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C H A P T E R 1 3 Managing Groups and Teams FIGURE 13.1 The coordination needed by a symphony to perform in unison is a prime example of teamwork.

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W H A T ’ S I N I T F O R M E ?

Reading this chapter will help you do the following:

1. Recognize and understand group dynamics and development. 2. Understand the difference between groups and teams. 3. Understand how to organize effective teams. 4. Recognize and address common barriers to team effectiveness. 5. Build and maintain cohesive teams.

FIGURE 13.2 The P-O-L-C Framework

Groups and teams are ubiquitous on the organizational landscape and managers will find that team management

skills are required within each of the planning-organizing-leading-controlling (P-O-L-C) functions. For instance,

planning may often occur in teams, particularly in less centralized organizations or toward the higher levels of the

firm. When making decisions about the structure of the firm and individual jobs, managers conducting their

organizing function must determine how teams will be used within the organization. Teams and groups have

implications for the controlling function because teams require different performance assessments and rewards.

Finally, teams and groups are a facet of the leading function. Today’s managers must be both good team members

and good team leaders. Managing groups and teams is a key component of leadership.

In your personal life, you probably already belong to various groups such as the group of students in your

management class; you may also belong to teams, such as an athletic team or a musical ensemble. In your career,

you will undoubtedly be called on to be part of, and mostly likely to manage, groups and teams.

1. CASE IN POINT: GENERAL ELECTRIC ALLOWS TEAMWORK TO TAKE FLIGHT

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In Durham, North Carolina, Robert Henderson was opening a factory for General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). The goal of the factory was to manufacture the largest commercial jet engine in the world. Henderson’s op- portunity was great and so were his challenges. GE hadn’t designed a jet engine from the ground up for over 2 decades. Developing the jet engine project had already cost GE $1.5 billion. That was a huge sum of money to invest—and an unacceptable sum to lose should things go wrong in the manufacturing stage.

How could one person fulfill such a vital corporate mission? The answer, Henderson decided, was that one person couldn’t fulfill the mission. Even Jack Welch, GE’s CEO at the time, said, “We now know where pro- ductivity comes from. It comes from challenged, empowered, excited, rewarded teams of people.”

Empowering factory workers to contribute to GE’s success sounded great in theory. But how to accomplish these goals in real life was a more challenging question. Factory floors, traditionally, are unempowered work- places where workers are more like cogs in a vast machine than self-determining team members.

In the name of teamwork and profitability, Henderson traveled to other factories looking for places where worker autonomy was high. He implemented his favorite ideas at the factory at Durham. Instead of hiring gen- eric “mechanics,” for example, Henderson hired staffers with FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) mechanic’s licenses. This superior training created a team capable of making vital decisions with minimal oversight, a fact that upped the factory’s output and his workers’ feelings of worth.

Henderson’s “self-managing” factory functioned beautifully. And it looked different, too. Plant manager Jack Fish described Henderson’s radical factory, saying Henderson “didn’t want to see supervisors, he didn’t want to see forklifts running all over the place, he didn’t even want it to look traditional. There’s clutter in most plants, racks of parts and so on. He didn’t want that.”

Henderson also contracted out non-job-related chores, such as bathroom cleaning, that might have been as- signed to workers in traditional factories. His insistence that his workers should contribute their highest talents to the team showed how much he valued them. And his team valued their jobs in turn.

330 PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT

group

A collection of individuals who interact with each other such that one person’s actions have an impact on the others.

Six years later, a Fast Company reporter visiting the plant noted, “GE/Durham team members take such pride in the engines they make that they routinely take brooms in hand to sweep out the beds of the 18-wheelers that transport those engines—just to make sure that no damage occurs in transit.” For his part, Henderson, who re- mained at GE beyond the project, noted, “I was just constantly amazed by what was accomplished there.”

GE’s bottom line showed the benefits of teamwork, too. From the early 1980s, when Welch became CEO, until 2000, when he retired, GE generated more wealth than any organization in the history of the world.

Case written by Talya Bauer and Berrin Erdogan to accompany Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2009). Principles of management (1st ed.). New York: Flat World Knowledge. Based on information from Fishman, C. (1999, September). How teamwork took flight. Fast Company. Retrieved August 1, 2008, from http://www.fastcompany.com/node/38322/print; Lear, R. (1998, July–August). Jack Welch speaks: Wisdom from the world’s greatest business leader. Chief Executive; Guttman, H. (2008, January–February). Leading high-performance teams: Horizontal, high-performance teams with real decision-making clout and accountability for results can transform a company. Chief Executive, pp. 231–233.

D I S C U S S I O N Q U E S T I O N S

1. Teams are an essential part of the leading facet of the P-O-L-C framework. Looking at the team role typology, how might you categorize the roles played by the teams in this case?

2. What do you think brought individuals at GE together to work as a cohesive team?

3. In the case of GE, do you view the team members or the management leaders as the most important part of the story?

4. How do you think Henderson held his team members accountable for their actions?

5. Do you think that GE offered a support system for its employees in order to create this type of team cohesion? If so, how might this have been accomplished?

6. What are the benefits of creating a team whose members are educated to make vital decisions with minimal oversight, as GE did in hiring staffers with FAA mechan