Ginger responds in LO12226 to the question errors by asking if the teams
are held accountable for the errors and how they are managing them and
then goes on to ask,
> "If someone outside the team
> is monitoring the error rate rather than the team itself, how can they
> feel responsible for it? Give them their monkey to care for and feed.
As I look across all the good things happening in the world of work, one
of the highlights for me is teams and the power thereof.
But I also notice a distinct trend for making these teams responsible for
everything. And I think that the monkey has metamorphosed into the old
800 pound (364 kilo) gorilla. And the legs of the workers, which were
getting stronger are now bending because of rickets and stress.
Teams can do a lot. But we need to give them team "stuff" and not just
make them accountable for individual performance.
Now Ginger and I have had a LOT of dialog over past months and she will
know that this isn't an attack on the person, but merely a reframe of the
reality of work. Teams are great. But we defeat the purpose when we've
got them micromanaging on individual performance.
Back in the old days of 1978, we would simply ask ourselves, "Could the
worker do this job without making errors? and then look at the feedback
system and see if the worker was getting information about their
performance related to the expectations and self-generated goals. We
called it behavior modification. Seemed to work then.
-- For the FUN of It!Scott Simmerman SquareWheels@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>