|
April 1998
The Myth of the Top Management Team
Jon R. Katzenbach Harvard Business Review, November-December 1997, pp. 83-91.
No abstract available
Unprecedented changes in all industry, particularly the healthcare industry, have called for increasing use of "teams" in an effort to effect rational analysis and behavior. For better or worse, those who have entered the practice of medicine primarily for the opportunities to engage in direct patient care have been pressed into more and more participation in "teams" (e.g., self-directed work teams, service design teams, sales teams, cross-functional teams, process redesign teams, etc, etc.). Not surprisingly, the top executives of any organization profess to belong to a top-level "executive team."
However, when asked about the "team at the top", most people offer a skeptical smile, implying that the "team at the top" is not really a team after all! The author of this article points out that even the best of companies rarely have its top executives functioning as -a real team. Indeed, he emphasizes that a team's know-how and experience inevitably lose power and focus at the top of the corporate hierarchy. Simply labeling a leadership group a "team" does not make it one. The term "team at the top" is a misnomer that obscures what teams can actually accomplish and what is required to make them work. Real teams must follow a well-defined discipline in order to achieve their performance potential. Performance is the key issue emphasized by Mr. Katzenbach. He reminds us that not long ago the corporate world was victimized by an army of gurus proclaiming the virtues of such "team values" as involvement, empowerment, and sensitivity. At that point, team-based organizations began to see an undiscriminating pursuit of new teams everywhere. In successful organizations today, the notion of performance is key to effective team efforts. The closer a team is to its marketplace, the easier it is to maintain that critical focus on performance.
The precise definition of a "real team" offered by Mr. Katzenbach is the following. "A real team is a small number of people with complimentary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. Each component of this definition reflects a form of discipline essential to successful team function."
The author of this article provides a perspective in which good leadership within organizations requires elements of team and "non-team" activities to achieve optimal success.
An all too familiar pattern of behavior in top leadership is reflected in a scenario describing why non-team behavior prevails at the top.
"The CEO designates his or her direct reports as some kind of executive council. This council's primary purpose is to shape strategic priorities, enforce operating standards, establish corporate policy, and development of management talent; its members set the direction, mission and policies for the business. The group meets at least weekly to discuss operating matters; individuals also come together periodically to discuss major strategy and policy matters. The CEO chairs the meetings, controls the agenda, and gains support for decisions from members. Agendas are circulated in advance, allowing only modest amounts of time for unscheduled subjects. In short, the executive council functions as an efficient, effective working group with a single leader. It seldom applies the discipline of team basics either to the full group or to its occasional subgroups."
From this above scenario, Mr. Katzenbach offers three "myths" regarding the strongly held beliefs about the importance of potential value of teams at the top:
1. teamwork at the top will lead to team performance;
2. teams at the top need to spend more time together building consensus;
3. the senior group should function as a team whenever it is together.
The reasons that non-team behaviors continue to prevail at the top of organizations are revealing. First, a meaningful purpose for a team at the top is difficult to define. Secondly, tangible performance goals are hard to articulate the further up the organization one goes. Goal-setting for a team at the top in this context is often vague and not particularly meaningful to more results-oriented executives. Third, the right mix of skills is often absent in teams as they are assigned or comprised. It is inappropriate to assume that any group of members comprising a critical team will possess the appropriate skill set for any particular project assignment. Fourth, most teams require heavy time commitment which immediately reduces the likelihood of team success involving busy executive level participants. Fifth, real teams rely on mutual accountability, which is a concept counter-intuitive to most successful executive level participants. Sixth, non-teams best fit the power structure which governs most organizations, whereas undisciplined teams frequently reflect an amorphous group with overlapping accountabilities, and with little direct impact on performance. Finally, non-teams tend to be relatively fast and efficient, whereas real teams, especially during the initial phase of shaping goals and brainstorming about working approaches, warrant and need more time to develop.
Based on the above reasons, it becomes easy to appreciate why "teaming at the top" is not a natural behavior in most organizations. Mr. Katzenbach emphasizes however, that wise leaders recognize the inherent value of both behaviors -- executive leadership and team discipline. The best chief executive officers apply executive leadership discipline in circumstances requiring individual accountability for profit, market results, speed, and growth. CEO's organize senior leadership in groups to take full advantage of their experience, skills, insights, and judgments in shaping the organization's strategy and policy. At the same time the value of combining individual leaders into teams is associated with and mutually accountable and collective objectives, tightly focused, specific performance results, nonurgent agendas in which efficiency is not the primary objective.
In summary, the author emphasizes a fundamental message that both team and non-team disciplines play important roles in the leadership of any performance-oriented organization. Not surprisingly, it takes perceptive executive judgment to determine when and how each discipline should be applied. As guidelines for initiating a real team, Mr. Katzenbach provides simple rules which apply to effective teams in any organizational setting.
Three tests are suggested to determine whether a group can achieve real team performance:
1.The group must focus its attention on shaping collective work-products of clear value to the company.
2. Its members must learn how to shift and share leadership roles.
3. these members must be mutually accountable for the group's results.
Although healthcare has lagged behind most industry in applying leadership models to its various organizations, the roles of single executive leadership ("non-team") and "top team" leadership are both important parts of overall leadership today. An effective role if practitioners in contributing to these processes will prove to be of increasing importance as "process" becomes a more integral part of the practice of medicine.
Return to the Current Literature Review Front Page
|
