Management test 3 - Chapter 10

When to use teams

1) When there is a clear, engaging reason or purpose for using them. 2) When the job can't be done unless people work together. 3) When rewards can be provided for teamwork and team performance. 4) When Ample resources are available

To effectively motivate teams:

1. Teams must have a high degree of autonomy 2. Teams must be empowered with control of resources 3. Teams need structural accommodation 4. Teams need bureaucratic immunity

Team Compensation and Recognition

A manner of enhancing team effectiveness. Companies must fully explain chosen compensation plan. The level of reward must match the level of performance TEAM, NOT INDIVID. Rewards Skill Based Pay- programs pay employees for learning additional skills or knowledge; encourages employees to acquire the additional skills they will need to perform multiple jobs within a team and to share knowledge with others within their work groups Gainshairing - companies share the financial value of performance gains, such as productivity increases, cost savings, or quality improvements with their workers Nonfinancial rewards = most effective when teams or team-based interventions such as total quality management are first introduced

Work Teams

A small number of people with complementary skills who hold themselves mutually accountable for pursuing a common purpose, achieving performance goals, and improving interdependent work processes. Can dramatically improve company performance over more traditional management approaches Instil a sense of vitality in the workplace that is otherwise difficult to achieve.

More about cohesion, good/bad team characteristic promotion/prevention

Cohesion sometimes needs to be reduced if groupthink, or resistance to change is occurring. Dr. B "here's two to add to increase coh: make the team difficult to be on(BUD/S), give a recognizable symbol of team membership (YUM art.)." Good char promo(&bad prev.) involves managing conflict by: Use more info to make decisions, use alternates to enrich debate(more solutions, all work to find best), establish common goals, use humor in work, balance of power so more people in decision process

More about team development

Forming - meeting, begin developing norms Storming - conflict on what team should do and how Norming - settle into roles, cohesion growth, positive team norms develop Performing - final stage, performance improves on account of team maturing into effective fully functional team. Team may decline w/o effective management. In real life, not like this; you just make a team, do the project, and adjourn (disband). Also, norms are more formal, like here are the bathrooms, breaks, and "be-no's."

Advantages of teams

Improve customer satisfaction: create work teams that are trained to meet the needs of specific customers. Improve product and service quality: teams take direct responsibility for the quality of the products and service they produce or sell. Improve speed and efficiency in product development: Improve employee Job Satisfaction: workers can improve their skills (crosstraining-members can do all of every1s work); are given proprietary business information; unique leadership opportunities Improve decision making: groups have dif knowledge, skills, abilities, PERSPECTIVES (ppl emphasize dif things).

Disadvantages of teams

Initially high turnover- teams arent for everyone Social loafing - team mmebers don't work as hard as they can. Tug of war - the more people, the less weight each person is pulling. Groupthink - from ch 5, group members who are highly cohesive hesitate to disagree with eachother Minority domination- few lead all. Teams may not feel as accountable for decisions made by the whole team

Setting Team Goals and priorities

Manner of enhancing work team effectiveness. Specific Goals - clarifies team priorities by providing a clear focus and purpose. Challenging Goals - Make team members work harder. Less social loafing bc team members rat em out if theyre putting in alot of work. Stretch goals - extremely ambitious goals that workers don't know how to reach. How innovation comes about.

Team training

Middle important manner of enhancing team effectiveness.To be successful, teams need significant training, particularly in interpersonal skills, decision-making and problem solving skills, conflict resolution skills, and technical training. Most commonly members of work teams receive training in interpersonal skills. Interpersonal skills = skills such as listening, communicating, questioning, and providing feedback, that enable people to have effective working relationships with others Technical training (skills employees need to know in order to do their jobs) Team leaders need training so that they do not feel unprepared

Enhancing work-team effectiveness

Setting Team Goals and Priorities, Selecting People for Teamwork, Team Training, & Team Compensation and Recognition

Work Team Characteristics

Team norms- informally agreed on standards that regulate team behavior. Team cohesiveness - the extent to which team members are attracted to a team and motivated to remain in it. Team size - The relationship between team size and performance is curvilinear. Moderately sized teams best. adds diversity of skills, knowledge. Team conflict - Primary cause of team conflict is disagreement over team goals and priorities. Cognitive conflict is strongly associated with improvements in team performance whereas affective conflict is strongly associated with decreases in team performance Stages of team development -Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, De-F,S,N.

stretch goal requirements

Teams must have a high degree of autonomy or control over their goals Teams must be empowered with control of resources, such as budgets, workspaces, computers, or whatever else they need to do their jobs. Teams need structural accommodation Structural accommodation = the ability to change organizational structures, policies, and practices in order to meet goals Teams need bureaucratic immunity Bureaucratic immunity = the ability to make changes without first getting approval from managers or other parts of an organization

selecting people for teamwork

less important manner of enhancing team effectiveness. An indirect way to measure someone's preference for teamwork is to assess the person's degree of individualism or collectivism. Individual collectivism = the degree to which a person believes that people should be self-sufficient and that loyalty to one's self is more important that loyalty to team or company Team level = the average level of ability, experience, personality, or any other factor on a team Team diversity = represents the variances or differences in ability, experience, personality, or any other factor on a team After the right team has been put together in terms of individualism-collectivism, team level, and team diversity, it's important to keep the team together as long as practically possible.

More on team compensation and recognition

make recognition personal, immediate, tangible. yum article. Skill based pay - more effectie for self-managing and self-directing teams performing complex tasks Gainsharing - most effective in relatively stable environments where employees can focus on improving productivity, cost savings or quality. (automatic link here to organic rather than mechanistic).