The Division Model part III - Ability

In creating a team, you want to create a certain amount of diversity. With the divisions, most of the diversity will be in the form of the member’s personalities. There will be a little difference in people’s ability to do tasks but mainly you want them all to have the same skills. In this, you want each member to have to tools to do any job the division is assigned to.

The first step in this is to train the members fully in their jobs. Often, when training isn’t mandatory to do a certain job, it will only be given based on the necessities of the moment. Once everyone is on equal footing on paper, you want to make sure that, at least within one division, everyone performs equally. The design of your divisions plays a big role in this. A bit like the lines in hockey, you might want to put your strongest assets together. This will mean that if you have three divisions doing the same job, one will be better at it than the two others. It might seem weird but you assign the workload based on the weakest team. This will give you the flexibility necessary to react to unforeseen event.

Of course, if there is a huge discrepancy in skill between the divisions, there will be a problem as the higher groups will have too much idle time. This is something that should be evaluated based on cost and, of course, politics (managers don’t like seeing idle employees).

On another note, there are the five Rs used to enhance workers abilities..

• Resupply: Most people think that everyone doing the same job should use the same tools. The fact is that people are not the same, something that also holds true for divisions. You must find out if this particular group has the tools that they can use for their job, to make them perform as well as possible. This goes for software, hardware, support, etc.
• Retrain: Usually, this will be very similar to the resupply point except that it focuses on the members’ knowledge
• Refitting: This is much harder for divisions as they are made based on the work descriptions. Normally, refitting will need to be done in rare conditions. In this case, if it has to happen, the point would be to look at the team members themselves and not just only the division.
• Reassign and release: These two would again be based on the individual since, because of the nature of the divisions, where they are tied to the job description, they cannot possibly be reassigned or released.

The Division Model Part II – Motivation and Rewards

We live in interesting times. As I’m writing this, I’m chatting with two of my friends in different countries. We now have so many tools to contact each other but we are getting more individualistic. One might say that we are moving towards becoming a singular plurality. Concepts aside, we live in a society and expect that this state will give us some benefit. We also do not want to let go of our individuality. I think a simple model starts with this set of equations:

Performance = Ability X Motivation where Ability = Aptitude X Training X Resources and Motivation = Desire X Commitment

For this post, let’s focus on Motivation (Ability we’ll deal with later…). As the preface suggested, you will need to motivate your divisions as both groups and individual members. There are tons of publications on how the manager can create a positive environments for her/his employees. You put the goals in place and give them the tools they need. The division would fall in the “tools” category. They would enable its members to do more than what they could do individually. With this initial work, work with a division would be similar to what would be done with an individual.

It becomes more interesting when you think of how you are going to use rewards. The division’s rewards should encourage team spirit and cooperation. Most people take the easy way when looking at groups and reward all members equally for any good action in the group. What you’ll achieve however is not quite what you want. The group might perform a bit better but every member of the group will feel like they are doing good work. If this is not the case, you are reinforcing bad behaviour in certain of your people. The better approach is to target a set of traits that you want in the members of the division. Once you have them identified, you reward the individuals that exhibit those traits. Punishing those who do not act the way you want them shouldn’t be necessary if you are clearly making the distinction in giving out your rewards.

This approach is not perfect. It will probably create tensions within the division and exacerbate the storming phase. You have to be careful to truly understand the division and what they are going through. You must make sure that the appropriate people are rewarded. The worst thing that can happen is the reinforcement of the “stealer” behaviour, the one who takes all the glory after someone else has done all the work.

It should be noted that, in a performing division, the members should be close to equally useful and this problem shouldn’t arise.

Next post, we’ll look at the Ability part of the equation.

The Division concept Part I – Introduction and Tuckman’s model

In 2009, everyone agrees that teams are the way to go in management. Everyone has strengths that put together are better than just the sum of them. That synergistic event is what most people seek when they create teams. This is why companies create cross functional teams. In this post however, I’m mainly thinking about reinforcing the structure of unifunctional teams through the idea of Divisions. These divisions would be comprised of people with more or less the same skill set and the same official position. The only large difference between the members would be their personalities.

Before going into the details of the concept, let’s just look at Tuckman’s old model for team development, with the four phases, and how it would apply to a division.

• The Forming Phase: The team is created. Normally, members get to meet each other, learn about themselves and their objectives. This is a period of awkwardness where a certain form of “polite” groupthink emerges. Basically, everyone tries to be polite with one another and doesn’t disagree with anyone. Idea rarely emerge at this stage. With a division, this stage would be short. If you create it within an existing structure, the members will already know each other and their objectives. As we’ll see later, these objectives will be the same the members had individually before the creation of the divisions.
• The Storming Phase: The created team starts to generate ideas. Members start to find out how to work together. The ideas that arise create conflict but there isn’t enough synergy in the team to quickly resolve them. This is the phase where the most problems arise. Within a division, this phase will be longer and more dangerous. Members are used to working as individuals and having their actions only impacting themselves. Some will work more, some will work less. Those working more will enter in conflict with those working less. A lot of mistakes will also be made at this point and demoralization might seep in. This might seem like a bad idea but this phase is important. These hard times are what will create the bonding necessary to create a performing division. Members will learn the strengths and weaknesses of others. Yes, they did know each other before but because the work was mainly individual they will still find out quite a bit about the others during the storming phase.
• The Norming Phase: The team emerges from the storming phase. Objectives are understood and a team structure starts to appear. The team members start to work together effectively. It is during that phase that the real groupthink might begin to rise its ugly head. As they get to see the team as a unique entity, members start to think alike. This might stifle creativity and should be avoided. Our division has survived storming and is now in a good position. At this point the benefits will make themselves obvious. The work will get done more efficiently and the members will be more engaged. Also, during this phase, a leader should organically emerge in each division. This should be encouraged. By this I mean that a formal division leader should not be named in the beginning. By having the leaders evolving from the situation, you will get the most adapted person for the job. Formally naming a leader at this phase might be possible but even then I do not think it is a good idea since, as said in earlier posts, leaders are situation dependent. Let the division evolve as naturally as possible.
• The Performing Phase: Tuckman says that not all teams reach this phase. Indeed the norming phase is usually enough to meet most objectives. In the long term however, a performing team is a truly impressive tool. All team members understand their roles and the objectives of the team. They all know what they have to to do and how to do it. The division IS a long term team but getting to the performing phase might be harder since the goals themselves change continuously through time. They are not created for a single clear project but with the idea of making their department work. A performing division will be able to anticipate problems and as with a regular team, the division’s supervisor’s job will be that of a mentor. The division will be mostly autonomous and will perform with far greater ability than the sum of its members. The danger here is to have disengagement. The division should be constantly challenged and its successes must be met with salient rewards.

With this overview, I’ll post next on how to bring together the division’s group idea with the individuality of its members.

Reblog: Kiva Loans

I recently posted on the Projet Credit Solidaire blog (in french), about the Kiva loans. I wanted to also send that message here simply because I think the idea is awesome.

Basically, you use the website to choose who you are going to loan the money to (as little as 25$) and send them the money through paypal, using a process that takes about 4 clicks and 2-3 minutes. I would be saying that “giving has never been so easy” but the cool thing about this is that it’s not even giving: after a period of time, you get your money back. Now, I don’t know if you actually get interest on the loan but if you do, this would make it a viable investment vessel. If you don’t then you are doing a good deed while only spending a minor opportunity cost. At any rate, go check it out: www.kiva.org