Tag Archives: Teamwork

Do’s and don’ts of managing autonomous teams (or Super7’s) – part IV

Managing autonomous teams, or Super7 teams, requires a different management style than managing regular teams. Here’s part four of the key do’s and don’ts from my practice as a Lean Super7 consultant. This week, we’ll look into the competences that an output-manager needs. When your department introduces Super7 Operations, or other forms of autonomous teams, this may help you to adapt to the new situation you’ll face as a manager.
Do: Adapt to the new situation and experiment with the required competences
Don’t: Expect this change to be easy
Other skills and behaviors are asked from a manager when an organization makes the transition from a classical, input steered organization towards autonomous teams or Super7’s.
Typical skills are:
• Facilitating style, focused on output
• Creativity in developing improvement experiments together with the team
• Drive to improve continuously
• Group focus instead of focus on the individuals
• Flexibility, managers should be able to manage each other’s teams
• Working fact-based, using facts and figures for planning and forecasting
• Analytical; being able to interpret data to challenge the teams and to identify improvement opportunities
Typical behaviors are:
• Proactive in finding improvement opportunities and in implementing improvements
• Focused on customers and customer processes
• Inspiring the team to be customer focused and innovative
• Helping teams and team members in their journey towards autonomy

Keep an eye out for the last post in this series: the most important tip will follow shortly

 

Menno R. van Dijk

 

Do’s and don’ts of managing autonomous teams (or Super7’s) – part III

Managing autonomous teams, or Super7 teams, requires a different management style than managing regular teams. Here’s part three of the key do’s and don’ts from my practice as a Lean Super7 consultant. This week, we’ll discuss the do’s and don’ts of management metrics and dashboards for autonomous teams. When your department introduces Super7 Operations, or other forms of autonomous teams, this may help you to adapt to the new situation you’ll face as a manager.

Do: Use quantitative metrics on output performance

Don’t: regard output as a Boolean function (i.e. true or false, the output has been delivered or the output has not been delivered)

Many managers in Financial Services Operations are used to manage by spreadsheet. When switching to output steering, they might tend to overcompensate. Instead of managing productivity, Fisrt-Time-Right and throughput time, they just evaluate whether the output has been delivered or not. The outcome is black or white, good or bad: either the team made it, or they didn’t. Managers should use quantitative metrics to measure the output. When the target output hasn’t been met, the team should be able to see by exactly how much the target was missed. This allows learning and evaluation of improvement experiments.

Do: Use the well-known Lean steering metrics to evaluate performance and to give the team insight in where they can improve. (.e.g. Efficiency (productivity, availability), First-Time-Right percentage, throughput time)

Don’t: Use these Lean steering metrics to manage the team on a daily basis.

As said, many managers in Financial Services Operations are used to manage by spreadsheet. These spreadsheets may still be of value for autonomous teams or Super7’s. However, the teams should only be managed on their performance against the daily output target. All other metrics should be used to aid in the team’s continuous improvement efforts. Dashboards and spreadsheets give valuable insight in where the autonomous team or Super7 can improve.

Do’s and don’ts of managing autonomous teams (or Super7’s) – part II

Managing autonomous teams, or Super7 teams, requires a different management style than managing regular teams. Here’s part two of the key do’s and don’ts from my practice as a Lean Super7 consultant. When your department introduces Super7 Operations, or other forms of autonomous teams, this may help you to adapt to the new situation you’ll face as a manager.

This week: protecting the boundaries of the team – with more than one different meaning of the word boundaries.

Do: actively manage the boundary conditions, keep optimizing

A manager can improve on performance by setting and adjusting the boundaries. As a manager, you are responsible for how much resources can be used to finish the task. You set the boundaries, for instance on how much flex-hours can be used this month. But don’t get complacent if everything keeps running smooth: too much green lights is also bad. Green lights tell you that everything is perfect, while there is always room for improvement.

Don’t: overload the system, prevent overburden (or in Japanese Lean-speak: Muri)

In many classical operations departments, managers used rigid controls, like hourly standardized work packages. These confine creativity and hinder team work, but they protect the employees also from over-burden. A Super7, or any autonomous team, won’t have this protective cage. Keeping the workload manageable is your responsibility as a manager. A team with performance that is up to par (i.e. 100% productivity in productive time and less than 20% unavailability) should be able to get the work done within the time they have. If they can’t finish on time day after day, you may have under-capacity. You as a manager should protect your team from overburden.

Do: Offer help by adding flex capacity from within the boundaries of Super7, rather than by adding extracting people from other Super7’s.

A recent study into Super7-effectiveness show that help by asking a team member to come back from home is better that help by asking a team member of another team to step in. Help from within their own team is appreciated more, and increases the team bond. With flexible (min/max) contracts, it is possible to increase available capacity without adding people to the group. An unexpected study result it may be, but it appears that a strong independent Super7 team is better than two Super7’s that work closely together.

 

Hope you enjoyed this part II – part III will follow shorty.
Menno R. van Dijk.

Super7 Operations - making it work

Soft Skills for cooperation in Super7 teams

What soft skills are needed for cooperation in Super7 teams – what soft skills are essential for a team to reach cooperational excellence? The implementation Super7 Operations (link) within the operations departments of one of the leading Dutch retail banks is in full swing. Many things need to be taken care of in the preparation phase: small, autonomous production teams (Super7’s) arent’ formed overnight. But one thing in particular is essential for a smooth introduction of Super7 Operations: attention to the soft skills that are needed for working together in a small, autonomous team.
In our experience, the most important soft skills for cooperation in Super7 teams that required training in preparation of Super7 Operations are:
1. Giving and receiving feedback
2. Understanding the development of autonomous teams
3. Effective meetings and making decisions as a team

Let’s look at these subjects in a bit more detail:
1. Basics of giving feedback
• Describe what behavior you have observed
• Explain what effect this behavior has on you
• Check if the person you give feedback understands you
• Indicate what behavior you would like to see

2. Basic development steps of autonomous teams
• Phase 1: group of individuals
• Phase 2: a developing team
• Phase3: a cooperating team
• Phase 4: an autonomous team, striving towards cooperational excellence

4. Basic elements of effective meetings and making decisions as a team
• Use team roles in meetings: chairperson, time keeper, voice-of-the-customer
• Make sure all items on the agenda are well prepared
• Assign a fixed amount of time to each item on the agenda
• Start with giving all participants the chance to say something about the subject – finish the initial round before starting the discussion
• Use a white board or flipchart to write down the most important points
• Keep the focus on solutions and improvement ideas
• Make sure everybody gets their say
• Keep the discussion focused
• Don’t take minutes, write down actions (what, who, when)

For the team managers, the change from traditional Operational Management to Super7 Operations can be even more dramatic than for the team members themselves. More on this change and the required skills for managing Super7 Operations can be found in my book: Super7 Operations – The Next Step for Lean in Financial Services. More information about this book can be found on www.super7ops.com

Maturity Model for Autonomous Super7 Operations Teams

At this moment, Super7 Operations (link) is applied within several operations departments of one of the leading Dutch retail banks. A lot has been learned since. The change from strict daily steering to small autonomous teams –and at the same time keeping all the good things from LEAN and Operational Management – has asked a lot from both the shop-floor employees and their managers. What we noticed is that teams go through several phases, or maturity levels, in their journey towards autonomy. And, team managers need to grow towards supportive leadership and output steering – this too doesn’t happen overnight. 

When we recognised this, it became clear that a maturity model would be very helpful. With this, the transition can be broken up into smaller, more manageable steps. And, for each maturity level, specific training and coaching can be developed to support both managers and Super7 teams.

The maturity model is still a work in progress, and at the moment only available in Dutch. If you’re interested nonetheless, you can request a copy by replying to this post. And, I expect to be able to post an English version of the Maturity Model for Autonomous Super7 Opertions Teams on this site shortly.

I would like to hear your experiences with the development of autonomous teams. You are invited to join the discussion on Super7 Operations on http://www.super7ops.com/

Case study – Cooperational Excellence within a small consultancy team

Can you create excellence through teamwork in a consultancy environment? The best way to see if something works is to try it. So that´s what I did last year, with help of my colleagues: a pilot within the team that I was a part of at the time. Could we increase the quality of our individual assignments by applying the concepts of Cooperational Excellence? Read my in-depth case study in the White Papers section.

Summary
Consultants help each other, by contributing on each others projects. In a project, there may be activities that the consultant doesn’t like doing, or isn’t very good at. The solution is NOT that the consultant asks help with these activitiesIn a project, there may be activities that the consultant does an average job of – good enough, but he doesn’t excel in it. While this same activity is something that a colleague does excel in. The project will benefit if this colleague helps with this particular activityThe idea is, that every consultant has his own unique abilities – or their own activities they excel in – and the whole team will benefit if each consultant can make more use of their unique abilityWhen every consultant asks help for his/her project, based on the unique ability of the consultant he/she asks for help, the average time that each consultant uses his/her unique ability will increase

 

Conclusion

In those instances where it was possible to find a match between an activity and a unique ability, the pilot showed that this concept works

The difficulty lies in finding enough matches, so that everybody benefits

More details and quotes from participants can be found in my White Paper: Cooperational Excellence in Consultancy

Updated White Paper: Team Targets or Individual Targets for Super7 Operations

Super7 Operations is based of small teams, working on a common goal. What does that mean for their team targets and incentives?

A lot has been said about bonuses and target related incentives, the past few years. Do they lead to irresponsible behaviour and risk taking within financial institutions? Should managers from state-owned companies, or companies relying on state support, get a bonus if they meet their targets? Interesting questions; however, that’s not what this blog is about. How bonuses and incentives influence the way teams work together, especially in Lean organisations, now that’s something I’m very passionate about.

In my experience as a Lean consultant, I have often found that organisations struggle to maintain the initial rate of improvement: when autonomous production teams, lean quality circles or TPM-teams are first formed, the performance improves spectacular. 20%-50% increase in productivity or machine output is achieved almost every time. In some exceptional situations, I even encountered productivity increase of over 100%. Enough to exceed my clients’ expectations, but my goal was always to get to a state of ‘continuous improvement’. This is when the production teams continue to improve: relentlessly reducing waste, again and again improving their standards.

I strongly believe that financial team incentives can play an important role in making the final step towards continuous improvement. That is why I did this literature search: to find out if my believe is supported by reliable research.

My conclusion: Several publications, especially on effectiveness of ‘Operational Excellence teams’ (e.g. TPM teams, autonomous teams, six sigma project teams, etc.), confirm that team incentives are more effective than individual targets. However, I had to adjust my strong believe on two points:

  • Also individual targets have their merits, and a combination of team and individual targets may well be worth considering
  • Targets and incentives aren’t the only driver, nor the main driver, for success of Operational Excellence teams, and they should be part of an integral approach

New White Paper: optimal team size

Lean and Super7 Operations work with small, autonomous teams. Exactly how small should our small autonomous teams be?

This is the question the manager of the central back-office of a large Dutch retail bank asked me, when I proposed the idea of autonomous team to him. At the time, I was working on a project to introduce customer focus and to realise same-day processing in his organisation. I came up with an innovative organisation design, in which small teams are responsible for their work for that day, i.e. all customer request of a certain type that the bank had received that day. After successful pilots, the organisation wanted to introduce this way of working for all (ca. 400) employees. That’s when this question came up…
 
From experience, I knew that the teams shouldn’t be too big: the pilots were done with teams of 5 – 7 persons. However, factual substantiation was needed. A quick search showed me that a lot of research had been done on Agile / Scrum teams, so that’s where I started. And this article is the result: a literature search on the optimal team size for autonomous teams.

My conclusion is: Organisational design isn’t an exact science. As an engineer, I would have loved to have found statistically sound measurements on the effectiveness of teams of different sizes – but in truth, I think that team size isn’t the main driver for team effectiveness. However, if your customer, the type of work your customer asks you to do, requires your organisation to work in small teams, I would suggest – as I did to the manager of the banking back office: small teams consist of 5 to 9 persons. Or, If the flexibility of your workforce allows this, as it did in the case of the banking back office: flexible team size, ranging from 5 on slow days to 9 on a busy day.

At the moment of writing, the banking back office has implemented the new way of working, and has asked me to do a ‘check-up’ on effectiveness of the new organisation. I can’t wait to start: Ï wonder what I will find, but I bet that it will be inspiration for several articles on CoOperationalExcellence.nl!
 

White Paper: Optimal Team Size

Team targets or individual targets? Does in matter for Operational Excellence?

Team targets are essential for making Lean, Lean Six Sigma and Super7 Operations work.

Despite the increasing popularity of Six Sigma as an effective improvement methodology, many Six Sigma projects fail to deliver expected savings. The topmost reason why Six Sigma projects fall short of expectations is a lack of management engagement at the right level of the organization.

While a lack of commitment and sponsorship is the leading cause of project short falls, there are several other important reasons for project short falls, including:

  • Lack of team cohesion and leadership
  • Lack of effective project monitoring mechanism such as setting of targets and monitoring
  • Difficulty leading distributed teams
  • Improper motivation to associates
  • Differences between employees
  • Non cooperation in both horizontal and vertical due to individual targets

To overcome above mentioned problems and to achieve six sigma targets and benefits top management has to set up group targets and incentives accordingly with the help of HR team, yearly appraisals, bonuses and individual key performance indicators (KPI’s) metrics also should have reflection of team achievements. Hence all major organizations are setting group targets and group incentive plans to achieve six sigma goals and targets.

Cooperational Excellence: what’s in a name?

Cooperational Excellence: People working toghether in small teams to create excellence in your operation. This may be nothing new under the sun for manufacturing and assembly plants: mini-factories, autonomous teams, u-cell manufacturing, quality circles etc. have become the standard in the last decenia. Especially in automotive, where off course Toyota still sets the standards (Toyota Production System).

In creating Service Excellence, these methCooods and organisational principles haven’t been applied so widely. Recently, I have implemented autonomous teams in a back-office of a large financial service provider, with even for me unexpected success: costs are down, queues and ‘inventory’ have almost completely dissapeared – which means waiting times for the customer times have also – and employees and management are enthousiastic about esponsiblitly on the ‘shop floor’ instead  top-down management control.

I have named this, the application of manufacturing-style teamwork in administration and service, cooperational excellence: working toghether in small teams in close cooperation, to achieve operational excellence.

If you want to know more, contact me, or just check regularly for new posts on this website!