but they are far wider than they were when the process began. The boundaries provide guidelines for the autonomy of all members of the organization, and they also build responsibility and values into every person in the company.

Knowledge once gained casts a light beyond
its own immediate boundaries.

JOHN TYNDALL 104

EXAMPLES

Confusion over organizational values

During a management training session with a health maintenance organization (HMO), the subject of values and beliefs was being discussed. Wanting to test his management team, the CEO posed a dilemma from an actual recent situation. Their company had been asked to pay for a lifesaving operation needed by one of their policyholders. Without the operation, the person would die. However, the policy excluded this operation from the person’s coverage.

The management team broke into small groups to discuss the dilemma. When they returned and began to discuss the situation, they offered different opinions on how to handle it. Some felt that helping the patient get the needed care was the morally correct thing to do, while others felt the company could not remain in business if it paid such claims. The CEO was astonished and dismayed. He truly felt that every manager would know that the company would never let any of its policyholders die in such a circumstance. However, he learned a powerful lesson with respect to communicating and clarifying the organization’s values to his people.

In complex decision-making situations it is essential for people to understand the purpose of the organization, its core values, and its beliefs.

VISION, MISSION, AND VALUES
AS BOUNDARIES FOR YOUR TEAM

How do your organization’s vision, mission, and values affect behavior and decisions at work? For these guideposts to be meaningful and useful, they must be translated into daily behaviors and actions. 105

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Your vision mission and values

Think about your organization’s vision, mission, and values. Can you state them? Are they clear? Can you translate them into your own words?

EXAMPLES

Helping customers versus selling products

The CEO of a Delaware high-tech electronics research and manufacturing organization had a strong belief in customer service. He believed that the company’s role in a blossoming technology industry was to help its customers solve problems.

One day he posed a hypothetical question to his people: “If a customer had a problem that could be solved better by one of our competitor’s products, would you recommend it?” His answer, in line with his values, was an unequivocal yes.

He believed that by truly helping the customer solve a problem, he was not only doing the right thing, but also showing the customer that his organization was a trusted resource. By creating a dialogue around his question and answer, he helped his people understand that their role was to help customers solve problems, not just sell products. The dialogue left no doubt about how he wanted them to respond in such a situation. 106

EXPAND YOUR TEAM’S ROLE EVEN FURTHER

At the beginning of the Next Level Team development process, you and your team members were asked to take responsibility for more decisions that affected your work. These decisions may have included things such as maintaining safety and housekeeping, measuring customer service and quality, and selecting work methods.

As the journey progressed, you probably began to take on more complex decisions, such as determining training needs, repairing equipment, providing cross-training, and scheduling production.

At this point, the role that you and your team members play must once again be expanded to reflect your growth and maturity as a Next Level Team. In the domain of decision making, mature teams are challenged to take on an expanded scope and complexity of decisions. For example, your team will need to decide when and how to engage in cross-functional teaming (collaborating with other teams), whom to hire for new positions, and how to prepare budgets.

EXAMPLES

The maintenance team takes on more responsibility

The maintenance team of a four-hundred-person pump manufacturing company had been moving steadily for two years toward operating as a highly functioning Next Level Team. The team’s manager had gradually given the members more authority for the operation of their team, and they had accepted the responsibility well. 107

As their company’s work grew and shifts were expanded, it became obvious that the team would need to add another mechanic. After discussing this issue, the manager and team members agreed that the team should conduct the hiring process. The members had already developed standards for each position within the team and had even developed their own performance appraisal system with the help of the human resources (HR) department. They were well prepared to understand the skills and abilities they needed from the new mechanic.

After learning the do’s and don’ts of interviewing potential employees, the team members interviewed, selected, and hired their new team member. However, after the three-month trial period it was obvious that the new-hire had exaggerated her abilities and was unable to perform some of the skills desperately needed by the team. The team members discussed their situation and decided termination was in order. At that point they thought about turning over the termination process to the manager. However, they came to the conclusion that since they had hired the new mechanic, it was up to them to terminate her employment.

Once again working through the HR department, just as any good manager would in this situation, they conducted the termination in a fair and caring manner. Throughout the process every team member felt the pain associated with the decision, but it left all of them stronger and more dedicated to improving how they would seek out and hire new candidates.

A team should never practice on a field that
is not lined. Your players have to become
aware of the field’s boundaries.

JOHN MADDEN 108

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Assuming total responsibility

Think about the roles that your team has taken on during its development as a highly functioning Next Level Team. What remaining roles and decisions would be appropriate to add if your team is to assume total responsibility for its operation?

TEAMS AS BUSINESS PARTNERS

At this point in the journey to Next Level Teams, your team must now begin to work as a real business partner with management. Frontline team members, team leaders, and senior leaders must begin to act like true equals in terms of accepting responsibility for the success of the organization. Each person will have a different role, but everyone will share responsibility for organizational success.

Positive and negative feedback on performance can flow up, down, and sideways in the organization. Frontline team members should provide ideas to senior leadership and expect action, just as senior leadership should expect a response from frontline team members. Information sharing flows in all directions, with origination and response coming from whichever source is most appropriate.

For example, frontline workers are closer to the action of production or service delivery. They may observe events or collect data that are unavailable to senior leadership. As partners, it is their job to interpret and share that information with team leaders, members of other teams, and senior leadership.

Senior leadership, on the other hand, may have more knowledge about industry trends and global events that impact the business. It is the leaders’ job to share this information with the teams and help them understand its significance. 109

All parties have a responsibility to act on information as appropriate, making decisions to fix or improve conditions and inform others of what they are planning to do. Business partners work together for the good of the organization, and partner actions must be encouraged and expected by all parties at this stage of the journey. Having wider boundaries will help keep everyone working for the same end results.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Acting like a business partner

Think about what it means for your team to work like a business partner with your organization’s leadership. What does your team already do that directly impacts the organization’s vision, mission, and results? What additional responsibilities could you take on to become a more significant business partner?

USING VISION AND VALUES FOR TEAM SUCCESS

For any organization to expect its people to operate in a highly effective manner, the decisions made by team members must be driven by internal beliefs that reflect the organization’s purpose and direction. These internal beliefs provide a self-correcting monitor for the behavior of people. But for this mechanism to work correctly, the organization’s vision and values must be crystal clear. Otherwise, people will be moving in different—sometimes even opposing—directions that usually hurt performance.

Leaders must take the time to communicate and model the vision and values desired for the organization. Team members must inquire into, discuss, and internalize the vision and values so they can make business decisions that move the organization toward that vision using behaviors that are consistent with the values of the organization. 110

The result of this use of vision and values is an organization whose members function as partners who are in agreement with its purpose, operating values, and hopes for the future. From such agreement comes a powerful mechanism for the highly effective functioning of Next Level Teams.

Simply pushing harder within the
old boundaries will not do.

KARL WEICK