Team Doctors, Report to ER

It billboards measurable results. What could be more measurable than a two-hour reduction in changeover time?

It forces unflinching communication - and constructive conflict. Team members could focus discussions on mechanical changes - Will the changes really speed things up? - rather than on the work process.

It makes possible small wins along the way. The team was spurred to keep going when its early work reduced changeover time by a sizable amount.

It challenges team members to make a difference in the marketplace. The team knew that less downtime meant more productivity - and an improvement in the company's bottom line.

It makes the team act like a team. No team member could single-handedly reduce changeover time. But the team could see that it would nail the goal if members worked collectively.

"When a small group of people is challenged in this way," Katzenbach says, "their titles, perks, and other identifying marks just fade into the background."

Coordinates: Jon Katzenbach, jon_katzenbach@McKinsey.com

Lead*er*ship Pho*bi*a, noun: an exaggerated and usually illogical fear of assuming the leading role. The symptoms: Decisions aren't made. Problems pile up. The so-called leader impedes the team's work.

You're suffering under a leader who can't lead. You wonder whether the team would be better off on its own. Maybe, maybe not. According to Ruth Wageman's research, even "self-managing" teams will fail if they aren't set up correctly.

Wageman, an associate professor of organizational behavior at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, has studied self-managing teams at several major organizations. Such teams are fast: Since they take responsibility for their own work, decision-making is pushed to the front lines. But all too often, they're dysfunctional: People do their work independently, instead of solving problems and taking responsibility as a team.

Wageman's interviews with 43 leaders and team members at Xerox convinced her that to succeed, self-managing teams need people who can fill three very different roles during three very different phases of a team's life. Such role-playing usually increases the chance that a team will succeed - since everyone on it ends up playing a lead role.

Team Designer: "In many U.S. companies," says Wageman, "teamwork is an unnatural act." If a team is to be successful, the leader must use the critical launch phase to chart the team's course, to design its major tasks, to make clear its responsibilities, and to establish its reward system.

"The most critical role of leadership," says Wageman, "is to get the team set up right."

Team Midwife: If women can "coach," men can "midwife." Once the team is launched, the leader's primary role is to help the group establish its goals and its ways of working - to "midwife" the team's work processes. "Do this after the team fully engages the task - about when the team is midway toward a deadline," Wageman advises.

Team Coach: Once the group starts performing, the coaching role takes over - and continues throughout the life of the team. Wageman believes that coaching is most effective when it is done sparingly. It should occur during natural "break points" in the action, such as at the beginning of a project and at interim deadlines.

Team leaders frequently tell Wageman that their top priority is to coach. That priority is misplaced. "If leaders haven't first attended to the design of the team," she says, "they'll be trying to coach members of a chaotic group."

Coordinates: Ruth Wageman, rw46@columbia.edu

Chron*ic Can*tank*er*ous*ness, noun: a condition characterized by frequently recurring quarrels that result from a team's inability to agree on the small stuff, such as when to hold the weekly meeting. Left untreated, this common condition can quickly escalate into all-out infighting.

A team should never underestimate the importance of agreeing on how to be a team. If it does, people will waste time, perform poorly, and undermine one another, says Tom Ruddy, who's responsible for developing high-performance work systems for the 2,000 teams that make up Xerox's worldwide customer-service organization.

Trouble is, every team has at least one iconoclast. Ruddy developed a deck of 35 playing cards to deal with these rule-breakers. Each card lists a situation that the team is likely to confront. Team members agree on how they should respond in each case, and they write this "norm" on the card. Then they make a copy of the whole deck for everyone on the team.

Xerox's service teams, for example, have a card noting that in meetings, everyone's opinion will be heard. If one team member cuts off another, the one who was speaking will "out" the rebel by playing that card. "After a while, team members internalize the proper behavior," Ruddy says. "That's when the team really starts to click."