Organizational team building, team management, and equipping the individuals are aspects that are often considered as factors that define company performance. With organizations focusing more on team building, a transparent work ecosystem, and an employee-oriented management process, building a self-managed team is something that it all eventually leads to.
What is a self-managed team?
A self-managed team otherwise known self-directed team is a team that is well-organised and has a well-set process that makes it almost like an autonomous group of employees that can function even without continuous overseeing.
While the manager defines the process and timelines of a project or task and equips the team, the team members have the discretion to decide, plan, and manage their daily schedules on their own with no or very less supervision. The best part of a self-managed team is that the manager needs to make minimal contact with the team, that too only for project updates, issue resolutions or resource allocation.
In an ideal scenario, a self-managed team is responsible and accountable for all the tasks undertaken. But for it to work, the team usually has to be small, and comprise skilled individuals who are also cross-trained.
But how is such a team built? Does this just happen naturally with hiring talented individuals? No. Team building, transparency, and leadership strategy play the primary role here.
The definite skills needed to build a successful self-managed team are:
- Ability to make decisions based on available data: A self-managed team depends on employee-driven decisions, for which employees must have the confidence and analytical ability. The organizational culture plays a huge role in confidence-building and so does the guidance provided by the leadership team.
While data may be readily available, what one makes out of it makes a difference. For building a self-managed team, it is essential to build a workforce that can segregate the data, identify the data that connects with the current processes, analyze and draw conclusions based on the data available. A data-driven decision has better acceptance and for a self-managed team to succeed, it is important to that the team acknowledges any decision made by members.
- Problem-Solving Skills: Members of a self-managed team require good problem-solving skills. This ideally breaks down to good data gathering, fact-finding, brainstorming, project planning, analysis, teamwork, project management, collaboration, communication, and testing the effectiveness of solution created through follow-up and troubleshooting.
How do you cultivate this skill in the employees? Would investing in technology alone suffice are aspects that need retrospection for building a highly skilled team.
- Effective communication skills: Good Communication skill is an essential element of teamwork. This comes down essentially to self-management, where individuals are aware of when and where they need input from their peers or the leadership team.
How well the team member knows about the resources and tools and the feedback process also depends on communication. It is more about whether the employee chooses to seek help and resources to get the job done, which again extends interpersonal skills.
- Alignment to Organizational Goals, short term, and long term: Why is this a necessary skill? No prizes for guessing. After all, a common goal drives a self-managed team. This, however, depends on how well the leaders build goals, and how relevant it is to the team or to the individual. Goes without saying that it must align with the larger organizational goals. Well-rounded planning is needed to ensure that the team and the members are all aligned with the long-term and short-term goals that aim to improve efficiency, engagement, and business performance.
- Focus on Co-ordination & Teamwork: Teamwork cannot be overlooked in a self-managed team. But this requires individual effort and hence each member in the team must have a clear understanding about how co-ordination makes teamwork easier. There should be a basic understanding between the team members and, for this, the organization must focus on rapport building through social interactions. Good teamwork essentially depends on how well the employees connect with other teammates. A strong bonding often results in better co-ordination and teamwork.
- Nurturing Team Expertise: Are individuals recognized for the skills they bring in? Nurturing the potential within employees requires connecting with them, providing the training, and challenging them to hone the skills they have. With individuals of unique talent and skills forming a team, this moves towards an even more inclusive team-oriented activity, wherein the expertise of the team is enhanced not just through training, but through activities that put the skills to use.
It is important to note that the structure of the team and how well the skills of the individuals present complement each other also play an important role in building self-managed teams.
- Promoting strong bonding and adherence to a company Work Culture: Trust is an important element, as it builds transparency and nurtures honesty amongst the team members. But this is more of an organizational influence. The work culture and the freedom given to employees also determines their attitude towards the company. The policies, the benefits, and the hierarchy in an organization often influence the alignment with the work culture and the level of bonding employees have with each other.
How Fugo is contributing to building successful self-managed teams?
At Fugo, the focus has always been towards empowering the employees by nurturing their skills and providing them an environment where they can freely apply these skills.
To build self-managed teams, Fugo has built a work culture wherein each employee understands the short- and long-term goals of the company. Every employee is clearly aware of how the tasks delegated to them affect the targets and hence works towards the common goal.
While most organizations consider creating self-managed teams as a task, at Fugo, we believe in nurturing a team spirit that allows each individual to take charge and start teamwork autonomously.
When every employee has the drive to work towards common goals, it becomes easier to create self-managed teams. The self-managed teams at Fugo focus on the team goals, and how they can be achieved through existing processes or by creating data-driven models to enhance performance.
