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 This Week’s Topic:
Are Your OE Teams Over-Managed or Under-Supported?
After the opening segment of a seminar on developing high performing teams, the presenter called for a 15 minute break. When the session resumed the speaker asked how many in the audience had called back to their office for an update. About a third of the people raised their hands. The visibly upset speaker launched into a tirade. “Don’t you realize how de-motivating that type of meddling can be?” he demanded, “You've just implied that you don’t trust your team and have no confidence in their ability to function without you.” He proceeded to enthusiastically berate the embarrassed offenders for several minutes.
With a deep breath to regain his composure,
the presenter turned his attention to the remainder of the audience. “I suppose that means that the rest of you did not call your office,” he said calmly. The remaining two thirds of the group nodded smugly. In an instant, the speaker’s face turned red again as he demanded, “What's the matter with you people? You’re sending the message that you don’t even care enough to support your team when you are away. How can you be so insensitive?”
It was a great performance and an unforgettable way to make a very important point. Supporting any team is a balancing act. On one hand, effective leadership is allowing people the space to grow their skills, use their judgment and learn from their own (small) mistakes. On the other hand, good leaders step in to guide a team when it faces a problem beyond its capabilities or is in danger of making a fatal error.
Of course, knowing which side of that tipping point to be on is easier said than done.
When it comes to Operational Excellence projects, our experience is that effective management must have a bias toward involvement. While we have seen a few project teams become annoyed with excessive management involvement, we can’t name one that has experienced a complete meltdown due to it. On the other hand, a high percentage of improvement initiatives fail due to a lack of management support, either as perceived by the team itself or by the rest of the organization.
Without question, upper management commitment is required to launch any significant new initiative. But once underway, here are some common warning signs that immediate management support of an Operational Excellence team is required:
- Team members are obviously stuck on a particular issue and unable to progress to the next step
- The team is spending its energy on internal arguments. (Honest disagreement and constructive discussion is good – bickering is not.)
- Improvement team members start finding reasons why they need to opt-out of their project assignment
- The rest of the organization develops an attitude that “we are too busy with our real work to support this new initiative”
- The organization as a whole loses sight of the long term direction; i.e. the “big picture”
- The pace of improvement slows or internal milestones are consistently missed
Are any these warning signs appearing in your organization? If so, they probably show that it is time for some management attention to support the efforts of the Operational Excellence team and to ensure the entire organization understands the need for continuous improvement.
Interested in more ways to improve operations and increase earnings at the same time? We invite you to download our white paper “Targeted Lean Six Sigma". You are also welcome to browse the list of
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If you have a topic that you would like addressed, or an Insight you would like to pass along, e-mail us at: Jack.Rink@rmdonovan.com
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