The Hindu Business Line : Structure and systems keep teams ticking

The word team evokes a picture of a bunch of geese flying long distance where they fly in formation, take turns leading the group, providing direction and breaking the effect of the opposing winds. The combined effect of the group helps in achieving their goal and that is more than the work of the individuals working together.

C. Gopinath

A Japanese engineer had just finished spending weeks on the shop floor of a friend’s factory in Bangalore, supervising the installation of machinery from his employer. My friend asked him what he thought of working with the crew of Indians he was supervising. Struggling with his limited vocabulary, he replied, ‘One Indian better than two Japanese, but one Japanese better than two Indians’.

This sounds like one of those koans of Zen Buddhism that you ponder over and uncover a fundamental truth, so let’s try to decipher that. Individually, Indians are excellent workers and idea generators. Thus, individually, we are better than two Japanese. However, our skills at working together are so poor that when we get together we make a mess of things!

There are areas at work where individualism is needed and highly valued. Pioneering spirits, an ability to take risks, creativity, and so on are the qualities attributed to successful individualists. They reject conformity and push ahead in the face of objections and opposition to come out with something new and unique.

And then there are areas of work where several people are engaged to deal with an issue or a problem and are expected to work together to achieve the goal. They may be bringing different skills that would need to be combined and coordinated to produce the result. In some of these cases, the work may be broken up quite efficiently that allows the individuals to work independently and combine their effort in the end for a final result. I would call these as just a group of people who happen to be working together.

1+1=3

On the other hand, the word team evokes a different meaning. It is like a bunch of geese flying long distance where they fly in formation, take turns leading the group, providing direction and breaking the effect of the opposing winds. This is not individual geese that happen to be flying together. The combined effect of the group helps in achieving their goal and that is more than the work of the individuals working together.

That extra result that comes from the team effort is sometimes referred to as synergy, the effect of one plus one resulting in three. That comes from sharing ideas, supporting each other, the interaction and coordination between the members producing a greater output than the sum of the individual parts would.

At a very simple level, that is what we expect from different departments in an organisation working together to achieve the desired goals of the organisation. But when the individuals cannot or do not work together, it can result in negative synergy.

This is when the result seems to be less than what could have been achieved by them working individually. That is what seemed to be happening at this German-owned manufacturing unit, also in Bangalore.

The German manager who was heading this unit was struggling with team work, or the lack of it, in his organisation. ‘My managers are very good and extremely capable individually,’ he commented. ‘But when we meet and make some decisions, they are expected to execute those decisions, taken and agreed to jointly. What I find is that individual managers, after having agreed to something together, do things that are in variance to what was agreed. They often are able to justify their individual action as being better than what was agreed to, but the effect is that the combined result is weak since some of the others were working as per the agreed plan.’

Here was the problem of individual optimisation that can result in team sub-optimisation. Therefore, it is not just that they do not work well with others, but unconsciously sabotage a group decision by individual action.

Have it in genes

The Japanese have it in their genes to think of the larger good and to subsume their individuality to work for that common goal. Look at their Cool Biz scheme. This slogan was coined a couple of years ago when the government recommended setting higher temperatures to trigger air-conditioning so as to save energy.

With social pressure working towards conformity, people have been falling in line including finding innovative ways to stay cool in the summer heat.

What that means is that in a country where even taxi-drivers are dressed in suits like they are going for a Board meeting, we saw bankers during summer shedding their ties and no jackets. Everyone felt that they have to do their bit for the larger good of society. Working in a team comes easy for these folks.

Why of software success

But how is it that the software industry in India has made such a success of teams? They are not just talking about five people in different rooms in one building being in a team. They are often in situations where 50 people may be spread in different continents, involving different languages and time zones, yet working as a team.

The two factors that make for their teams to work well are structure and systems.

The structure makes it very clear who are the members of the team, what is their goal, what are the timelines, and what are the roles and responsibilities of each member of the team.

he systems that are put in place set the ground rules for how the team will work, how they will communicate, and how often, facilitate their getting to know each other through conscious efforts, and make it very clear how their performance will be evaluated and the rewards and punishments that go with it. And a major part of the systems is the extensive training that the individuals go through to make all the structure, the systems and the culture become part of their nature. People are just not thrown together hoping a team spirit will emerge. Building a team takes work.

Steve Hamm’s book, ‘Bangalore Tiger’ gives a fascinating inside view of how this happens in one company, Wipro. Careful structures are set up, targets made clear, and performance constantly measured and fed back to the individuals so they know what they should work on.

Training takes place constantly, and rewards are closely aligned to the desired goals. In the absence of Japanese genes to make people cooperate and work together as a team, structure and systems can play an important role.

Different experience

I met a student from Indore at an institute in France last week. He was taking courses as part of an exchange program. When I asked him what he found different with the courses there, he observed it was the way students worked that he found very different. ’Back home,’ he said, ‘we usually divide the project work and do it individually.

Here, I find the French students like to sit together and work together on the report while arguing and interacting. I am benefiting from that experience.’

Here was one person who had figured it out what it takes for working as a team as opposed to working in a team.

(The author is professor of international business and strategic management at Suffolk University, Boston, US. His Internet address is cgopinat@suffolk.edu)

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